Scotproof

From The Great Scandinavian Baking Book:

“The formal Finnish coffeetable…is served in three courses. The first course is always a sweetened yeast bread, often a braid, and often flavored with cardamon. With the first course you have a cup of coffee and sample a cookie or two. The second course is a pound cake or another unfrosted cake baked in a fancy tube pan. You sample the cake and a couple of cookies with another cup of coffee. The third course is a fancy filled cake, which you sample by itself, with a third cup of coffee. With the fourth cup of coffee, you sample anything you haven’t already tasted, or go back for seconds. As with the flowers in the centerpiece, there should be an uneven number of choices on the table. Seven is considered perfect.”

Shore:

Plate (bit blurry):

Method:
Wait for the tide to go right out. Identify scallops by their intermittent spitting (see video, above). Take home and scrub thoroughly, then put in a pan of boiling water. Put lid on pan and wait until the shells open (not long); discard any whose shells don’t open. Prise from shells and get rid of all the gunk (brown beardy bit, dodgy black bit - I get rid of the orange roe as well, though it can be eaten), leaving just the white flesh. I give them a quick rinse at this stage, just to get rid of any rogue bits of gunk or sand. Heat some butter in a frying pan and throw in the scallops. Fry on a high heat for just a couple of minutes, turning occasionally until nicely browned. Salt and pepper; ready to eat. Good on their own or with bacon.

Stages in between:

Avoid curious cats:

Just back at my desk after a few days’ break in Dublin and Glasgow. Click this picture, taken in Bewley’s, to see more of the Dublin set on Flickr:

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The plan is to use this website to keep track of tips and techniques I come across in the world of editing and web design, as well as things of personal interest. Not really a blog, exactly, but a collection of notes and links to useful “stuff”. That’s the idea, anyway; we’ll see how it turns out.