Just Like at the Coffee Shop (Currant-Buttermilk Scones)
I’m so delighted to have just bought a new cookbook.
When I first moved to New York in 2003, as my only reader will know, I got a job working at a Soho coffee shop called Once Upon a Tart. Owned by a tall Frenchman given to double entendres, Once Upon a Tart kept me busy during the daylight hours, and fed around the clock. For shift lunch, I was allowed to fix myself up a lavish (and ridiculously healthful) plate of homemade salads, with a cup of vegetable soup and a piece of good bread. At the end of the day, when I put the store’s un-sold wares into large black plastic garbage bags to be hauled away by City Harvest, I always saved out a few items for myself. So even in my off time, I pretty much lived on sandwiches from the Tart: sliced pork loin, goat cheese with marinated radicchio, broccoli raab with sundried tomatoes and fresh mozzarella on cibatta, turkey with cranberry chutney and brie and frisee. They were really good toasted in the oven at home.
Perhaps the most sublime gastronomical moment at the Tart, though, happened on Saturday mornings. I worked the opening shift, so I had to be there before 7am. Getting up that early, often hung over, was pure torture, but I liked the walk down deserted Bedford Aveune, the navigation of an almost-empty subway system, and the emergence at Broadway and Prince, always flecked with trash from Friday night’s revelry. I’d walk the few blocks to Sullivan Street just as the sun was coming up, and duck under the half-raised metal grate into the store. One or two bakers had gotten there earlier than I, and before I wheeled the serving carts into place, brewed coffee, unwrapped all the cookies and pastries that had been carefully wrapped the night before, and did all the other tasks involved in getting the shop open for business, I’d enjoy a magical moment: picking which warm-from-the-oven variety of baked good to start my day with. A dried cranberry scone, crusted on the outside with fine baking sugar? An apple-cranberry muffin? Ginger-pear? A walnut scone, like a huge warm cookie with a dollop of apricot jam swimming in the center? As often as not, I chose a currant-buttermilk scone, and ate it with the first cup from the first airpot of coffee I brewed. It was a supremely civilized way to start a day of service.
So, during my time working at Once Upon a Tart, the owners of the business published a cookbook. At the time, I didn’t have $27.50 to spare on a book, and I had no way of knowing how nostalgic the dishes prepared at the shop would become for me. But I was on Abebooks.com not too long ago, and something inspired me to pick up a copy of the Once Upon a Tart Cookbook, by Frank Mentesana and Jerome Audreau. It came in the mail last week, and it’s been a glorious reunion. I can’t wait to make so many of the recipes that I remember from years ago. Leafing through the book has been trippy, especially looking at the photographs: I remember those window displays! Those glass cake stands! That blackened baking sheet!
There’s more I want to say about the Tart and the memories I have of it, but let me cut to the chase. Though I’m not usually much of a baker, the first recipe from the book I ventured to try was the one for currant-buttermilk scones.
I happened to be awake and dressed and home earlier than usual last Saturday morning. A and A were still asleep in their room. I’d picked up some buttermilk a few days before. All was in readiness. I decided to wake up the household with scones.
Currant-Buttermilk Scones
from Once Upon a Tart, by Frank Mentesana and Jerome Audreau
I made a half recipe–scones don’t keep well–so I’ll give the halved recipe here. This makes 5 scones.
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
.5 teaspoon baking soda
.25 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup sugar
10 tablespoons (1.25 sticks) cold butter, cut into 1/4-inch cubes
1 large egg
half cup cold buttermilk
1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
half cup dried currants
1. Position your oven racks so one is in the center of your oven. (The recipe in your book says to line your baking sheet with parchment paper, but I didn’t do this, and suffered no ill effects.)
2. Dump the dry ingredients into the bowl of a food processor (I used A’s Kitchen Aid stand mixer, for the first time ever, with the paddle attachment. It worked just great.) Pulse a few times to mix them.
3. Add the butter all at once, and run the food processor for 15 seconds. Switch to pulse, and continue pulsing until there are no chunks left and the mixture looks like moist crumbs. Be careful not to over-mix the ingredients. (Note: this took a lot longer with the Kitchen Aid, but the point is that you don’t want to over-mix the butter because if you blend the hell out of everything, you’ll get a flat, overly dense scone.) Remove the blade from the food processor, and dump the crumbs into a big bowl.
4. In another, small bowl, whisk the eggs to break up the yolks. Whisk in the buttermilk and vanilla. Stir in the currants.
5. Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl with the ‘crumbs,’ and stir with a wooden spoon. Stop as soon as no flour is visible. You don’t want to work the dough a moment longer than necessary.
6. Use a half-cup measuring cup or your hand (KS note: Your hand! It’s fun!) to scoop the batter out, and plop it onto the baking sheet, leaving 2 inches between the scones.
7. Place the baking sheet on the center rack in the oven, and bake the scones for 25-30 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown and a small knife or toothpick inserted into the center of one comes out clean.
8. Remove the baking sheet from the oven, and place it on a rack to cool for a few minutes. Use a spatula to transfer the scones to the rack or a serving dish. Serve fresh out of the oven or at room temperature. (KS note: Um, if AT ALL possible, serve them fresh out of the oven. Duh!)
A few more notes; I can’t resist. While the scones bake, your house will fill up with the heavenly smell of pastry. The scones aren’t too sweet, and they’re nice and buttery: you definitely won’t need to spread butter on them before you eat them. They turned out quite well—they really did taste like the ones I remember from the shop—even though I forgot the quarter-teaspoon of salt, though they’d probably have been even better with. While the scones bake, and the house fills with that wonderful smell, you can clear away the mess (and actually there’s much less mess than if you were to have cooked, say, a whole dinner), and when your housemates walk into the room rubbing their eyes, you can be sitting there fresh as a daisy saying, hey guys, I made breakfast!
In conclusion: I love the Kitchen Aid. I love scones. I love Frank Mentesana and Jerome Audreau. I love the weekend.
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