More gardening! More picking! And radish scones!

It used to be too hard for me to look back on a year and see how it changed me. It was weird, to think that the pebble that skipped between one spot and another could create either too many ripples or not enough. In California, between ages 20 and 24, I grew up; but it was in a fractious way that I still have a limp from nowadays. I'm learning from that, though.

But now I look back at a year and see where I am and it is both humbling and terrifying and satisfying all in one. A year ago, I was living at home and Nolan was living at his parents', too, and we would see each other once in a while and drink and fall asleep. A year ago, I was sequestered to my old childhood bedroom while I saved up and figured out what I wanted out of life and a relationship and if we were buying a house or moving somewhere new again. A year ago, there was a lot more silence in my life and a lot less to do during the day. A year ago, everything was different and uncomfortable and I wasn't ready to move forward.

Now--now we have a house and the dogs and the chickens and the land. I have room to stretch in bed and still be cuddled by the person I am going to marry. My hair is grown out and curled and I tend to wear old flannel shirts and there's usually dirt under my nails. We garden now, picking from our little bed the lettuce and radishes and onions we'll have for dinner. Nolan's dad planted them when we first moved in. We throw our scraps to the chickens and eat the rest. Just another thing we take care of, just another responsibility we have for our land.

We have only the smallest recollection of How It Used to Be. And we savor the mornings with cups of coffee and the nights with a beer and everything in between is working towards a goal now--whether that goal is painting or fencing or just pulling out the sofa bed and watching movies for three days. It's all there to make us happy; to make others happy, too. The only part of us that still exists from a year ago is that Nolan still smokes the same brand of cigarettes and I still have a flair for dramatics. Everything else is different.

A year can really change a person or two. 

And each year it seems like we take a small vacation in the summer for something with food. Last year, we spent a couple days in Charleston, WV to tour the JQ Dickinson Salt Works. This year, we are heading to Vermont on Friday to go see Vermont Creamery, so i thought what better way to begin celebrating than with a goat cheese scone. And to commemorate our growth in a year, to look at how a year can change two people, I added radishes from our garden. Spicy and plump and terribly beautiful, they added an element to the scones that naturally flavored them beyond the usual salt and pepper of my upbringing.

Enjoy. 

Dill, Goat Cheese, and Radish Scones

This recipe is a riff on last week's post for my shortcake scone. This is a savory version, so either you can really use as a base and just swap out the flavorings with whatever your heart desires.

Ingredients:

• 2  cup AP flour
• 1 TB baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup cold butter, cubed
• 1 egg + 1 yolk (for egg wash)
• 1/3 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 cup goat cheese 
• 1/2 TB dill, chopped
• 3 large radishes, rough and finely chopped + 1 or 2 sliced for topping

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400*F and prepare a sheet pan with a Silpat or parchment paper
2. In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt
3. With clean hands, roll the butter into the flour with your fingers, creating flakes. Continue to crumble butter until fat is the size of peas
4. In a measuring cup, whisk together your egg, cream, and cheese
5. Create a well in your dry ingredients and with a wooden spoon slowly mix while you pour your wet ingredients in
6. Continue to mix until fully incorporated and a dough comes together
7. Add dill and chopped radishes and fold to incorporate into dough
8. Pat out onto a floured work surface and shape into a rectangle
9. Cut into 9 pieces and transfer onto your prepared sheet
10. Make an egg wash (1 yolk + 1 TB water) and brush onto your scones
11. Top each with a radish slice
12. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden

Buttermilk Honey Scones with Rose-Strawberry Jam

I’m finding more beauty in the crumbs, the coffee stains that ring a mug. I found an old textbook about gender and saw the pages, dog-eared and speckled in burns and blood, from a paper cut and ashes dusted aimlessly from my cigarette.

I used to read under grapevines and now I sleep twelve hours some days.

I used to speak Spanish in a timid accent and now I don’t speak it at all.

I used to bite my nails, but I stopped that a long time ago.

I read about 6 sisters who changed the world and I used to think I could, too. I told my mother I was never going to speak to her again, and now I watch the news with her, nursing coffees that grow cold and conversations that became keep memories of her mother alive and warm. She opened a box in a room she turned into a cat infirmary yesterday morning. Inside were thirty-seven napkins, hand-stitched and embroidered in yarn, lace, and scraps of satin.  How delicate they were; carefully folded and not very well made. They did the job and we moved on to other topics, like how my mother isn’t very good at tennis and I’m not very good at forgiving. If my brother was having a boy or a girl. How my mother loves the smell of rosewater and hates how many ants she found in the windowsill in the kitchen.

