Local Favourites Part One: Potato Scones

Hey! Did you know that the third issue of Young Explorer (Which is, according to the Shrieking Violet, "Manchester's loveliest zine") is now available to buy for a mere two quid? Well it is. The theme, this time, is food and there are loads of dead good things to digest in there. Like Laura Kirsop from Internet Forever talking about what she eats when she's on tour, a comic by Stef Bradley of Today Zine super stardom and loads more besides. There's more info here if you're interested.

There's also a super nifty bit in the middle of the zine about regional food stuffs that you would probably enjoy. We talk about our favourite local foods and then there's an annotated map of Britain with arrows and things on it, so that you know where all these nice foods are originally from.

To accompany that bit of the zine, we're going to do a series of blog posts where we attempt to cook each one of the six things that we highlighted as being our favourite regional foods. Then we'll share the recipe, and post some pictures of how things looked as we were going along. This first post is POTATO SCONES.

Potato Scones

Potato scones are pretty easy to make. We've intentionally started with the easiest recipe of the bunch and will probably forget about the harder ones on the list. But potato scones are dead nice and are a perfect accompaniment to any fried breakfast (Particularly if you're vegetarian or Scottish). I had them for the first time in Edinburgh years and years ago, in a breakfast that also included chips and hash browns. So much potato! You don't have to go so spud mad though - we've restrained ourselves here and served our potato scones with some nice beans and fried mushrooms.

Ingredients
500g floury potatoes
115g self raising flour
A knob of butter
A splash of milk
Sprinkle of salt

Step one - mash some potatoes. About 500g will do. Lots of recipes that we found said 'floury potatoes' are best, but we just bought the one kind of potato that the Sainsburys in Piccadilly Station sells.

Step two - mix in about 115g of self raising flour. And also a wee bit of salt. Och, I have only just started writing about potato cakes and already I've turned Scotch!

Step three - turn your flour/mashed potato combo out on to a surface that you've dusted with some flour. Give it a bit of a kneading, but don't go too mad. Just push it all together roll it around a bit until it resembles a big ball of dough. Like this:

I wish we could take amazing photos of our food, like those on Fish, Chips and Gelato. But we can't, so these will have to do.

Step four - roll out your ball into a pancake type shape. 1cm thick, perhaps? Quite thick but not really thick. Thicker than a pancake. If you've had a potato scone before you'll know what you're aiming for, anyway. At this point you can cut your big potatoey pancake into quarters and fry them separately. Or you can just put the whole thing into the frying pan and cut it up when it's cooked. I have no idea which way is the most authentic. Possibly the former, so obviously we did the latter.

Step five - if you're going for the 'stick the whole thing in the pan' approach, fry it for about ten minutes and then awkwardly slide it out on to a plate. Using another plate, flip the scone over and then slide back into the pan (We were regretting not cooking them in quarters at this point) until both sides have gone kind of golden and crispy looking . Then turn the whole thing out on to a chopping board and then quarter it. Don't worry, yours will look better than ours.

Step five - serve with whatever fried foods you fancy eating. Or I guess you could eat them on their own, but you know, that wouldn't be as good.

So what's your favourite regional food? Tell us about it. Please. We never get any comments on here! Alternatively, why not tweet us, talk to us on Facebook or follow us on Instagram and Pinterest?

Enjoy the nice weather!

S