It's all Greek to me!

Has anyone ever done the thing where you make a cup of tea, leave it somewhere fully intending to drink it, but then you just...forget? Then two hours later, you come back to an ice-cold cup of disappointment and sadness? This is unfortunately a regular part of my life, unless I put the tea directly in front of me as if to say ‘hey, don’t forget me like you did the last seventeen times.’ Point is, tea is amazing and it never fails to cheer me up. With my final (as in final ever undergraduate) exams looming, I’ve been doing a lot of tea drinking lately. I’m particularly fond of oolong tea, what kind of tea do you like? 

Funny story about teas, the tea in the cupboard is stored in tins (most of what I have is loose leaf) and one day I happen upon this mysterious tin which is marked ‘one leaf’. So I open it and it’s this black stick of something, and it smells okay to me, so I decide to brew it up (I’m definitely going to get poisoned one day, I bet). I let it steep, and the stick unfurls to become this branch with leaves, so I’m like yeah awesome, fancy stuff, let’s see what it tastes like. I took a mouthful, let it sit in my mouth for about five seconds, and it was one of the more horrible experiences I’ve ever had. Turns out it’s this Chinese herbal tea that has all these amazing health benefits like relieving headaches; no thanks, I’ll stick with paracetamol.

To say that this tea is an acquired taste is putting it lightly

This isn’t to say I don’t believe in the healing properties of tea, but it could taste a bit nicer. Take yogurt for example, full of probiotics and calcium. I’ve always liked yogurt and one of my fondest memories involves yogurt (it’s a very long story) so just recently I was talking to cousin sloths about this amazing flatbread they made that had only three ingredients; Greek yogurt, self-raising flour and salt. Needless to say, my curiousity was piqued and I requested the recipe. However, if you buy one of those big tubs of Greek yogurt (like I did), you end up having a lot left over and I was at a bit of a loss as what to do with it before it expired. Should I eat it? Freeze it? Pretend it never existed until it inevitably stank up the fridge? Luckily for me (and the fridge) I had a tiny brainwave of inspiration and made scones with the remainder and used up the tub. Money saving tip right there.

I was scared they'd merged to form the ultimate scone, but no

Everyone should try mulberry jam once, unless you're allergic which in that case feel free to stay far, far away

So bread. Much flatness.

Although the recipes share similar ingredients, it’s all about technique which will really make a difference. With the scones, you want minimal handling to produce the least amount of gluten (the protein in flour) in order to get light, fluffy bundles of joy whereas the flatbread requires a bit more kneading, which activates the gluten and encourages it’s development.

Scones utilise what I’ve been taught is the ‘rubbing in’ or ‘fingertip’ method, where the butter is rubbed in with the fingertips until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs-ish. Honestly though, I’ve yet to see breadcrumbs that look like that mixture so maybe I’m just buying the wrong breadcrumbs. I like to think I get better results if I leave bigger chunks of butter because as the butter melts, the steam produced (butter has a high water content) will provide you with a flaky, buttery pastry. This is kind of the principle behind oil-and-water pastry but I’ll probably cover that in a later blog post. If I don’t, someone remind me, okay? Thank you!

I'm bowled away with how easy this recipe is

Rubik's cube, more like butter cubes

Rub in with the fingertips. I suggest taking off any jewellery 'cause it can get quite messy. 

"breadcrumbs"

Well, well, well.

Dummy that I am, I forgot to take a picture of the Greek yogurt mix, whoops

Ah, so pretty. Be gentle with it!

I should've moisturised my hands before this.

Shaping the scone so it doesn't look like a pile of dough.

The operation was a success, maybe?

What'cha gonna do with all these lumps? Notice they're touching slightly, which will help them rise a bit better.

Egg wash, you can also get the same effect with milk, but the colour's less intense

This flatbread recipe is Matt Preston's of Masterchef Australia judge fame. If you've been living under a rock these past few years, he's the one with the cravat. I actually really like his recipes, he seems really down-to-earth and enjoys food, which is something I can always get behind! This one is absolutely no frills, and simple as. The most complicated thing is probably the process of kneading, but with a bit of practice, you can whip these out in a jiffy, and there's so much potential! You could smear a blob of cream cheese on top and throw on some smoked salmon and dill for a fancy dinner party hors d'oeuvres; or sandwich some tender, marinated falling-apart-at-the-touch-of-a-fork pulled pork and tart, sweet and crunchy coleslaw between two pieces for a filling lunch that'll make heads turn; or my favourite, whip up some hummus and eat it with the flatbread, mmmm. 

