Garlic Cheddar Scones

I've made these several times in a campfire, but never in the oven. However, If I can make them outside, cooking them inside the house should be pretty easy.

Scone Ingredients:

3 cups of self-rising flour
3 tablespoons of butter
1 and 1/2 teaspoons salt
3/4 cup of cheddar cheese ( I use a mix of sharp and mild cheddars)
2 cloves of garlic, minced or chopped into very small pieces
1 and 1/2 cups of milk
A bit of cornmeal



Preheat the oven. Probably 350 degrees, maybe a little cooler. ( In a fire, you want coals hot enough so you can put your hand over the fire and count to three, but not quite four) Wash your hands too.

Mix the salt and flour together. Use a whisk when possible to make sure there are no clumps. Cut the butter into four or more pieces. now you put the butter into the flour mix and use your hands to crumble the butter into the flour. Melted butter does not work. Keep crumbling the butter bits into the flour until there are no clumps and the flour mix looks a little crumbly.

Add the garlic bits and cheese next. I do this with my hands to keep the garlic from clumping and to make sure the cheese is evenly dispersed. Make a well in the midst of the dry ingredients, and pour the milk in. now mix in the flour until you can handle it by hand. I form it all in a clump, then turn out on a floured surface. Separate into two balls of dough.  Make a flat round of each ball so that it would cover the bottom of a pie plate.

 Grease two pie plates well (or a cookie sheet if you'd rather) and then sprinkle cornmeal over the surface. This makes sticking less likely. Cut each round into 8 pieces for large scones, or 16 wedges for smaller scones.  Put them in your pans.  You're supposed to brush milk over  the top of them before they go in the oven. I tend to drizzle a little olive oil on them instead.  Bake until they're done. I suspect in the oven that will be 10-20 minutes. In the fire, it depends on the coals... 15 to 30 minutes. They'll be brown on top when they are done.

 Try to cool them before eating. Mine were gone before a picture could be taken, so a friend allowed me to show hers - they were made in a dutch oven in the fire.

Maple Glazed Scones

3 cups all purpose flour
4 tablespoons (packed) dark brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/2 cup (or more) plus 6 tablespoons whipping cream
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
1/3 cup (about) powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 375°F. Whisk flour, 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in large bowl to blend. Add butter and rub in with fingertips until mixture resembles coarse meal. Stir 1/2 cup whipping cream and 1/2 cup maple syrup in small bowl to blend. Gradually add cream mixture to flour mixture, stirring just until dough comes together and adding more cream by tablespoonfuls if dough is dry. Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface. Knead dough gently until smooth, about 5 turns. Using floured hands, pat out dough to 8-inch round; cut dough into 8 wedges. Transfer wedges to baking sheet, spacing 2 inches apart.

Bake scones until golden and tester comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Transfer to rack.

Meanwhile, whisk remaining 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar, 6 tablespoons whipping cream and 2 tablespoons maple syrup in medium bowl to blend. Gradually whisk in enough powdered sugar to form thick glaze.

Drizzle or spread glaze over warm scones. Let stand until glaze sets.

We made this recipe  at a French & Indian War encampment in the fire, with a few differences.  Instead of one round, we made two smaller ones to fit into pie pans. We heated a dutch oven in the fire, then pulled it out, set a trivet into it, set the pan of scones on top and covered them. Then we laid down a bed of coals, put the dutch oven over them and added coals to the top. After about 10 minutes we checked on them, and turned the top to prevent hot spots. Another 10 - 15 minutes and they were done. We let them cool a bit and then glazed them. Although they were dark on the bottom, they went over very well.  Many thanks to my sous chef Caroline, who did a lot of the work on these scones in primative conditions.

18th Century Drunken Chicken

Here's an oven based recipe that we converted to a campfire meal.  Pictures of that whole process can be found at MizRebecky's Adventures. Either in the oven or over the fire, this is very easy to do and tasty as well.

Ingredients for a single recipe (we made a quadruple batch):
4 chicken legs-thighs (chicken joints)  - we used chicken thighs for easy cooking & cleanup.
1/4 pint cider  - we used woodchuck cider.
2 teaspoons English mustard powder  - we used pre-made powder. You can make your own by pulverizing equal amounts of brown  and white mustard seeds.
1/2 teaspoon salt
black pepper
1 tablespoon oil - we used olive oil.
2 tablespoons honey

 The recipe says to put your chicken pieces in a dish (in a single layer). we were making drunken chicken for many people in a dutch oven, so we piled it all in one pot. I suspect single layer you would get more of a glazed result than we did.

Then combine the remaining ingredients, pour over the chicken and allow to stand for a minimum of 1 hour. Ours soaked for about an hour and a half hile we were off doing other tasks.

