The noble potato - part 2

Scottish Potato Scones

If Latkes are a Jewish staple these simple potato scones might be considered a Scottish one. The ingredients for both are quite similar but for the scones the potatoes are cooked by boiling before mixing with the flour.

400g hot potato (peeled, boiled and drained)
100g flour
40g vegan margarine
1/2 tsp salt

You will need a very heavy pan with a thick base or a griddle to make these.

Melt your margarine. If you do it in your cooking pan it will grease it in the same action.

Mash the potatoes finely, put through a ricer or coarse sieve if you like to remove all lumps but it's not essential. Add the melted fat, salt and the flour to the mash and combine well. It'll be a bit hot to put your hands straight in so use a fork to get the mixture started.

Divide the well mixed dough into two portions. On a well floured work surface gently roll out one portion to a circle about 15-20cms wide (let the size of your pan guide you!) and about 5 or 6 mm thick. Cut the circle into quarters.

Heat your lightly greased griddle or heavy frying pan but don't let it become smoking hot. You need a gentle heat to cook these cakes through. Arrange your scone pieces on the griddle and cook slowly until the underside is golden, then turn and repeat for the second side. It'll be three or four minutes for each side. While you're doing that, roll out the second portion of dough ready for the pan.

Serve warm with spread, marmite or jam. Leftovers will keep for a couple of days, wrapped in the fridge, and can be reheated under the grill or refried to form part of a full British breakfast.

The noble potato - part 1

Latkes with sweet green cucumber pickle.

Part of my current difficulties with having an interest in cooking comes down to an immature (think two year old toddler) tantrum about not wanting to eat what's so abundant it's boring.

We have a lot of potatoes this year (and tomatoes and courgettes) and before I've even eaten many I'm telling myself I'm sick to death with them. Pretty stupid because you can make so many very different dishes with potatoes, all of them delicious and mostly easy too. I've given myself a talking to and will, in penance, attempt a short series of potato based posts, interspersed with anything really good that comes up, showcasing the many ways the spud can make a good meal.

Latkes are potato cakes made with grated raw potato and fried in plenty of oil. So far, so good but when you actually come to research this traditional Jewish recipe, which is made especially for Hanukkah but also at other times of the year, you find that the variations on the theme are legion with vegetables, flavourings and even cheese added.

Consequently I have little concern over offering my own recipe version, which is veganised by leaving out the egg! I have to come clean though and admit these are the first really successful potato pancakes I've ever made, previous attempts have been passably nasty but at least this has allowed me to identify the essential points to address.

Peel and grate some potatoes. Much is made of the variety but I used a mix of waxy (Pink Fir Apple) and floury (old Epicure) and didn't have any problem. Use a large grater, it's less grief in my opinion. Three medium potatoes made enough for eight cakes.

Finely chop a small onion and add it to the potato. Don't add too much, onion is watery and sugary. The water makes the cakes gummy and the sugar will burn before the potato part is cooked. On the other hand, the flavour is much improved by the allium.

Put the potato onion mixture onto a clean tea towel, gather up the corners, go outside somewhere and comprehensively take your aggression out on it, squeezing those vegetables until they are as dry as really dry things.

Put the dried veg into a bowl and season lightly with salt and pepper. Now, I didn't weigh anything this morning so you'll just have to go with the flow. Sprinkle over enough white flour to coat each shred with a light dusting. Use your fingers to toss the flour through the mixture and allow any excess to fall to the bottom of the bowl. Using your hands take small portions of the floured potato and squeeze it into small flat cakes, not more than 1cm thick and about the size of the palm of your hand. Do several and set them to one side.

Heat a heavy frying pan with about 1cm of olive or other fresh oil in it until it is hot but not smoking. Place 4 or 5 of your little cakes into the oil, not too close to each other. They should sizzle as they hit the fat, then reduce the heat a little. You need to cook the cakes through before the outside burns so expect to take several minutes for each batch of latkes. Squash the cakes down as the first side cooks to spread them out a little and turn them once during cooking so that each side becomes golden.

Drain on kitchen towel and serve as quickly and as hot as possible.

Tradition has them served with apple sauce which I think would be lovely but I didn't have any so had sweet cucumber pickle instead which made a similar combination.

Lacking in the execution

Tofu Fingers in a Chinese Curry sauce

This was a nice enough idea, seasoned tofu fingers coated in cornflour and fried in plenty of oil is always a good start but the rice was mismanaged and the sauce inadequate so no recipe tonight. This is just to remind myself I need to try harder next time.

Still I may allow myself a glass of wine, just to help my digestion you understand.

Breakfast?

