Showing posts with label British. Show all posts
Showing posts with label British. Show all posts

Friday, January 13, 2017

Savory spruce (or pine!), oatmeal and cheese scones. Eat your Christmas tree, part 2!

So after experimenting with the spruce in a sweet dessert cookie, I got curious about it as a savory. After all, rosemary and pine have kind of similar flavors, and rosemary is frequently the featured flavor in artisanal breads, biscuits and rolls.

I started out with a fairly basic oatmeal scone recipe, but I deviated pretty quickly. Technically, I think these would count as a "teacake" at this point, rather than a true scone.  I made them a little smaller than scones, as they are little sweeter (but still not sweet), denser, and richer. 

With spruce being an ingredient in Scandinavian cooking, and scones being British or English, what would you call these? Scandlish? Britinavian? 


I really liked these a lot, more than the sweet cookies I made earlier, though most everyone else liked the sweet better. These are best served hot, preferably with some creamy, grass-fed butter or fresh cheese, and, of course, a pot of hot tea!

Special note: women who are pregnant should avoid eating spruce. You could make these with pine or balsam fir instead, though!

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Sweet potato colcannon with wild greens


Just a quick post today, I mixed this up yesterday with stuff hanging around in my fridge.

Colcannon is an Irish side dish of boiled cabbage or kale mixed into mashed potatoes. But in this wildcrafted take, I used healthier sweet potatoes and foraged greens (in this case, chickweed, but you could try it with lots of things). 

It's really simple, but it's the little additions to the mashed potatoes which make it so good: caramelized onion, lots of garlic and butter, a splash of cream. And of course, your wild greens. 

No recipe really needed: you should play around and find what works for you, but here is what I did: