My parents are on holidays visiting from Argentina and last week it was my father’s birthday so I decided to prepare a little celebration. Instead of cooking a traditional courses meal I prepared a variety of dishes for a relaxed and fresh summer dinner. My choices were easy to make and some of them can be cooked in advance, so there’s no need to slave oneself in order to offer a “birthday banquet”. Here’s what I cooked:
- Spinach and Goat Cheese Quiche (already posted here)
- Cheese; Sausage and Dried Fruit Platter: the cheeses were a French cow’s milk Saint Paulin and a Spanish goat’s semi-cured cheese; the sausages were two kind of Secallonas, a Catalonian typical dry sausage and the dried fruits were figs, pistachios and cashews
- Pulpo (octopus) a la Gallega
- Scones with Sobrasada and Brie Cheese (today’s recipe)
- Dates with Bacon Brochettes (no need for extended recipe, just wrap deseeded dates with smoked bacon slices and put them into a brochette stick, grill them in the oven until the bacon is crispy and they’re ready to go!)
- Tabbouleh
- Hummus + Warm Pita Bread
- Pa amb tomàquet (Catalonian bread with tomato): spread half a mature tomato while lightly squeezing it over a slice of home-made stile bread (it can be toasted), then add a little salt, sometimes I skip this since I’ll be eating it with already very salty stuff, and finally pour some olive oil on top. If you feel like you’re wasting a lot of tomatoes by doing this, you can use grated tomato instead.
- Bordeaux Wine
The scones snacks I’m publishing today are a creation of “Mr. Soup Taster”. I’ve always loved scones, the traditional English tea time treat, but no one seems to know them in Spain. Therefore, one day I was preparing them for a brunch with friends so they could try them when he came out with this idea of filling them with sobrasada and cheese. Sobrasada (or sobrassada in Catalán) is a Mallorquín (Balearic Islands) sausage with a strong pimentón accent and a pâté texture. I think its strong flavor pairs very well with the softness of the Brie cheese and the slight sweetness and creaminess of the scones dough. If you can’t find Sobrasada, which I imagine might be the case outside Spain, I think any pâté would work wonderfully; the idea is to transform the traditional scones into a savoury and surprising snack!
The Scones recipe is from BBC foods, and it never fails me!
Scones with Sobrasada and Brie Cheese
- Servings: 6, as a snack
- Time: 40 minutes
- Difficulty: medium
Ingredients
- 225 g all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoonfuls of baking powder
- a pinch of salt
- 55 g butter (I used salted)
- 25 g caster sugar
- 150 ml milk
- 1 egg, beaten, to brush the scones
- 200 g sobrasada (or any pâté of choice)
- 200 g Brie cheese, sliced
Preparation
Pre-heat the oven to 220 ºC. Put the flour, the baking powder and the salt into a bowl.
Add the butter, sugar and pour the milk. Knead until you get a soft dough.
Flour a clean counter or work surface to knead the mixture a little longer until the dough is no longer sticky, incorporate more flour if needed.
Stretch using a rolling-pin to a 2 cm thick round. Use a round cutter to form the scones (mine is 6 cm diameter, probably a little wide, if you want your scones taller, use a 5 cm diameter one). Repeat until the dough is over.
Put the scones into a baking tray covered with a baking sheet (I don’t grease it and they never stick). Brush them with the beaten egg.
Bake them around 15 minutes until well risen and golden. Let them cool and open them into halves.
Spread each scone base generously with Sobrasada, put a slice of Brie cheese on top and cover with the scone tops.
Heat in the oven at 200ºC a few minutes (beware not to burn them) till the Sobrasada and the cheese have melted a little. Serve them warm and enjoy!
PS. Sorry for the poor quality of the pictures; I did my best, however, without natural light they didn’t turn out very well, but I wanted to share the recipe anyway!
Filed under: Creation, English, Other than Soup Tagged: snacks