So kneading can be complicated if you’ve never made any kind of bread dough before, but I follow this as a kind of guideline:

1. Push the dough with the heel of your palm outwards (I push to the left because I’m right handed)
2. Fold the dough over on itself, like you’d fold a piece of paper in half.
3. Rotate the folded dough a quarter turn (90 degrees) with the other hand.
4. Push dough back out and repeat. Every few times you push the dough out, flip the dough over to ensure it doesn’t stick to the surface.

I love one-bowl recipes

Tip everything out onto a floured surface.

Kind of try to combine everything together, ready for kneading

Ugh, I really should've moisturised my hands. Anyway, push it away from you so the dough stretches

Fold it over like you'd fold clothes (assuming you fold your clothes)

Press it flat and repeat until...

My potato of a camera doesn't show it too well but it's formed a soft, sticky dough. Keep kneading until...

Soft and smooth like a baby's bottom

Also you can do something like this, which is pretty cool I guess

 Don’t worry if you don’t get it the first time, practice makes perfect; plus this kneading technique can be applied to stuff like pasta and dumpling skins! Keep in mind that sometimes your dough will appear very sticky, which will make you want to add more flour. However, give it a bit of time and a bit of hard elbow grease love with the kneading and it’ll slowly come together and form a nice, smooth dough. That being said though: If you’ve been kneading for like, half an hour with no improvement and it’s still sticky, then yeah, you probably do need to add more flour. When you cook it, you're waiting for bubbles to appear (kind of like a pancake) before flipping it; they also burn pretty easily (as I discovered) so low to moderate heat is best.

Circles are so overrated, it's all about the wonky ellipse now

You can see it's getting puffed up, guess you could say it's full of hot air

Greek yogurt scones

Makes 18 medium-ish scones - 24 small scones

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

• 3C self raising flour
• 2 Tbs baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 C caster sugar
• 300mL Greek yogurt
• 50mL milk
• 150g butter, chilled and cubed

METHOD

1. Grease and line a baking tray with high sides (I used a ~20cm lamington pan but the pan size changes depending on how big you make your scones)
2. Preheat the oven to 210-220'C/200'C (fan forced)
3. Sift all the dry ingredients together into a bowl and stir until combined
4. 'Rub' the butter into the flour mixture with your finger tips until mixture looks like 'breadcrumbs' (until it resembles wet sand)
5. Make a well in the middle of the mixture
6. In a separate bowl, combine the greek yogurt and milk until combiner; then pour into the flour mixture
7. Mix until ingredients are just combined (mixture should still be lumpy)
8. Pour mixture onto a floured surface and push together gently until mixture forms a soft dough
9. Roll or press mixture out until ~3cm thick; then either use a cookie cutter to cut out rounds or pull off about 2 tablespoons worth of dough and form into a slightly flattened ball.
10. Place rounds into prepared tray so that they are just touching, but not squished against each other.
11. Brush with beaten egg or milk
12. Bake for 20-25mins until browned (check if they're ready by tapping the bottoms of the scones to see if they sound hollow)
13. Serve warm with your favourite spreads!

~*~

Flatbread  (adapted from Matt Preston's recipe)

Makes a lot of little flatbreads

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

• 2C self raising flour
• 1C Greek yogurt
• pinch of salt, sugar to taste
• extra flour, to flour the surface (i.e. sprinkle flour on the surface to prevent the dough from sticking)

METHOD

1. Place all ingredients into a bowl and mix until a soft dough forms (the mixture starts to come together)
2. Pour of the dough onto a lightly floured surface (that's all the extra flour you'll need)
3. Knead until dough becomes smooth (may take around 5-10 minutes of solid kneading)
4. Remove a small portion of dough (with this dough, a little goes a long way) and roll out until about 0.5cm thick or thinner, try to make it an even thickness.
5. Heat a fry-pan with a little olive oil and gently place the rolled-out dough in the pan
6. Cook on one side until bubbled up and puffy, then flip and cook the other side until both sides are browned
7. Continue until all the dough has been used up
8. Serve warm or cold.

Happy slothing and all the best for exams (if you have them)!!

xx