We had called time on the trip round town on the Saturday night relatively early, compared to the old days of staying out until three in the morning, and I was in bed by half one in the morning. These days if I stay out too late it wipes me out for the whole of the following day and if I have a really late night then I need to book a few tactical days off work after the night out.
Luckily an early(ish) night meant some time for a good long walk and also chance to do some more cooking projects. This said I decided to make something that you can only really make at this time of year due to the availability of one of the ingredients; Garlic Scones. The reason why you can only make them at this time of year is because rather than using garlic bulbs you use the leaves of wild garlic plants in the recipe which are only really edible at this time of year.
The soundtrack to cookery today was The War on Drugs' recent brilliant album "Lost in the Dream" which includes great tracks like "Red Eyes" "In Reverse" and "Under the Pressure" a song that describes adequately my mind-set since the start of the new year.
I first put in a mixing bowl 225 grams of self-raising flour and fifty grams of low fat margarine. I cut the butter into small, misshapen cubes and then rubbed it in with my hands until the flour and margarine were combined together and shaped like breadcrumbs.
The next job was cut up eight wild garlic leaves. Wild garlic grows commonly near where I live, mainly along the side of riverbanks and footpaths and fortunately some was available in the garden of the house I am currently living at. I sliced the garlic leaves horizontally using a sharp knife into narrow strips. I added the strips of garlic leaves to the flour and margarine together with 100 grams of grated, lactose free extra mature cheddar. I also added one beaten egg and one hundred millilitres of semi-skimmed milk to the bowl and stirred them together until they formed a thick paste.
I realised that I needed to dry the mixture if it was going to cook properly and so I added to the bowl about seventy-five grams of self-raising flour. I then stirred the mixture into a ball and kneaded it like bread dough into the flour until I had something that had the dry, dusty consistency of pastry. I rolled it out on the worktop until it was about a square foot in width and about a centimetre deep. I cut the pastry up into five centimetre square pieces and baked it in the oven on 200 degrees, 210 for non-fan ovens, for about fifteen minutes.
After taking the scones out of the oven and letting them cool down a little I had a taste of them and found the wild garlic to be less potent than garlic bulbs would be. The wild garlic leaves did not overpower the taste of the mature cheddar either. The scones were best served with a spot of margarine melted onto them and proved to be an enjoyable starter to tonight's tea.
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| Butter would melt: these scones are delicious if halved and then margarine is spread on top of them. |
