The Otago Peninsula and How to Make the Perfect Scone

It's been a very special week at our house with Peter and our friend Rod Morris launching their book "An Extraordinary Land".  We are heading down to Dunedin for two events to launch the book in the south.  It's most fitting that this week I give you a taste of our other home, where our family grew up, the Otago Peninsula

Top left: An Albatross's stretching its wings at the Royal Albatross Centre

(wingspan equals length of a mini), Top right and bottom left: yellow eyed penguins are

shy of people and the best close up view is at Penguin Place; bottom left furseal pup at

Natures Wonders  Photos courtesy of Tourism Dunedin

The Otago Peninsula is a perfect eco-tourism travel destination and has enabled Dunedin to be called "The Wildlife Capital of NZ".   Unlike us;  the seals, yellow-eyed penguins, little blue penguins, fur seals and sealions enjoy a good cold day. An albatross requires wind for lift off.  

To enjoy being in touch with nature on the Peninsula you should come prepared for some vigourous weather.

Don't let that put you off...there are lots of spectacular clear sunny days too! 

From the road coming into Broad Bay taken July 2012 

One resident, not connected with wildlife, but firmly connected to the history of the Peninsula undertook a massive challenge.  Had Margaret Barker not driven up to Larnach Castle in a combi van in the 1960's, and saw it was for sale it may not be here today.  Rumour has it another bidder had plans to pull it down.  Margaret and her family have over the years transformed the rundown mansion into one of NZ's top tourist attractions.

Larnach Castle for tea

This great photo by Andris Apse is courtesy of Tourism Dunedin. It shows

the wonderful vantage point Larnach Castle has of the Otago Peninsula.

I love to visit the castle for its garden;  recognised as a "Garden of International Significance".  It's a great credit to the vision and years of work by Margaret and the green fingers of her head gardener Fiona Eadie. I am a fan of Fiona's garden philosophy.  I first heard her in an interview on Radio NZ National .

Stay all day for a garden entry price of $12.50, and if you visit Dunedin regularly it pays to purchase a  Garden Pass for $20 per anum so that you can enjoy the garden's stunning seasonal changes.

With garden entry you can access the ballroom where the cafe is situated. 

Larnach Ballroom chandelier

It's not often you get to sit in an elegant ballroom beside a warming open fire, beneath a massive chandelier, while sipping tea and eating scones with jam and cream... you can at Larnach Castle.
Until you get the opportunity to come south...why don't you try your hand at making scones for friends and family?

My Favourite Scone Recipe

My first memories of scones was Mum filling a giant basket of halved scones topped with homemade raspberry jam to take down to the woolshed for the shearers 10 o'clock smoko.

My sister Kerry sent me this after our visit to
Larnach Castle grounds and cafe

I have heard baristas need to make 1000 coffees before they make the perfect cup.   It doesn't take that long to make the perfect scone but it does take practice and just like making coffee there are some tricks to the ancient art of scone making.

I  came by this recipe from my Mum.  Its not her family recipe but she gave me the coffee mug that had Peta Mathius's Dad's scone recipe.   I tried it one day and found it to be good - a little more butter than Mum's recipe (naughty but nice).   So here is Harvey's Scone recipe:

 2 cups plain flour, 4 tsp baking powder, 100g butter, and a little milk to mix.

400 F is around 200 C.

It seems like a lot of baking powder but you need to have this much to get the dough to rise quickly.

First secret - make sure the butter is cold as you do with pastry.  Chop into small cubes.  If time is short then you can cheat by using a food processor to mix butter and flour, but to get the best melt in the mouth scones mix the ingredients by hand.  The same rule applies to pastry. The result is that you end up with tiny butter pieces in the dough, which melt during cooking to create a special lightness.

My Mum used to make a pile with the flour on the bench and then finely cut in the butter with a knife.  A pastry cutter would do the job well too.   

Cut as you would finely cutting parsley

She would finish the job by rubbing the butter through her hands, squashing any lumps into the flour.

Scoop up the butter and flour mix, put into a bowl, add the baking powder - mix in well (by hand).

Next add the milk.  Start with 1/2 a cup of milk and add more as you need it.   It's no good giving exact measurement for milk as it will depend on the flour as to how much liquid is needed to make a dough.

You can tell by eye.  If you have butter milk in the fridge, use it instead of regular milk and it will make an even better scone.

Mix in the liquid with a table knife and try to make the dough with as few strokes as you can.  Too much handling will make your scone tough. I best describe the action as first folding over with the blade of the knife and cut through to mix.  

A table knife tends to stop you stirring the dough

Sprinkle  flour onto your bench or large board.   Turn out the  dough.  It should be damper than you would prepare for pastry. It doesn't matter if it's rather sticky as you can roll it in flour to make it easier to handle.  Mould it gently into a flat ball shape with your hands.

Gently roll with not much pressure to say 3 cm or 1 inch depth.   Shape and cut into pieces.    

You can still see pieces of butter in the dough.

Flour a tray and brush the tops with milk.  They only take 10-12 minutes in a hot oven around 200C. 

I do the traditional thing of wrapping them in a tea towel while hot.  This kind of steams them.

Scones are best eaten with homemade preserves and for an extra treat some beaten cream.  Ideally still warm from the oven.   Your guests will love them!

Scones straight from the oven served with Feijoa and Guava jelly.

Probably 80% of the time I use a food processor to mix scone flour and butter, and that's because scones are something you can make really quickly if visitors drop in unexpectedly.  However, the"taste panel" here really loved the scones I made the old fashioned way. If you have time, I think hand rubbing flour and butter is the way to make the perfect scone.

Peninsula Wildlife

In the 1930's scones would have been a regular part of morning or afternoon tea.  Agnes Richdale, wife of ornithologist Dr Lance Richdale, would have been hard pressed to find the time for scone making. Agnes was his research assistant in the field but also typed up pages and pages of his research notes on the Royal Albatross and Yellow Eyed Penguins on the Otago Peninsula.

Royal Albatross had never successfully bred at Taiaroa Head, until Dr Richdale pressured city leaders to protect the colony from vandals. Lance and Agnes worked tirelessly to ensure that albatross could succesfully raise chicks.  In 1938 they were rewarded with the first born chick at Taiaroa Head taking off on 3 metre wings to begin its life in the Southern Ocean.

This is a frame from an 8mm film that Lance Richdale made in 1939 that can be

watched at the Albatross Colony.

Agnes Richdale is weighing the albatross chick dressed rather elegantly for the task 

Seventy years later, in 2007, the Royal Albatross Centre celebrated the 500th chick born at the colony.  The best time to visit is between December and February when there is an adult on the nest with the chick. 

 Richdale also did pioneering research on the yellow eyed penguin at a time when there were lots of breeding pairs on the Peninsula.

In the mid 1980's it was a different story. Breeding pairs were decreasing in numbers.  This decline was noticed by sheep farmer Howard McGrouther. Being a practical farming man Howard decided to give the penguins a helping hand.

A yellow eyed penguin with its chick and A-frame shelter at Penguin Place

He constructed A-frame houses for the penguins to nest in so they only had to defend predators on one front.  He had given the penguins on his property a good fighting chance against stoats and cats.  

The late Howard McGrouther feeding a penguin some
fish at the penguin hospital he set up for penguins that were
underweight and needing building up to survive out at sea.
(Photo: Craig Baxter)

To fund this conservation work, he created  Penguin Place.  Guided tours take you really close to the secretive penguins through a series of trenches (an idea of Howards to keep people down at penguin height). 

Next to the Albatross Centre lives another farmer Perry Reid.  Perry is passionate about conserving the wildlife on his property for future generations.  He has fenced off a large area of the farm, is doing predator control work and replanting native vegetation.  All this work is to protect local wildlife including the yellow eyed penguin, little blue penguin and a seal breeding colony.

At the photo vantage point  - that's me at the back on the left

and Perry Reid right.

When you visit Natures Wonders - a fun-filled tour over his farm in an all-terrain vehicle, you can see the great results of his vision and his labour. Visiting the seal colony was a highlight for me as the pups are so darn cute. On a clear day there are spectacular views along the coastline and up the harbour to the city. 

I am grateful that Dr Lance and Agnes Richdale, Howard McGrouther, Perry Reid and Margaret Barker made bold and brave decisions for the benefit of all those living and visiting the Otago Peninsula (wildlife and people).

Allans Beach

One of my favourite things to do is to walk the length of Allan's Beach to where Hoopers Inlet meets the sea.  It's a revitalising thing to do and it's absolutely free.   It's the only Peninsula beach where people can take their dogs.  There's a good chance you'll meet sealions sleeping on the sand.  You can see penguin tracks sometimes but you seldom if ever see them.

You just have to remember the rule - don't get between large sealions and the sea.  Keep your distance.  They do look flabby and slow but they can move deceptively fast.

Photos I have taken at Allens Beach: top left
a sealion posing; top right, the end of the beach
where the inlet meets the sea; and my lovely
niece Jessie enjoying the fresh sea breeze.

I take snapshots but Rod Morris takes photos....

Tui getting nectar from a kowhai flower from "An Extraordinary Land"
featuring 12 essays on New Zealand's unique natural stories by Peter Hayden
and over 250 photographs from wildlife photographer and naturalist Rod Morris.

 This is my favourite photo in Rod and Peter's book  and the tui is perhaps my favourite bird.  When we first settled on the Peninsula in the early 1980s you would never see a tui. Now I see them quite often in the garden.  It's a good sign for this Extraordinary Land. 

