Proper British Scones

I have been feeling the need to bake.  But unfocused as to exactly what I should bake.  I thought about cookies, or a cake.  But having come currents leftover from my biryani project last week, scones jumped to the head of the list as the most natural thing to make.  A quick survey of options brought me to Cooks Illustrated's Proper British Scone recipe from issue 127.

Pretty simple, not overly sweet, I had all the ingredients in house, and it would use up most of the currents.

Here they are, raw and cooked.  They definitely did what you'd want scones to do, puffed upward but not outward, tall and, well, scone-y (as opposed to muffin-y or biscuit-y or cakey or bready).

It's worth calling out the little "bonus" scone tucked on the pan in the photo above.  I can never bring myself to just throw out the bit of dough that inevitably is left behind once you've cut, pressed, measured, or scooped all the whatever you can out of a batch.  It was just as delicious as its full-sized relatives.

I lack a biscuit cutter, so extend a special thanks to the can of black beans I made into chili last night.  Since I hadn't recycled it yet, it served the purpose admirably.

 

Below plated and ready for a test-bite.  I even had some proper orange marmalade (with champagne!) to spread on them.  Lastly, a look at the interior.  I'm really really pleased with them.  Like I said, it was totally easy to make the batter, which in turn was quite easy to work with.  I'm going to have to share them with friends -- my apartment is now chock full of proper scones.  I bet they freeze well...

 

Breakfast in Vegas

Last week I spent a few days in Las Vegas, where I spoke at a conference.  On the advice of a friend who knows these things, I stayed at the Golden Nugget, downtown, well away from the Strip.  In retrospect I'm not so sure of the wisdom of that advice (though the Carson Tower, recently renovated, has great rooms very affordably).

However, it was an opportunity to put to a test the mythical Las Vegas breakfast buffet.  And sure enough, for $14, I had one of the most epically weird meals I've ever had.  Feast your eyes:

 

In case you need a guide, there's some breafast potatoes with chorizo, an egg scramble with smoked salmon, a cheese blintz with strawberry sauce, a biscuit with gravy, a slice of spam (here's to Hawai'i nostalgia), and off to the side, a quarter of a waffle with a chunk of fried chicken on it.

Not pictured is some assorted fresh fruit.

The only thing that would've made it weirder would've been if they'd had Japanese breakfast items to mix and match; a bit of grilled fish and some sticky rice or miso soup.  Probably they did have those things and I just overlooked them. And probably that's a good thing.

Still, I couldn't have asked for better fuel for a long day of meetings, conference sessions, and racing around a very large convention show floor.

 

Waffle and Broad, Downtown LA

I spent a couple of days in downtown Los Angeles for work last week.  Not much exciting from a food perspective, but I went to check out the new Broad Museum.

 It's a truly striking building, by Diller Scofido + Renfro, with a great facade...

 

Which is relevant because the next morning I went for an early breakfast at Grand Central Market.  Rather than Eggslut (I hear great things but was put off by the name--I'm kinda sensitive to vulgarity before 9AM.) I went for a cappuccino at G&B Coffee

And was beyond pleased to discover that they could make fresh waffles, while-you-wait.  It was like eating the exterior of the museum!

Whole-Wheat Pancakes REALLY From Scratch

Cooks Illustrated Magazine.  I love it dearly, have been a subscriber for well over a decade now.  But I'd be the first to admit that they publish ridiculously fussy recipes on a regular basis. For every life-changing "almost no-knead bread" recipe, there are three that are more along the lines of 48 hours of prep to make french fries.  And even the almost no-knead bread recipe decided you should knead it just a bit.

The latest case in point is the whole-wheat pancakes recipe in the last issue.  On the surface, it's pretty reasonable--the article talks about how bran and other stuff in whole-wheat flour breaks up gluten, making for a more forgiving pancake batter that you can beat the heck out of and still have good results.  But the punchline is that whole wheat flour also develops off-flavors far faster than white flour, since the bran and other stuff oxidizes pretty quickly.  Therefore, says Cooks, you should make your own flour, by finding wheat berries and blitzing them in a blender for 3 minutes, and then make the pancake batter from there.

"Right," thought I.  "That's insane.  Make your own flour...  Crazy Cooks Illustrated, I'll never do that."

So, today I did.  First off, I made a buttermilk substitute, since buttermilk is not something I use much at all.  (Add lemon juice to regular milk and let it sit a bit, it gets thick, slightly sour, and acidic).

Next, here are the wheat berries, looking pretty un-flour-like.  Organic hard winter wheat, from Whole Foods.  Cheap in their bulk foods section. 

But, sure enough, a thorough blitzing (3 minutes' worth) and it looked pretty flour-like. 

The rest of the batter gets made right in the blender, and is pretty straightforward, even easy--though I was a bit concerned during a lengthy blend of the flour and the buttermilk that the nice vortex that was supposed to form was more a solid glob, and the motor was starting to smell seriously overtaxed.

And here's the finished product in all it's pancake-y glory.  The thing that irritates me about Cook's Illustrated is not that they're fussy so much as they are so often correct in their fussiness.  These were delicious, and not all that much more work than ordinary pancakes would be.  And I can say I made flour this weekend.