How many years its been since I last celebrated my birthday with her.

I live for those moments, those mornings. The innocence and the redemption. The fog hands dully until about nine in the morning. It burns off, I go to work. She sits with her cats, with Milo and her Labrador retriever. She watches crime documentaries and lights candles in the heat. She went shopping the other morning and brought home some roses. Strawberries were on sale and she had never seen honeycomb before. So I made her these scones as a thank you for taking me back in. So close to home, so different than who I was. I used to read under grapevines and they’re still there. Giving second chances and strangling the chicken wire fence that surrounds the house.

Buttermilk Honey Scones with Rose-Strawberry Jam

Ingredients for the Scones

• 2/3 cup buttermilk
• 1 egg
• 1 TB vanilla extract
• ¼ cup honey
• 3 cup flour
• ½ sugar
• 1 TB baking powder
• ½ TB cornstarch
• ½ ts salt
• 8 TB butter, cubed and cold
• 3 TB honeycomb, cut into cubes for topping

Directions for Scones

1. Preheat oven to 450*F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper
2. Whisk together buttermilk, egg, vanilla, and honey, set aside
3. Sift together all dry ingredients into a mixing bowl and transfer mixture into your food processor
4. Add butter, pulse to combine until fat is the size of peas
5. With motor running, add liquid through feeding tube
6. Turn dough onto a floured work surface and pat into a round
7. Cut into 8 triangles, and pat edges to be clean
8. Place on baking sheet and bake for 13-18 minutes or until puffed and golden brown
9. Top with honeycom

Ingredients for Rose-Strawberry Jam

• ½ pint of strawberries, hulled and halved
• 1 cup sugar
• Juice of 2 lemons
• 2 TB fruit pectin
• 2 TB rose water
• Zest of one lemo

Directions for Rose-Strawberry Jam

1. In a medium-sized saucepan, combine strawberries, sugar, and juice. Heat on medium.
2. Stir occasionally (I like to use a wooden spoon) so that the mixture does not burn, but you want enough heat that the juices bleed from the berries and the sugar and lemon juice condense slightly
3. Allow to boil for a good 2 or 3 minutes
4. Add your fruit pectin and stir vigorously for a few seconds to combine
5. Resume your boil for another minute
6. Take off heat, stir in zest and rose water
7. Jam will continue to thicken as it cools, when slightly warm to the touch, you can put in your jar. This recipe makes one pint of jam and is not a proper canning technique, but a quick jam recipe
8. Store in fridge, use often and plentifully

Summer Fruit Scone Cobbler: In Partnership with Falk USA

The Pleiades shared their secrets, but I was left alone. How dark the world looked when I saw it through a makeshift telescope, a paper towel roll that someone else had bought and thrown away. There is muscle memory for imagination; I’m exercising that muscle more and more now that I have moved back home. To the house I grew up in. Where I spent my summers as a child, eating canned ravioli and swimming in the creek behind my house. I read books about dragons. Somehow magic seems more real to me than loving the brother I never see.

Forgiveness isn’t a muscle I train very well. It’s not one I’m used to, so I’ve let it atrophy since I left home.

Since I moved to California.

Since I was in law school.

Since I moved to Texas.

Since I was unemployed.

Since I studied art and smoked a pack a day.

Since I stayed with a male go-go dancer whose name I could never pronounce.

Since I ate nothing but stale bagels from my work.

Since I left it all behind to start again and again and again, rebuilding homes from whispered promises when I was wrapped in another person’s arm.

Back when those kisses were flint and my imagination was tinder. I let my world burn down more than once. I’m nothing if not consistent.

And when I came home, it all changed for me. I could smell the summer on the frost. I could tell it was different now, that there were creek rocks that had my initials carved in them and a stunted rose bush grew where I buried my first rabbit.  That life wasn’t hard and hearts break as easily as a fingernail. And I’ve broken both.

So I sit and I read now.  I look for faces in clouds and the veins in marble. I think of the thousand words I want to learn in French and the handful I want to say to my mother. I sleep with my dog, we share a pillow. He breathes so much faster than I do. He hates the air conditioner. I take two baths a day sometimes and I always forget how much cream my mother likes in her coffee, so I’ve given up on pouring hers.