It's raining Feijoa!

The drought in Auckland has broken.  Not only rain is falling in our suburban garden it's also raining feijoa. What a treat for a southerner!

Feijoa is perfumed, sweet and a tart fruit all in one.

To ensure the fruit is at its maximum flavour you need to wait until they fall, but this does mean they only last for a precious few days once they hit the ground. Feijoa do bruise so you need to handle them as you would a peach.

The best way to eat a feijoa is raw, cut in half and scooped out with a spoon. The juicy sweet seed centre is a different texture to the outer part of the fruit.  The outer edge can be tart and usually has a grainy texture, especially when not at full ripeness.

You too may have this fruit in abundance or have been given a bagfull and are looking for fresh ideas on how to use them.

 Here are three of my feijoa favourites....

Feijoa Salsa

As the Feijoa originates from South America, Salsa is a most appropriate dish to start with. It makes a great starter with bread and crackers or to accompany a main.  It works well with chicken or fish.

This is something that I put together with what I have in the kitchen.  You can use any combination of fruit/vegetables for a salsa.  It usually has some heat from chillies, onions or garlic. Always taste as you go to see if it needs more acid, heat or sweetness.

Begin by finely chopping a small red onion or half a large one, a red pepper or a chilli pepper (depending on the heat you want to add to the salsa) and a clove of garlic finely diced.

Scoop out the flesh and chop about 6 Feijoas (you can use more or less).  

To give the salsa a tang, add the juice of a lime or lemon.  

Decide on the herb flavour you want to use or have on hand.   I used coriander.  It worked well with Feijoa but you could use basil, tarragon, parsley or mint.  The choice is yours. Season with salt and pepper.  

Add a good slurp of olive or avocado oil. 

If you feel it needs a little more sweetness add a tsp of honey.

Feijoa Sorbet with Ginger

The first time I made sorbet I was rather apprehensive because it seemed so exotic and surely must be difficult.   But let me tell you it's so easy...just plan ahead a couple of days to allow for the freezing process.  You can even make sorbet easier by using an ice cream machine, but I don't have one and did a perfectly good job with a stick mixer, a recycled ice cream container and the freezer. 

Feijoa Sorbet  has an ever so slight pink tinge and is an
excellent light dessert after a filling main course.

This is a mix of two recipes I found.  One using egg white and the other using ginger beer. In the Sorbet world there is a debate over whether you should add egg white or not, as some feel the egg white can flatten the flavour of the fruit. My home kitchen taste panel voted the egg white version the best for Feijoa because it produced a sorbet more like a gelato ice cream.

Ingredients

• 400g sugar (originally had caster sugar but I used ordinary)
• 2 or 3 slices of ginger (or to taste)
• 750 ml water
• juice of ½-1 lemon (helps to stop feijoa puree turning brown and does cut the sweetness)
• 250 ml feijoa puree that has been strained
• 1 egg white beaten to soft peak

First bring the sugar, water and ginger to the boil for 3-4 minutes.  Turn off and allow to cool slightly.

While the syrup is cooking and cooling, puree the scooped Feijoa flesh.   To make 250 ml of pulp that is strained you will need to make about one quarter to a third more puree as the grainy flesh stays behind in the sieving process.

Take out the ginger and add the sieved puree to the syrup. I know its a lot of sugar but you do need sugar to keep it soft.   Alternatively if you add alcohol, then you can reduce the sugar.  If a sorbet is too soft it means you have too much sugar, not enough sugar and your sorbet will be ice. 

Next fold in stiffly beaten egg white... easier said than done!?

The first time I tried this recipe it was for a dinner party and I thought I had a disaster on my hands at this stage of the process. The egg white just floated. I tipped it into my ice cream container, put it in the freezer in the hope that when I got it out the next morning the egg white would behave.

Left is the rather ugly first night freeze of the sorbet, centre the kitchen stick blender in action
and right is the finished sorbet to go back in the freezer.

Next morning my fears vanished.  Once I whizzed up the frozen slush with a stick blender the egg white became part of the sorbet making it  light, smooth and even creamy. Ideally, you do this process at least one more time before serving. 

The sorbet was a big hit. I served it with halved Feijoa, limoncello and a basil leaf.

We kiwis have really taken the Feijoa to our hearts and our gardens since first introduced in the 1920's.  Overseas you might see them called Pineapple Guava or Guavasteen.    

Feijoa are from the Myrtle family.  You can see

the family resemblance to our native Pohutakawa! 

Photo from Feijoa Feijoa - fabulous recipes for Feijoa lovers

You can use the flower stamens in salads and they taste cinnamon-like.  I am keen to try this next spring.

The Red Cherry Guava and Feijoa - both have a similar
shaped flower stalk

I don't have particularly fond childhood memories of guavas.   Mum would buy tinned guavas as a treat from the tropics. The large pale pink seedy fruits were never very appealing.

