26/01/2013 by TWB

Scones!

I’ve never been very good at scones, I don’t make them very often (that’s probably why), mainly because I don’t think I’ll ever be able to achieve the ease of throwing together an awesome scone like Pam. So it was with trepidation that I attempted scones this morning. The incentive – so Hugo had something to take along to friends for morning tea (that’s what we call mid morning snack in Australia) and also because I promised Mike Small that I would post Pam’s Scone recipe!

Mum grew up in Australia and, as in Scotland, the Country Women’s Association or Women’s Rural Institute is famous for its scone making prowess. The simplest of recipes can be the most challenging and floor even the most accomplished chefs (as a recent MasterChef episode illustrated). Mum learnt to make scones with ‘Gravy’ (aka Ms Graves) – the most resourceful cook and dressmaker I have ever come across and who supported my grandmother in raising her 4 children alone in Sydney in the 1940s. Both Gravy and Mum loved the CWA and Australian Women’s Weekly recipe books.

Pamela’s scone tips:

don’t over work the dough (when a scone recipe says to knead the dough, all you are doing is pushing the mixture together and bringing it to a relative uni form). Mum made scones in a block on a baking tray, not cookie cutter scones, which probably accounts for the rougher texture of her scones. (They wouldn’t have won prizes at the local county show! She did win prizes for all sorts of other things though ….:-)
use a knife to mix in the milk
preferably use milk that’s gone off
to keep warm and soft, wrap in or cover with a clean tea-towel
eat them fresh out of the oven, warm with real butter and home made jam
a hot oven (at Longwood, the Aga top oven)
and generally I’m pretty sure that speed actually helps the lightness of a scone’s being…

Basic Scone

BASIC SCONES a la PAMELA (makes about 12)

Heat your oven to 220 degrees. Oil and flour a small baking tray.
Use a knife to stir a dessert spoon of caster sugar (optional*) into 3 cups of SR flour (or plain flour + 3 tsp baking powder). Add a pinch of salt. Make a well in the centre, and with the knife, mix in 1 cup of milk (room temp is best) until you create a soft dough (you might have to add another tablespoon of milk; don’t add too much though or it will become too sticky). Use your hands to grab all the dough from the bowl into one large ball. (Do not knead as your scone will become heavy.) Press out the dough onto the tray to make a rectangle about 1.5cm thick and score into approx 12 squares. Brush the top with milk. Pop in the oven on the top shelf for about 12 minutes. Turn out onto a wire rack for a short cooling and cover with a clean tea towel.
Serve warm with just butter or decadent cream and jam.

[For a richer flavour, you can rub 25g of butter or marg into the SR flour with your fingertips til the mixture resembles breadcrumbs or I like to use half milk, half cream.]

* Mostly sugar was not added into the main mixture (kids probably would prefer it), because the jam usually adds enough sugar.

DIVERSIFYING YOUR SCONES

At the sugar stage you could add chopped dates, sultanas, cheese etc. At the Longwood Bakehouse organic flour was always used, but usually white for scones. For a wholemeal scone that tastes okay and is not like a brick, I recommend using 1 cup wholemeal, 1 cup white. I haven’t tried scones with quinoa, pumpkin and sunflower seeds etc but I think that would enter the ‘muffin’ genre of scone-making. Please comment and share your favourite scone variations.

This morning I experimented with ricotta and dark chocolate ….

Chocolate Ricotta Scones

Chocolate Ricotta Scones

I replaced the 1 cup of milk with 1/2 cup of Ricotta + 1/2 cup milk. I broke up 2 pieces of Lindt 85% dark chocolate into shards and stirred these in with the knife before adding the last bit of milk. Also, after brushing with milk, I sprinkled the surface with sugar ( I used caster but brown would have been better). Hugo will let us know if they were palatable……?

21/01/2013 by TWB

Barbecue Sauce

Juliet Dean reminded me of this recipe – a favourite at all barbecues, especially during the days of renovating Longwood in the late 1970’s, when a hoard of volunteer workers and visitors would be fed on the patio – also later, as Dolly recalls, at the large parties that Pat and I hosted during our teenage years. Mum would make a big pot of the sauce because everyone added it liberally to their charred sausages and chops. If anyone has a photo of those days – please load it or send to me to add to this post.

It was/is also really good cold (in fact it improves with a little age!) – nothing like dipping a cold sausage in some cold bbq sauce! It’s really quick and easy to make (you could make a healthier version with fresh organic tomatoes and honey).

Pam’s Barbecue Sauce (origin – possibly Anne Renton?)

50g butter or marg; 1 tablespoon brown sugar; 1 finely chopped onion; 3 tablespoons tomato ketchup or chutney; 2 teaspoons curry powder, 1 tablespoon flour; 1 pint good stock (550ml -ish); a good splash of Worcester Sauce; salt & pepper; (chilli flakes optional).