In a startling reversal of the space-time continuum I'm now working my way through 10 more days without a car or any access to things beyond the garden and the pantry stores. Not such a big deal as we discovered before but it does lead to some issues with everyday foods that are easier to buy in for one consumer. Like bread.

Yesterday I got over this problem by making chapatti which were bloody good if I say so myself, they cooked perfectly and by chance or design I got exactly the softness and puffiness I desire. Unfortunately, giving the recipe out for them is like giving out the recipe for wallpaper paste. It's just flour and water, it's what you do with them that matters and that is so difficult to explain.

Today I crumbled, (ha, get that!) and took the last loaf out of the freezer but it still wasn't thawed in time for breakfast. Enter the instant polenta.

Instant polenta has a bad press, probably mostly from people whose formative years were spent breaking their elbows stirring the 'real' stuff for an hour while dodging the explosive bombs of hot paste spluttering from the pan.

The instant stuff probably isn't as good, but it sure is convenient. Easiest to measure by volume, an espresso cupful (about 60ml although you don't usually get a full cup of espresso) is enough for two not terribly hungry people. Add four more cupfuls of cold water and heat, stirring continuously over a gentle heat for about FIVE minutes. You'll know it's done when it gets thick and starts leaving a trail behind the spoon in the pan. Add a good dollop of oil or vegan marge and you're ready to serve.

I split mine into two portions, one to eat hot and the other to chill and be fried in slices later. With the hot I served homemade beans in sauce. The garden is providing a lot of shelling beans at the moment and with some shallots, garlic and tomato sauce I made this not terribly delicious hotpot type thing which went quite well with the starchy polenta.

I will give you my tips for flavouring though because that worked quite well. A little bit of white pepper adds something that black pepper misses, probably because ready ground white pepper is slightly fermented. You can become quite a white pepper aficionado because various brands and batches may have quite different flavours and I'm well on my way to becoming one. With the white pepper, a pinch of ground allspice works nicely with the tomato although a single clove would also do the job as long as it was removed before eating.

More tomorrow I hope but I've been having a run of failures in my recipes recently, probably because food isn't top of my priorities at the moment, and there hasn't been a lot to share about it.

Flapjack

I had a whole long story to go with these, as well as my own recipe but for reasons that are best not gone into I'm too cross now to tell it properly. The recipe is a reliable one from The Complete Farmhouse Kitchen cookbook, the book of the TV series that informed many of my afternoons spent skiving from school.

Makes 15

75g marg.
2 tbs. golden syrup (about 50g)
75g dark sugar
150g rolled (porridge) oats

Grease a shallow tin, about 18cm square (or line with parchment or ideally both)

Put marg, syrup and sugar into a saucepan and heat gently until all is warmed and dissolved.

Remove from heat and mix in oats.

Spread into prepared tin and press down well.

Bake in a moderate oven 180C for 15-20 minutes. The colour should be just golden but it will burn quickly if you leave it in too long.

Remove from oven and allow to cool for five minutes, then mark into bars. Allow to cool completely before breaking into sections. Store in an airtight tin. Keeps three weeks.

This basic recipe can be gussied up with added dried fruit or coconut flakes if liked.

Baked Quinoa with Plantain Chips

A while back I was bemoaning the fact I couldn't find plantain in Normandy. Somebody must have been listening because I've found them in a couple of places since then.

Inspiration enough to step up to the cooker.

The Quinoa Bake is, because this is France and that's the way they sell it, actually Quinoa and Bulgar based. I would have preferred 100% quinoa but if you want to do exactly as I did then make a 50/50 blend or even just use bulgar in extremis.

Cook your quinoa in plenty of simmering lightly salted water for about 15 minutes, until the curly germ springs loose and the grain is soft and palatable. Drain and place into a well greased oven dish. Put a layer of fresh sliced tomato, not too thick on top - I used yellow tomatoes and sort of wished I had tomatilloes - then cover that with some thick tomato coulis or passata. Sprinkle with a little salt and some dried mixed herbs.

Make a handful of breadcrumbs, wholemeal for preference, grate in some vegan cheese and season well with black pepper. Use this to top off the bake, sprinkle with a little oil and pop into a hot oven.

To make the chips; peel and slice your plantain on the diagonal (or slice and peel if this is easier!). Fry quickly on both sides until just starting to turn golden, then remove from the pan and with spatula and some pressure squash each slice until it spreads a little.

Put onto a baking tray, add salt and hot pepper flakes to taste and put them into the oven with the bake for 20 minutes or so. The chips should be golden and the top of the bake browned and crispy.

Serve with a little hot sauce of your choice. This is really good.