But I was introduced to the Red Cherry Guava in our garden by friends Jules and Ruud, ex Aucklanders now living in Christchurch.   With nostalgia for the flavours of the north they pounced on the few that were ripe and we realised we had a treat ahead for us.

The Red Cherry Guava is the size of a marble or a small crab apple. It has a dull red thick skin and like Feijoa they are packed with vitamin C with most of the vitamin C being in the skin.  Guavas are related to the Feijoa and have that same perfumed sweet flavour.

Down south I would make crab apple or hawthorn and apple jelly.  I decided this year I would make a jelly more fitting for Auckland - Feijoa and Guava Jelly.  

I used about half a bucket of Feijoa and around 1 kilo
of Red Cherry Guava.

I cut the Feijoas in half to check that the fruit is not too old and to assist in the breakdown of the fruit.  I decided to add to the flavour with a cinnamon stick, to reflect the taste of the Feijoa flowers. Barely cover the fruit with water and cook until mushy.  Alison Holst advises for her pink Feijoa Jelly not to squash the fruit.  I decided to give the soft fruit a bit of a squash with a potato masher.

The one rule in jelly making is "don't squeeze the bag" or your jelly will end up cloudy.   I thought mashing the fruit at the cooking stage may also cloud the jelly.. but then for Rosehip jelly you actually puree the cooked hips in a blender before cooking a second time before going through the jelly bag.  

To make your own jelly bag simply sew up a piece of cotton muslin
to the size of a pillowcase.   It's something you will have for years.

 Once the fruit is soft it's time to extract the liquid to make the jelly.  I sit the jelly bag inside a large bowl, pour in the contents of the pot, and slowly lift the bag and tie to a stick or broom handle that sits between to chairs.   Leave it hanging for 24 hrs and don't let anyone squeeze the bag!

Notice that the jelly has a layer of scum.  This disapates with the addition
of a nob of butter and a stir after you take it off the heat.

Most jelly recipes say one cup of sugar to one cup of liquid.   I like my jelly to have a real tang and reducing the sugar even a little is a good thing.  I use the same formula as for marmalade.  3/4 cup of sugar to a cup of liquid plus an extra half cup.  So for my 11 cups of juice  I needed 8 1/4 cups of sugar. I rounded the measurement up to 9 cups of sugar to 11 cups of juice.  You do need sugar for preserving and setting so it is a balancing act.  

Heat the liquid and then add the sugar, stirring until all sugar is dissolved, to avoid sticking on the bottom.  Get the jelly up to a rolling boil and continue to boil until the jelly shows signs of setting.  

As I was unsure of the pectin content (pectin in fruit ensures the jelly or jam sets) in Feijoa and guava I was preparing myself for the jelly not setting.  It seemed like ages it was boiling and it wasn't setting so I added the juice of a lemon.  Lemon assists in the setting because it is high in pectin.

To test the set I find the best way is to place saucers into the freezer prior to making the jelly and spoon a little onto the really cold plate.   If you blow on it and a skin wrinkles on the top or when you push with your finger and the liquid doesnt close up behind, then you have jelly.  

It's not the end of the world if it doesn't set first time. You just re-boil with added sugar. I wanted a soft set jelly with plenty of wobble.   It wasn't setting in the saucer but it was starting to jelly on the wooden spoon so I took a risk and poured it into clean hot jars that I had sterilizing in the oven at 150 degrees.

Place the hot jars on a wooden board as the wood will avoid
 jars cracking that may occur with a contrast of heat on a metal surface.

Fill the jars with a small jug and seal.  I seal by first putting on a cellophane seal and then put on screw lids from recycled glass jars.   This will avoid evaporation that will occur with cellophane only.

I had to wait until the next morning to see if my jelly had set...and yes it had! A lovely rich red wobbly jelly. I made a batch of scones for the home taste panel and everyone who partook loved the jelly.

For those of you down south I imagine it will be too late now to make Hawthorn jelly but in Central Otago the rosehips will be ready to pick after a couple of frosts.  The frost increases the sweetness of the hips.  As collecting rosehips is a prickly and time consuming business I suggest adding apples to bulk out the fruit.

Rosehips growing along the Central Otago Rail trail

 I am going to share my Feijoa bounty and have packed up a small box with a jar of jelly for my sister Kerry in Dunedin.  I will also keep a jar of jelly for Jules and Ruud as a thank you for introducing me to the Red Cherry Guava.  

The joy about making jelly is sharing what you make with your friends.   The trouble is, you then have to make another brew because the cupboard is bare.  But its an inexpensive and well appreciated gift. 

To me there is nothing better than a reminder of summer or autumn fruit in the form of a jelly with a scone or crossiant on a winter weekend morning.