Sep 11

"A warm pumpkin scone for a winter's afternoon"

"Sono una merenda scalda cuore" (a heart-warming snack)

Profumi e Colori

I'm going simple today because time is running out, but I am also continuing with the theme of Comfort as defined by Ottolenghi and co. My title for the post is the title of the recipe for the above, as photographed by Jonathan Lovekin for Nigel Slater. One can imagine them scoffing it together after the photo session. If you are not enticed by the photograph, which hits you as you turn the page of Tender volume 1, then surely you will be tempted by the recipe title. And as the rain trickles down on a dark wintry (even thought it's spring) afternoon, I would rush to make it - if I had any pumpkin. Maybe tomorrow.

Here is Nigel's introduction to A warm pumpkin scone for a winter's afternoon, which tells it all really:

"A warm scone is an object of extraordinary comfort, but even more so when it has potato in it. The farl, a slim scone of flour, butter and mashed potato, is rarely seen nowadays and somehow all the more of a treat when it is. I have taken the idea and run with it, mashing steamed pumpkin into the hand-worked crumbs of flour and butter to make a bread that glows orange when you break it. Soft, warm and floury, this is more than welcome for a Sunday breakfast in winter or a tea round the kitchen table. Cooked initially in a frying pan and then finished in the oven, I love this with grilled Orkney bacon and slices of cheddar sharp enough to make my lips smart – a fine contrast for the sweet, floury "scone" and its squishy centre." Nigel Slater

Wikipedia is rather more functional in it's description of a farl, not to mention unspecific:

"A farl is any of various quadrant-shaped flatbreads and cakes, traditionally made by cutting a round into four pieces."

Also traditionally Irish it seems, although Scotland seems to be the ultimate source of the word itself:

"The word farl is pronounced farrel and derives from the old Scots word fardel, which essentially means 'a quarter.'" Moya Watson

Because they were cut into quarters. But yes, they are mostly a kind of potato bread:

"They provide fertile ground for experimentation with almost no chance of failure – it is hard to cook a bad farl. ... A hybrid of scone, bread and pancake, they are the most Gaelic of edible pleasures. They conjure up the skillet on the open fire; will‑o'‑the-wisps over a pitch black bog; the purple heath." Henry Dimbleby/The Guardian

Experimentation - the other concept that Ottolenghi and co embrace in their book on Comfort. You take something that defines comfort for you and you play with it, as Nigel has in his warm pumpkin scone, by 'taking the idea and running with it.'

I don't know whether it's the recipe title, the beautiful picture or that fact that it's a scone and it's Nigel but several people on the net have had a go at it. Those who just copied it straight as is demonstrated on the websites Bon Appétempt, Farlows and an Italian site - Profumi e Colori - whose words are my opening quote. The title sounds even more tempting in Italian - Scones tiepidi alla zucca although in fact it is more pragmatic, as it leaves out the winter afternoon - and therefore the double meaning of warm - which they do go on to explain.

As you can see their results vary and they don't look quite as luscious, but pretty good all the same. The writer of Bon Appétempt was quite ecstatic in her appraisal of the recipe:

"I’m not lying when I say that this scone made my Sunday. Though its texture hardly reminded me of any scone I’ve ever eaten before. It’s so moist from all that pumpkin that the center is more like that of mashed potatoes. The delicate flavors, however, are where its scone-ness really reveals itself. It’s slightly pumpkiny, a bit buttery and a bit “floury”—a word Slater uses to describe it, which I didn’t think much of when I first read it, but now realize is completely accurate. Oh, and then there are these occasional bursts of thyme. It tasted like autumn. And in this season-less city, that’s worth its weight in gold." Bon Appétempt

The writer of Farlows was similarly positive in his article on Halloween and not wasting the pumpkins:

"My favourite though is Nigel Slater‘s brilliant pumpkin scone, which I make without fail every year [at Halloween] and it‘s a regular on the breakfast, or supper, table here, usually with a good cheese." Farlows

However, it seems that it's not just the great recipe creators of today who ring the changes on old classics. The lady who writes The Boatshed Chronicles, fiddled with Nigel's recipe in a major way creating a sweet scone, not a savoury one, but still hanging on to the method and the pumpkin by creating Pumpkin, date and chocolate scones, not to mention that she had intended to use prunes but didn't have any so used the dates which she did have.

Nigel himself has other recipes for pumpkin scones and they are a departure from both his pumpkin farl, and ordinary scones. People fiddle with them all the time don't they? Henry Dimbleby, in his article on potato farls tells you to experiment with the texture a little:

"The less flour and bicarb you use, the denser and moister the farl. Using more flour and bicarb and moistening the mixture with milk creates an increasingly light and fluffy bread‑like substance."

And since I am now back to the original back in time recipe for potato farls, here are two more from - yes Ottolenghi - Curried potato farls with bacon and apple mustard, and Rachel Roddy - Potato flatbreads with anchovy butter. Both of which look pretty nice, and illustrate how comfort recipes can be transformed into exciting new things, but which don't simultaneously fulfil that winter's afternoon comfort of a squidgy scone. With cheese. Always with cheese.