As I thrill to our dominance of the 2nd test at Lord's, my support for England is expressing itself in a celebration of the wonderful British potato.
So as Flintoff's been pounding in from the pavilion end, I've been pounding potatoes from the kitchen end of the house, in unison. I love the various breads, scones and pancakes you can make from the potato. This weekend, I've made a couple of differing batches of what I call 'Tattie Scones" or potato cakes. Yesterday's mix was a bit wetter, more like a pancake batter. I also used half flour, half fine oatmeal (instead of just flour) with the potato. The texture of the resultant cakes were similar to an Irish Boxtie pancake, quite puffy and moist.
Today's lot were a hybrid of a simple Celtic tattie scone and the pan-cooked version of Boxtie. Grated raw potato is squeezed out, the residual water discarded but the starch conserved; about the same amount of boiled potato is mashed, nice and dry. About the same weight again of plain flour is mixed with the 2 potatoes. Some salt (a fair bit - most recipes don't specify enough), a lump of butter and a pinch of bicarbonate of soda are added. Fold it all together and knead briefly into a rollable dough. I dry fried the circular cakes of the dough in my little steel pan (see picture) which is now so well seasoned, it has entered a new level of usefulness and has been promoted from a dry spice toasting utensil to a front line, multi-purpose operator.
Great pictures, great food.
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