Melt the butter and fry the onion lightly. Add curry powder and flour, brown sugar and tomato ketchup and stir to a paste. Add the stock, seasoning and Worcestershire sauce; and stir til smooth. Simmer for probably about 15 mins.

(This probably makes a small saucepan-full. Mum didn’t usually make anything in a small quantity – she was always expanding the scale and I can tell by the pencilled in quantities at the side of the recipe that she made it in 4x, 8x and 16x quantities!)

The Patio, 2011

: Yum!

20/01/2013 by TWB

Chicken with chorizo, prunes and crispy almonds

I’m not sure where this recipe came from originally, possibly a magazine. It certainly was a regular favourite in recent years and my daughter Zoe loves it!

Serves approx 4. 8 free range chicken thighs, 1 chorizo, 16 ready to eat prunes, small glass dry white wine, 300 ml chicken stock, fresh thyme, knob of butter, large handful whole almonds, sea salt, quarter pint single cream.

I know this doesn’t look particularly appetising but it was really yummy. Some of the chorizo is a little charred and the other black things are the prunes!

Arrange chicken thighs in a roasting tin or baking dish. Finely slice a large chorizo and place the slices on top of the thighs. Season with ground pepper. Scatter the prunes about the dish. Mix the wine and stock and then pour over. Scatter the thyme and cook for around 30-40 minutes. In the meantime, sizzle almonds in melted butter for 2-3 minutes, and set aside. Remove the chicken, prunes etc to a warmed dish, cover. Reduce the remaining juices in the tin/dish to half. Add the cream, stir til smooth and pour over the chicken etc. Sprinkle the almonds with sea salt and scatter over the chicken. Serve with crispy green veg, such as courgettes, green beans and a great glass of Australian dry white wine!

TIPS: scatter the almonds on top just before serving – they will be nice and crunchy, adding an extra dimension to your dish!

Grandma’s cooking class – Pamela and Zoe at work in the Longwood kitchen, December 2008

19/01/2013 by TWB

Welcome! I’m just getting started!

This blog is all about sharing Pamela’s wonderful collection of recipes with family, friends and the community that enjoyed so many of her meals around the Longwood kitchen table and all the other Flockhart family homes over the years.

Pamela Ellison Flockhart (nee Macartney) was an avid home-maker and superb cook – cooking for the five thousand was a regular feat and delivered with ease over the 61 years of her marriage to Ross, nourishing five children, five grandchildren and whoever walked in the continually open back door. An architect by profession she performed the duties of a minister’s wife for many years and continued in the same ways long after my father left the occupation. Pamela was a role model to many who inspired us all with her effortless hospitality, her good nature and level-headed advice.

My brothers, David, Andrew and Patrick, and I, as well as my sisters-in-law over the years have been known to ring Mum with an urgent request for one of her classic recipes – no matter where we were living at the time – it could have been Tennessee, Taiwan, Australia, Malaysia or France.

Many of these recipes were stashed in a notebook that my grandmother, Thelma Macartney (nee Buchanan) gave mum in the 1950’s – an imperial sized lined notebook – the sort that were standard issue in Australian schools at the time. This book now lies in tatters next to me on my desk, held together with rubber bands and yellowy sticky tape. It contains many of Pamela’s favourite recipes collected from many sources, either clipped from magazines, shared by friends or requested from a restaurant. What it doesn’t contain, and which are sadly now lost, are her tips on how to vary the recipe or to shortcut the process. She had an inimitable way of throwing ingredients together without too much care for measuring exactly and was always adventurous in replacing an ingredient with another if it wasn’t in her generously stocked pantry.

I’m not sure of the exact date when she decided to start the Longwood Bakehouse (or indeed when she closed it; I’m sure Dad or my brothers will set me straight) but I think it must have been running from the early 1980’s into the mid-90’s.

The Bakehouse was our family country kitchen, in East Lothian, where Mum used stoneground organically grown wholewheat flour and free range eggs to produce a variety of bread, rolls, quiches, pizzas, cakes and pavlovas. Rising at around 3am five days a week to mix and knead, prove and bake became the ritual that my father joined, helping Mum before he drove 20 miles into Edinburgh for a day at the office (delivering bread on the way!).

This blog is an attempt to share Pamela’s Longwood Bakehouse Recipe Book with all the family, friends and community that so enjoyed many meals around the Longwood kitchen table or the dining tables of the Polwarth, Pentland View, Northfield, Iona, Buccleugh Place, Argyll Crescent and Sydney homes.

Please leave your comments and anecdotes about Pamela and her recipe collection, especially if you recall any of her special tips!