Cheesy Scones & BBQ tempeh

I have a little pink notebook with a list of recipes I want to make.  These scones were a recent addition. 

It’s silly considering how many online bookmarks and starred recipes I have on the comp, but when it comes right down to it, I’m a pen and paper person.  I love food magazines and cookbooks more than I like the internet.  Boom.  Deal with that.

 

Most of the recipes are from smitten kitchen and 101 cookbooks – I think Deb and Heidi are awesome.  So yeah, Deb’s jalapeno cheddar scones had me all up in arms.  Want, want, want.

The funny thing is, I chose this recipe after trying to figure out what to do with this guy.

 

Why is that funny?  Uhhh, because it’s not a jalapeno.  Kyle brought it home from his work shop’s garden and I was too scared to do a taste test to determine the amount of heat.  I really should have though, because then I would have discovered it was actually a bell pepper.  Derrr. 

So what was meant to be Deb’s jalapeno cheddar scones turned into Elise’s bell pepper cheddar scones.  Oh, and for the record, they’re neither vegan or wheat/gluten free.  Not FODMAPs friendly in the least.  They’re vegetarian and delicious though.  I very much tried one. 

Bell Pepper & Cheddar Scones [adapted from smitten kitchen]

Ingredients:

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 7 tablespoons ghee (+1 tbsp for sautéing the pepper)
• 1/2 cup goat’s milk kefir
• 3 eggs
• 1/4 pound cheddar cheese, cubed
• 1 large bell pepper, minced

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°F.

In a small pan, melt 1 tablespoon of ghee and sauté with the bell peppers until soft.  Remove from heat and let them cool.

Meanwhile, in mixing bowl #1 combine half (1 cup) of the flour with the baking powder and salt.  Then cut in the ghee.  Don’t worry about the ghee being perfectly incorporated, as long as the chunks are small (pea sized as per Deb) that should be good). 

In mixing bowl #2 add the remaining portion of flour (1 cup) with the cubed cheese.  Toss so the cheese is coated and then add in the bell peppers and toss again.

In the bowl #3 (I know, lots of dirty dishes), combine the eggs and kefir – whipping until semi-mixed. 

Combine the flour-ghee mix with the egg-kefir mix and gently fold until it starts to come together.  Then add the flour-cheese-pepper mix and stir until everything is incorporated. 

Place dough onto a well-floured board and knead minimally (< 1 minute, don’t over knead!) until it has just barely come together.  It’s okay if it’s still semi shaggy as long as it can be shaped well enough into scones.

Mold into perfect biscuits with a fancy cutter or the rim of a glass (or just divide into 10 portions by hand like I did). 

Place on a parchment-lined (or greased) baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes at 400 degrees F.

 

The 3 mixing bowls. 

Pre-baked.

 

The post-oven cheese-y ooze.

 

Are you seeing this!?!? 

I mean, really.

As much as I hate using this overplayed expression…OMGEEEEEE! 

Now that is some dairy-ified beauty.  Like fried crisp cheese stuffs.

I made Kyle some BBQ tempeh to balance out his meal (because otherwise he would have eaten 4 rolls and called that lunch).

Not too much to this, just a splash of oil and water, cubed tempeh, then Stubb’s honey pecan BBQ sauce.

Sauté it in the oil first so it gets a little sear, then add the water so it softens the tempeh.  Then add in the BBQ sauce and let it simmer til it reduces and gets sticky.

 

Eat!

 

This sh!t is bananas.

 

Sometimes you just gotta eat the stuff that you want to eat.  Even if it means your gut will hate you.  [I had one and shockingly my gut didn’t hate me…I’m thinking it was a fluke though…loading my belly up with wheat and dairy is like playing GI Russian roulette]

Notes:

To make vegan, swap ghee for Earth Balance, kefir for plain almond yogurt, and cheddar for daiya cheddar.

To make gluten free, try an all purpose GF flour blend (like Trader Joe’s or King Arthur).  Some FODMAPs people (not celiacs!) may be able to tolerate spelt flour in exchange for the whole wheat flour, but please do your research before experimenting.