Tuesday 7 July 2009

Wimbledon lunching

The Wimbledon mens finals are one of those very English events that occur during the summer, so I thought I'd try to prepare something equally English to sustain myself and the male companion through watching it on TV. Good thing too as it turned into an epic match. So we started off with traditional cucumber sandwiches, open sandwiches with smoked salmon and cream cheese mixed with wasabi, and errrr...crisps. Hard to go wrong with cucumber sandwiches but I did impress myself with the salmon and wasabi combo. The wasabi provided just enough of a sharp kick to cut through the richness of the salmon without over-powering it. I used the S&B brand which comes in a tube, so it was incredibly easy to mix about one-ish heaped teaspoon (adding a bit at a time and regular test tastings required) in with about half a tub of cream cheese.

So onto course two. I was inspired by a recent post by Hollow Legs to try making some scones. I am not a natural baker, having produced a range of rock hard breads and semi-raw pastries in the past, but this looked like quite a straight-forward recipe and the picture was too drool-inducing to ignore. I cut the scones quite small as I wanted something relatively dainty (and also because I used a beaker rather than a scone cutter). And the results......not bad at all. As you might be able to tell from the photo they didn't really rise as much as I expected (cause unknown, but if anyone can enlighten me that would be great), but tasted lovely. Though anything served with huge dollops of clotted cream and jam is always going to taste pretty damn good.


All was accompanied by Pimms- could we get more English?


Cost: S&B wasabi £0.99
I rate it 8/10

Cost: Tesco Finest Cornish clotted cream (by Rodda's) around £1.40
I rate it 8/10

Cost: Tesco Finest strawberry conserve around £1.35
I rate it 7/10 (tasted fine but no different to any old strawberry jam)

3 comments:

Nora said...

What a great idea! I was watching the match - but think it would have been much more fun if I'd been eating some lovely traditional English goodies. And glad to see you got strawberries and cream in there!

Hollow Legs said...

Hmmmm... wonder why the scones didn't rise. The lemon juice in my recipe activates the raising agents in the self raising flour, so perhaps there wasn't enough of a squeeze of lemon juice?

TheFastestIndian said...

Nora- I think the ideal would actually have been watching this match on a big telly outside with lots of food and drink. Had to make do with the sofa though!

Lizzie- well they rose a bit, but looked nothing like your ones. Maybe not enough lemon juice....or lemon a bit old? It had been in the fridge for a while. Anyway, tasted great, so thanks for providing the inspiration as would never have even thought of trying to make these before!