Back to tradition with a batch of cheese scones

After last week's exotic excursion to South America, this week I felt like baking something simple (jet lag) and traditionally English. And what's more English than scones? My youngest sister Hatty makes the best scones in Yorkshire - maybe the best scones in England but it's hard to tell because they never last long enough to make it out of Yorkshire. If you want one/three, you can get them in her cafe, the Jam Jar in Ripon. I think cheese scones make a regular appearance on Thursdays, which is market day.

People often ask Hatty for her scone recipe, expecting it to be some long held family secret. In fact, it's from the free recipe book that comes with Be-Ro flour, although no one ever believes it. And as you'll see from my attempt, there's clearly some other magic involved...

Mum's had a well-thumbed copy of this book for as long as I can remember (i.e. the 70s!); my copy is a bit newer but the recipes are exactly the same.

Ingredients

(makes about 8)

175g self-raising flour

1/2 tsp mustard powder

Pinch of salt and pepper

25g butter or margarine

75g grated cheese

1 egg

2 tbsp milk

Method

- Mix the flour and seasonings together, then rub in the cold fat

- Stir in the cheese, keeping a bit to sprinkle over the top

- Mix together the egg and milk, then add to the dry mix to make a soft dough

- Roll out and cut out, either triangles or using a fluted cutter (but see the Tips section later on this). Brush with a little milk or egg and sprinkle with the leftover cheese

- Bake at 220C for 10 to 15 minutes until golden brown.

Now embarrassingly, you'll notice that despite the camera angle, these scones are biscuit flat! 

The Bearded Argentinian assures me that they taste delicious, but if I want to practice with a few more batches, he'll do his best to test them all. There I was thinking that scone-making was in my genes, and out come these failures... So I did a bit of research:

Tips for not making flat scones:

- Firstly, I had no idea there was such variety in recipes: raising agents, flour types, eggs vs no eggs, lard vs butter vs margarine...

- Most likely, the butter had something to do with it, as I only had spreadable butter to hand, and cold hard block butter is probably better

- Consulting the scone oracle Hatty, you don't need to roll them out either, just pat the dough down and leave them much thicker (can't believe this is against what the BeRo book says!). Then they might turn out more like these beauties:

(https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g209973-d3906140-Reviews-The_Jam_Jar-Ripon_North_Yorkshire_England.html?m=19904)

Four Hobs on the Road... and someone turns 70

It may come as a surprise, but the Bearded Argentinian is actually from Argentina and not Mexico as commonly mistaken. This week we are are visiting his parents in Buenos Aires, as his Dad turns 70, which is link enough for a 70's blog in my opinion. Below is the "recipe" for an asado, the closest translation being barbecue, but as you'll see, this is a million miles away (literally) from charcoal incinerated burgers...

The first step in this recipe is "Go to Argentina" as you'll never get the right quality or cuts of meat anywhere else. Also you need one of these:

I'm referring to the parilla, a brick construction found in pretty much all Argentinian gardens (not the man, who is Carlos, the birthday boy himself).

This asado took place two days before the big event (which was 4 times bigger) and was a kind of Sunday lunch for the family, including our friend Nico, who abandoned his wife and children for the weekend and travelled over 900 miles from Patagonia just to help us eat all this food.

Ingredients 

(serves 5, with leftovers)

10 chorizos

1 morcilla (a large sausage of black pudding)

Many kilos of asado (beef rib)

Many kilos of pork rib

Method

- Make a fire at one end of the parilla with dry wood (not green wood, which smokes too much. Yes, I have been lectured on this topic). Look, there's a separate bit for the fire:

- As the wood burns, move the hot white ashes from the grate of the fire to the grill. It takes about 2 hours to get enough ashes to start cooking. I strongly suggest opening a beer. 

- Add all the meat to the grill. The bars of the grill are v-shaped so that the fat runs away from the meat. I'm not proposing this is by any means healthy, but, you know, it could be worse...

- While the meat is cooking, have some picada - this basically means "food to pick on" so is usually cut into handy bite size pieces, and can be cheese, salami, olives, aubergine, breadsticks etc. Try really hard not to eat too much though, there is a lot of food coming.

- When the meat is golden brown on the bottom, turn and keep cooking. I'd be very surprised if you're not already on your third beer by now - it's thirsty work.

- Serve the chorizo and morcilla first, with green salad, potato salad and chimichurri. Oh, and some Malbec (nearly forgot, must be all the beer)

- Next, serve the beef..

... then finally the pork.

- Invariably, the meal will be followed by an intense conversation about politics and/or football. This is called "sobre mesa", literally "over the table", and is a good opportunity for non-Spanish speaking guests to quietly slip into a meat coma. I usually only respond to "un poco de vino tinto?" during this stage.

- Finish off with 6 flavours of ice cream. Not a choice of 6, a scoop of each. I'm not even joking. Here's an unrelated photo of our Goddaughter Amandita elegantly eating an ice cream:

Buen apetito! You might also need the phrase "estoy llena"... (I'm full!). Note, you will be asked at least three times if you're sure about this. 

Cook's tip: as a shortcut, just make friends with an Argentinian and they'll do all this hard work for you. I should point out that the Bearded Argentinian is *more than a friend* but there's no need to go to extremes.