And I’ll never grow angel wings, but I plan on leaving here soon.  I’ll probably always mistake the frogs that sing for mockingbirds; but that’s part of who I am here. A great pretender, a secret-keeper, a dreamer with his nose in the air. And I may forget I have a brother from time to time, but the lightning bugs are moving constellations and I can wish on any one of them I choose.

When my eyes have finished adjusting.

This recipe is my ode to summer. To all the fruits they sell in farm stands next to trailer parks in my little hometown in Pennsylvania: stone fruit and ruby berries. The pits in my stomach and the strawberry moon. An ode to all the memories I’m making since I moved back home. I’ll never have anything better, but I’ll dream of winter in Brussels and springtime in the desert soon, when I get too used to waking up content.

Summer Fruit Scone Cobbler

This recipe is about approximations. It's about what feels and tastes right. Know your fruit and make it intuitive. Use more of one fruit and less of another if you'd like. Know how tart or ripe it all is and how it will work together and adjust your flavors and sugar from here. The flour in the fruit portion will make for a nice, gooey mixture. And, finally, do not pack your fruit too tightly in, as the juices are liable to overflow. Use my recipe for the fruit portion as more of a suggestion than as a mandate, because fruit varies as much as personalities can. Yields one cobbler in a 12 to 14 inch pan. And while I know this recipe will fair just fine in any other type of pan, there is something about the gentle and reassuring heat conductivity of copper that gives this recipe a whole added layer of flavor and beauty. 

Ingredients for fruit portion:

• 4 peaches, pitted and sliced
• 3 red plums, pitted and sliced
• 8 strawberries, hulled and sliced
• ½ pint of raspberries
• ½ pint of blackberries
• 2 tablespoons Gran Marnier or similar liquor (optional)
• 4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• ½ cup white sugar
• ¼ cup clover or similarly spiced honey
• ½ tablespoon salt
• zest and juice of half a lemon
• 1 tablespoon orange zest
• 2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract

Ingredients for the scone portion:

• 2/3 cup buttermilk, very cold (may need less, depending on altitude and flour absorption)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• ½ cup cornmeal, fine-ground
• ½ cup white sugar + more for sprinkling
• ½ teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, very cold
• ¼ cup of dried cherries
• 2 tablespoon whole milk
• scant ¼ cup sliced almonds

Ingredients for the whipped cream:

• 2 cups heavy cream, cold
• ¼ cup white sugar
• ½ cup confectioner’s sugar
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• ½ tablespoon Gran Marnier or similar liquor (optional)

Directions:

For the fruit portion:

1. Prep your baking dish with softened butter, rubbing it into all corners of your dish. Don’t bother skimping—it adds flavor and makes cleanup easier. For the best results for this dish, I chose baking mine in my 28 centimeter Falk copper au gratin pan. A cast iron pan would work as well, but the conductivity of the copper is superb for this dish.
2. Cut all of your fruit and add with your berries to a large metal bowl
3. Add all remaining fruit portion ingredients (liquor, flour, sugar, honey, salt, lemon zest and juice, orange zest, and vanilla)
4. Stir gently with a wooden spoon
5. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate while you work on your scone. Fruit will macerate and juices will begin to flow in the bowl during your remaining prep

For the scone portion:

1. In a measuring cup, whisk together buttermilk, eggs, and vanilla. Set aside
2. In a food processor, pulse together flour, cornmeal, sugar, salt, and baking powder until just combined (one or two pulses)
3. Add butter. Pulse 8-10 times or until fats are incorporated into dry ingredients and pea-sized
4. With motor running, pour wet ingredients slowly through the feeding tube until a wet dough begins to form
5. Turn dough out onto a floured work surface and sprinkle dried cherries on top of dough. 
6. Pat into a disc that is about 1.25” in thickness and 9 inches in diameter
7. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes
8. While dough is resting, preheat the oven to 425*F
9. Remove fruit from refrigerator and pour contents and juices into your prepared au gratin pan, smoothing to make one layer
10. After your half hour has elapsed, unwrap your dough and pat back into its disc shape
11. Using a sharp, floured knife, cut into 8 sections
12. Brush each with your remaining whole milk, sprinkle with sugar and almonds

For the cobbler:

1. Place on top of your fruit, evenly spaced apart. Press dough down slightly into your fruit
2. When oven is preheated, bake dish for 30-35 minutes. The water content in the fruit juice may cause the bottom of your scones to be slightly less baked than the tops. Begin checking at 30 minutes for a nice, even golden brown on the tops and a paler tan on the bottoms for doneness
3. While cobbler is baking, whip your heavy cream, using the whisk attachment of your stand mixer or a hand mixer (or a whisk, if you’re brave enough!)
4. When peaks begin to form, slowly add your white sugar, then your confectioner’s sugar
5. Heavy, glossy peaks will form; next, add your liquor and extract
6. Scrape with a rubber spatula into a dish for serving
7. Remove cobbler from the oven when ready and serve immediately
8. This dish is good for up to 3 days, if refrigerated and stored properly (but best served warm right out of the oven with a dollop of liquor-spiked cream, in my humble opinion)

This post was created in partnership with Falk Culinair copper cookware. Since 1958, this brand has established itself as one of the most trusted names in the culinary world. With its timeless designs and its multi-use products, every kitchen can benefit from Falk--I know mine has. You can learn more about Falk USA by visiting their website, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. 

Nathan Miller Chocolate: A Tour, a Recipe, a Takeover

Life works in funny ways, it has a sense of humor. I thought I was too good for everything Pennsylvania offered; so I left. I found myself trying my damnedest to recreate it any chance I had. I found a Steelers jersey at a Goodwill once in San Diego. I bought it on the spot.

I thought the Laurel Highlands and the Cumberland Valley were relics, stale, stagnant. I thought I had created a mythology around them. I feared it on the plane, when the wheels hit the tarmac, when my dad picked me up in his Pathfinder. I worried I had missed something that never existed. That I had become a refugee to my wild imagination. That my mother never loved me. That the effervescent greenery would wear me down. That there would be nothing for me to come back to in Pennsylvania.

But there was. There was a community. Whether you spend your time hanging out in gas stations or ice cream stands, there was a community I came back to. And when I drove US-30 to get to Chambersburg last Sunday, I felt that community grow.

I visited a chocolate factory. My community grew while I was there. I began to understand more about the products I love. I passed farmland and barbecue to get there and everything felt satisfyingly familiar. I questioned why I had left Pennsylvania, wasting money and years and friendships trying to leave a place I’ve loved for so long.

I visited a chocolate factory last week. Nathan Miller Chocolate invited me to see the entire bean-to-bar process in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. We toured the café, we toured the factory, too. We saw how the beans were sorted and smelled their earthy burlap sacks. Large slabs of chocolate and delicate bars being wrapped. Vats of chocolate with 55% buttermilk. Small tasting spoons weren’t enough and I bought 3 bars. I learned the difference between South American chocolates. I learned how professionals wrapped their bars. I learned everything I could and couldn’t wait to go back. For another day, another road trip. Any chance I had to see the beauty that’s in every pocket of Pennsylvania. Five years ago I left and never thought I’d see an artisan chocolate factory in rural Pennsylvania. But I’m so glad it’s there, waiting to be discovered. Waiting to share with you.

Check out the gallery above and the video of my tour during my FeedFeed takeover. You can also visit Nathan Miller Chocolate on their website, their instagram, Twitter, and their Facebook. These lovely bars are also available on Food52, because they’re just THAT gorgeous.

And speaking of FeedFeed, I am an editor over at the Nostalgic Desserts feed and it is one of my favorite things as a food blogger that I get to do. My community has grown and I have grown with it. I'm different than I was 5 years ago. I'm more me than ever before.

Happy Tuesday.

Black Forest Scones

With the Nathan Miller Cherry Pretzel bar, I was inspired to make these scones. You can view me making them in-action in the video below as well.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 TB white vinegar
• 1 TB vanilla
• 1 chocolate bar, pulsed until crumbs
• 2 1/2 cup flour, plus more if it is a sticky dough for you
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder, highest quality you can get
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 3 TB shortening, cold
• 4 TB unsalted butter, cold
• 2 cup whipped cream (I made mine from scratch, adding Gran Marnier as I had some leftover)
• 2 cup cherries, halved and pitted

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450*F and prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper
2. Combine milk, vinegar, and vanilla in a cup and refrigerate while you prepare the remainder of the dough
3. In a food processor, combine chocolate flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, sugar and salt. Pulse a few times to combine
4. Add fats and pulse 6-8 times until pea-sized and combined into flour mixture
5. Get your milk mixture from the fridge. With the motor of the food processor running, slowly pour in the milk mixture
6. Turn dough out onto a floured work surface and pat into a round
7. Cut into 8 triangles
8. Place onto prepared baking sheet and bake for 14-18 minutes, they will be done when firm and browned on the edges (but not burnt!)
9. Allow to cool from oven, top with whipped cream and cherries and enjoy!

