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Before I finish off with the last York post, I thought I'd change the tune a bit. Yesterday I decided to become adventurous and take advantage of my moderately-outfitted kitchen. Yes, I decided to attempt to cooking something (within minimum number of pans, bowls - none, to be exact, and measuring tools - everything here is in weights, which is fine if you have a kitchen scale. Needless to say, I don't. Online conversion charts were my friends that day).

While in York I acquired two cookbooks of traditional UK food (oddly, they both seem to include Irish dishes, but very few Scottish dishes are in evidence). It ended up being quite a social occasion, actually. I had been intent upon finding local cookbooks (being, if you hadn't noticed, entirely enamoured with food from the UK), and we walked into a shop that, lo and behold, had a whole display of them. I started reading them, but, not having the foggiest about any sort of British cooking, could not really discern which were better.

-"Ah, sir," I addressed a passing shopkeeping, "Could you possibly tell me which of these is a good cookbook?" And then, thinking maybe he wouldn't have any such experience, added, "If you happen to know."

-"The one you're holding is fantastic," That would be the Complete Traditional Recipe Book by Sarah Edington. "I bought it a few months ago, and it's one of my favorites. But that one," he gestured to Farmhouse Cookery, "just came out. I got it a week ago and it's really good. Anything by the National Trust is going to be fantastic."

At this point he calls over another shopkeeper to corroborate. "And, they're half off right now," he added helpfully. Well, that sealed the deal.

Flipping through them is an experience of its own, and I quickly decided to make a meal. One of the sparser, less complicated dishes and a nice bread. Well, the meal didn't happen, but I have all of the ingredients, and so I adventured to make the bread recipe yesterday while suffering science writer's block.

Featuring

I present to you

Norfolk Rusks

Now, flip to page 122 of your copy of Farmhouse Cookery by Laura Mason, and you are greeted by this picture of a stunning scene captioned Formerly used to drain the land, Horsey Windpump in Norfolk now offers striking views across the Broads. Very good.

And the recipe? Yes, I am aware you can't read it (you mean you can't make out my minute scrawl in the margins?). Oh, and this caption reads, Dunwich Heath in Suffolk is an important conservation area for rare birds such as the nightjar. Good to know, I'm sure.

Now, Norfolk Rusks. According to my new friend Laura, "These little bread rolls are unusual in English bread-making, but are a well-established recipe in Norfolk." Well, yes, I agree whole-heartedly with everything in that statement, except, perhaps, for the choice of calling them "rolls", for reasons which will become apparent.

Open your cupboards and make sure you have:

100g/3.5 oz butter (for those without a kitchen scale, this translates to 7 tablespoons)

200g/7 oz plain flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 egg

2 Tbs milk (or enough to make a "stiff paste")

At this point, I must apologize for not being as put together as the test kitchen bakers over at King Arthur Flour (check them out at http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/), and I don't have pictures of the whole process. I have paraphrased the instructions below:

Cut the butter into the flour and add the salt and baking powder. Add the egg, stir until fully incorporated and add just enough milk to make a "fairly stiff paste", or what we would call a "stiff dough".

At this point, I'll interject that the dough will look, and taste, like a typical American biscuit dough. Moving on...

Divide into 18 pieces and roll each into a round 1 cm thick.

Actually, I would recommend flattening out the whole ball of dough out into a 1 cm sheet onto cellophane, wrapping it, throwing it into the freezer for an hour (or substituting vegetable shortening for 1/2 the butter), pulling it out, cutting it with a cookie cutter or biscuit cutter, and then proceeding. The idea is you want as much rise as possible, and, while I haven't tried this technique (drat it, KAB, you're supposed to post these things before I cook the recipe to try them out on), freezing the full butter dough or substituting the shortening keeps the fat solid for longer when it goes into the oven, which allows the dough to rise more. Not that I've tried it, but these are definitely a concoction you want a lot of rise on. And I would highly recommend the cutter, because otherwise they'll look messing (like mine!).

Place on a greased baking sheet and bake at 425 Fahrenheit for 5-7 minutes until well risen. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a short time, then score round the middle with a knife and pull each one in half.

Yep, definitely let them rise as much as you think they're able, then pull those babies out, let them cool (cool well, or else, again, it'll be messy) and cut 'em in half. At this point notice that nothing has been said about making sure they're done or what color they should be. That's because you, like me the first time I didn't read the recipe all the way through before baking *clears throat* will be astonished to find that this is not, indeed, the end! That is predominantly why I don't want to call these "rolls". Even "bread" is stretching it. On we go:

Return to a cool oven at 300 Fahrenheit until golden and dry all thew ay through (this takes about an hour). Cool and store in an airtight container. Eat with butter [I like how she says this as if there weren't already enough butter in them already. Actually, I think they'd be quite good with some sort of cheese melted on top].

So there you go. It's a dead ringer for an American biscuit when you pull them out the first time (tastes great with honey!), but you must resist the temptation to allow sisters, mothers, flatmates and, primarily, yourself to eat them all because they've got to go back into the cooler oven for a long, long time. You'll know they're done when they're a uniform shade of deep, golden brown (actually, they're done when the color is the very definition of "golden brown". I've never seen anything that describes the color so well). Make sure they're not pale in the middle, and they should pretty much just flake apart when you touch (or eat!) them! As below.

So this is, surprisingly, not a recipe I would make for breakfast as I expected it to be. I find that it's much more of an hors d'oeuvre (that's a kicker to spell, by the way), served with a topping of some. Give them a try!