Oven bake the chicken slowly in a large oven proof dish/pan for approximately 1 hour, basting the joints periodically as they cook.We put much more marinade in ours, as fire can be much less predictable than on oven, and we didn't want it to dry out. So no basting was done, but periodic stirring was essential. I think we cooked ours more like an hour and a half. The chicken was incredibly tender and tasty.

the recipe suggests Serving hot with steamed greens and mashed or baked potatoes. We had boiled potatoes and a salad to round ours out. We discussed doing it again and maybe having dumplings on top, but that will only work if you approached it with plenty of marinade in the pot.


*The original recipe, done in an oven, can be found at http://www.food.com/recipe/18th-century-drunken-english-somerset-cider-chicken-with-honey-238815

Honey Buttermilk Bread

Honey-Buttermilk Bread

Ingredients

1 & 1/2 cups Non-Fat Buttermilk

4 & 1/2 cups Flour

2 Tsp Sea salt

1/4 cup Butter (melted) or Canola Oil

1/4 cup Honey

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1 & 3/4 tsp Active dry Yeast

Instructions

Warm Butter milk & Dissolve yeast in it.

Add Honey, butter, Baking Soda, & Salt.

Add flour until it starts to form a ball.

The dough will be sticky.

Turn out onto floured surface & Knead remander of flour in as needed.

Knead 5 minutes or until dough is elastic.

Let it rise in a greased bowl (turn dough so top is greased as well), covering with a damp cloth.

Punch down dough and form into loaves.

Place into greased pans & let rise til doubled.

Bake in 400 degree oven for 40 minutes or until hollow when tapped.

Note: As you can see from the photo, I've also made this in the fire at Encampments

Susan's Highlander Stew

Ingredients
5 Ibs chuck roast cubed into ~1 inch pieces (lamb may substituted)
3 Ibs baby red potatoes cleaned and halved (regular red potatoes should be cleaned and quartered)
3 Ibs small/medium yellow onions quartered (or cut smaller depending on size of onions)
1 Ib baby carrots (halved or cut in thirds)
2 cans Guinness (Killians may be substituted)
1 box chicken stock
1+ cup flour
kosher salt
pepper
Italian seasoning
olive oil (vegetable oil may be substituted)

Instructions
Combine flour, salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning in a container of choice. Dredge meat in flour mixture. In cooking vessel of choice, pour in olive oil to heat. When oil is hot add meat to brown. When meat is brown de-glaze kettle with gooiness, stirring and scraping. Add all of the other ingredients in kettle, allow to cook at a simmer for 1-2 hours (all ingredients should be covered with liquid so if needed add additional chicken stock or water). Season to taste. To thicken further closer to serving time you may add a slurry (mixture of flour and water) allowing cooking for several minutes to lose raw flour taste or a mix of corn starch or arrow root and broth to the stew bringing stew to a boil for a few minutes to thicken to desired consistency

Notes
Try to be consistent with the sizes of all items. The closer to each other in size they will be, the more evenly they will cook.

Missus Fanny Farmer’s French style Bread receipt

2 + 2/3 tsp yeast (1 pkg)

2  ½ cups warm water

1 Tblsp salt

6 ½ - 7 ½ flour

2 Tblsp cornmeal ( for tins)

Dissolve yeast in warm water . add salt & 5 cups of flour. Add flour as needed, then knead for 5 minutes til elastic. Let rise. Punch down once doubled. Divide & shape into tins which have been greased & sprinkled with Cornmeal. Let rise. Bake  at 450 degrees for 15 minutes, then bake at 375 for 30 minutes. Mist with water every 15 minutes for crusty bread (makes steam)

Beer Bread

12 Ounces of beer, any variety except non-alcohol

2 Tablespoons of something really sweet (sugar, honey, fruit juice concentrate, etc.)

3 Cups of self-rising flour

   (For every cup of flour, use 1 ½ tsp baking powder and ½ tsp salt to make it self rising)

Mix the ingredients together. Pour the batter into a lightly greased, pre-heated loaf pan and bake at 400° for 50 minutes (maybe more depending on your oven). The recipe makes one loaf of bread suitable for 2-3 people. If plan for more servings, adjust the ingredients proportionately. This bread tastes best fresh from the oven but is also quite good cold. It will be a rather dense bread with a texture more like muffins or corn bread. I highly recommend using a strong porter or stout (like Guinness or Murphy’s) for the beer and honey as your sweetener.

I've also done this recipe in the fire at 18th century encampments. For that purpose the only really questionable ingredient in the recipe above is the self-rising flour. Self-rising simply means that the flour already has baking powder mixed with it.

 In the period, potash, a.k.a. pearlash (a kind of salt made from refined wood ash) was used to aid the rising process. Baking soda is the modern equivalent of potash, and baking powder is essentially baking soda with some compound starches added as a souring agent.

 In other words, baking powder provides basically the same function as the salt or wood ash by-products but is easier to come by today. Baking powder was first discovered in the late 1700s, but didn’t come into widespread use until around the 1830s