A Breakfast in Bed: Pumpkin Scones with Maple Glaze

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I write fiction novels in my head about my childhood, about who I am now. I forget that being twenty-four means I fit somewhere in between the liminal spaces of a God Complex and existential nausea. I have a week's worth of dishes still soaking in the sink and I fixated on a hangnail all morning instead of just cutting it off.

I was exhausted this week, I let myself be exhausted. I laid down on two chairs I pushed together and took a nap in my boss's office during a lunch break. One day I ate nothing but Greek yogurt and a Reese cup. I either drank too much coffee or not enough. I let a mug of green tea sit on my desk for four hours before dumping it all down the sink. I had good intentions, but I wasn't feeling very intentional that day.  

I'm slowly realizing that Deucalion and Pyrrha were real, and the stone they threw behind their backs to create me was pyrite. Beautiful to some, but called a fool all the same. I've panned all of my luck out. I shine in crags, in riverbeds. I still consider myself a novelty.

I was exhausted this week, I let myself be exhausted. My mother would have said I probably just needed to get more sleep.

And she would have been right, but it's hard to stay asleep when the ritual of the morning is what keeps you excited. How the reliability of my ten dollar coffee pot calms me. How the blanket my mom crocheted me in college has kept me warm for six cold seasons now. How every branch that scratches the window in the morning sounds like a bird that's struggling to sing. How the dogs stay tired and I think how romantic it would be to run away.  I found an old pack of cigarettes in a bag from Pittsburgh. I thought how romantic it would be to smoke them all on the steps of the back porch, too. In the grey light that blooms before dawn, it all seems so romantic, even the toxic or the mundane. And I love that about the morning, how balanced the limns seem. How it's full of promises it can't keep. It's all fiction, rewriting itself every morning.

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I held onto those moments for as long as possible today. I let my coffee cool by my bedside while I avoided emails and read a book. I heard the same familiar branch hit the window and I recognized it for what it was. I refilled my coffee and ended up pouring out the rest. I ate two scones with my hands and stretched until my elbows cracked in agreement. Dogs scratched at my door and the predawn grey light desaturated my pink palms until all the lines disappeared. I had no future beyond that morning. I recognized no sound but my breathing. I had forgotten who I was this week, but I won't let it happen again.

Pumpkin Scones with Maple Icing

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Ingredients:

• 2 cup AP flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, separated
• 4 tablespoons shortening, very cold
• 3 tablespoons butter, very cold
• 1 cup buttermilk, very cold
• 1/2 tablespoon white vinegar
• 1/3 cup pumpkin puree
• 1 cup confectioner's sugar
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup
• 1/2 tablespoon heavy cream
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450*F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper
2. In a food processor fitted with a steel blade, combine flour, brown sugar, baking powder, and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Pulse a couple times to combine
3. Add fats and pulse 5-6 times to cut the fats into the dry ingredients.  They should be the size of peas when combined properly
4. In a measuring cup, whisk together buttermilk, vinegar, and pumpkin until well incorporated
5. Create a well in the center of the dry ingredients with a wooden spoon and begin to pour buttermilk mixture into the middle of the well, stirring constantly.
6. When dough is ready, it will be shaggy but firm.  Turn out onto a floured work surface and pat into a round shape, about one inch high.  
7. Using an oiled and floured knife, cut into 8 equal slices and place on parchment, separating evenly on baking sheet
8. Bake for 18-21 minutes or until golden brown
9. While baking, mix together confectioner's sugar and maple syrup in a small bowl with a fork.  It will be the texture of a thick glue.
10. Thin out with heavy cream (may need more cream, depending on your desired consistency)
11. Allow scones to cool and pour glaze over.  Top with cinnamon.  Eat immediately or within a day for freshness

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And if you want to read something in bed on this lazy Sunday morning, then check out my latest (and last!) installment I did for the Baking Society here. I write about Thanksgiving and a recipe for a Persimmon Pumpkin Pie.