Tattie scones

1st January 2012
Tattie scones
from Broths to Bannocks by Catherine Brown, Waverley Books, 2010


New Year's Eve and Robert tells me that the one thing he's missed over the Christmas holidays is a proper fry up. "You know," he says, "When you've been doing something really physical, so you've earned it." He must be planning to go cycling in the morning. "What?" I hear you gasp. "The morning of January the first?" Yes indeed. You and I might plan a long lie the morning after but to a cyclist it's just another glorious opportunity to put some miles in those legs... Anyway, I pop into the small Tesco's at about 3, thinking it'll be quiet. Good thing I didn't go to the big one, as the small one is mobbed, and everyone seems to be preparing for a siege. I manage to grab the last pack of black pudding overlooked at the back of the shelf, debate whether to go home with another tin of Quality Street now they're even more reduced (no) and fail to find tattie scones, without which no Scottish breakfast is complete.

Later, we're sitting at the table, Robert and me and the girls, working our way through our leisurely dinner punctuated by games in a bid to keep all of us awake until the bells. They're all discussing New Year's resolutions (no thumb-sucking, be nicer to each other, same old things). On the whole, I prefer my resolutions to be secret if I make them at all, because if it's a self-improvement type of resolution having someone nag you about it turns it into a someone-else-trying-to-improve-you-resolution, and if it's a wishful-thinking type resolution then it probably shouldn't be aired in public anyway. But sometimes I like to set myself a challenge (as those who've read my other blog will know). Several years ago, fed up with what I'd been cooking, I challenged myself to try a recipe I'd never cooked before once a week for a year. So sitting there at the table, eating something I'd just cooked from one of my new Christmas cookery books (Saucy Monkey from Short and Sweet by Dan Lepard), I decide to try it again. The last time I wrote about the recipes in a notebook, but this time I shall blog for your edification and delight...

We manage to make it to midnight and then go for a potter about outside for a while. No chance of a bonfire like last year, because it's drizzling, but it's nice out in the fresh air and you can sort of see the fireworks in town if you stand on tiptoes and look at the right gap in the trees. It's only about one when we all go to bed, so of course Robert's up and away out on his bike by about ten in the morning. I stay in bed reading before removing myself to the sofa for more reading. The girls get up when they like and eat the remains of the saucy monkey for breakfast (pudding for breakfast is traditional at Christmas; trifle is best, but there's never any left). Everyone lies around (except Elspeth who is revising again) until Robert turns up again. The sun's shining for the first time since I don't know when so once he's showered, all of us but Els take the dog down to the river.

It's three by the time we get back, so there's some discussion about what to call the meal we're about to eat. 'Tunch' is the verdict. So, out come the black pudding (only R and I will eat this), bacon, sausages, scrambled egg, fried tomatoes, baked beans and I make tattie scones.


 It's incredibly easy, a little bit of buttery mashed potato, mixed with enough flour to make a dough, rolled out and then cooked in my gran's cast iron frying pan. The dough's a bit soft and hard to handle, so next time, I think I'll need to add a little more flour, or maybe stick the dough in the fridge for a bit before I roll it. For a couple of them I put too much oil in the pan and they're too greasy. Gran's pan hardly needs any greasing. It's non-stick with age. I love this pan: it's smooth and black on the inside and knobbly and black on the outside, with a handle that seems far too long for the size of the pan.

The best of the tattie scones are dry and crisp on the outside and soft and potatoey in the centre, rather like a very thin crispy piece of fried mashed potato (which, I suppose, is more or less what they are). I wonder, though, if this is the best recipe? The tattie scones you buy tend to be closer to scone than to potato, although I did serve these straight from the pan and perhaps it's different if you cool them first. Everyone loved them though: I could have made twice as many.