The Fork: Scones akimbo!

We don’t know who is new here or not, so just let us explain real quickly that we are The Fork, and we’ve got a wild and woolly bunch of friends and lovers who orbit our bright and shining existence.

There’s The Spork, who sometimes pinch hits for us when we’re busy; The Knoife, an Australian pal who knows all the slang and everything; and La Forkette, our partner who pops in from time to time with recipes developed in the home kitchen.

Now that you’re up to speed, welcome, and hold onto your butts for a scone recipe from La Forkette (who fully made scones the other day and then we teamed up to eat, like, nine of them).

La Forkette’s Scottish Oat Scones (Don’t Ask About the Scottish Part, It Only Causes Trouble)

You’ll Need

1 1/2 cups oats (Quaker works just fine, trust us)
2 tbsps butter (3 if you want it BUTTERY, which is cool)
1/2 cup sugar (use 1/4 if you want ‘em less sugary)
3/4 cup white flour
3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour (yes, it’s different than just plain ol’ whole wheat flour)
1 tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
3/4 cup currants or raisins or maybe even dried cranberries (pssssst—use chocolate chips instead)
1 big-ass egg
1/2 cup plain yogurt (though we’re thinking vanilla might work)
2 tbsp. canola oil (we used coconut oil, which was awesome)

The Steps

Get a big bowl in which you can mix stuff ready by putting it on the counter. Get a wooden spoon or something, too—y’know, something with which you can stir stuff. Also, get a smaller bowl that you can set stuff into while you’re waiting to put it into the bigger bowl—stuff like butter.

Turn your oven on to 425F and, while it’s heating, pop some parchment paper in a cookie tray. If you don’t have parchment paper, you’re living wrong. Get some. If you don’t have a cookie tray (or sheet, as we’ve heard them called), why are you baking something? Get the sheet, then come back. But, like, don’t leave your oven on.

Melt that butter on your stovetop (in a pot or something if you need to be reminded) over low-ass heat until it’s good and melty, maybe even kind of browning, then drop it in that small bowl from before.

Now, you’re gonna want to move kind of quickly here; or more like you’re gonna want to move with purpose because you’ll next put the dries (the oats, the flour, the sugar, the baking soda, the baking powder) into the big bowl and mix ‘em all up. You can also stir in the currants (or chocolate chips) at this point with the dries.

‘Member that butter in the small bowl from before? Now that it’s had a couple secs to hang and get all buttered-out, mix in the wets—the egg and yogurt and oil—in the small bowl with that butter and mix pretty good (this won’t take long).

Throw the contents of the small bowl in with the contents of the large bowl and mix until you think, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that looks right; it’s kinda doughy.” By this time, your oven is probably aching to get filled with soon-to-be-scones. But just relax for a second because you have to do one more thing.

That one more thing is pulling the scone dough out of the bowl and gently hand-rolling it into a dough ball. Now, you can pop it onto the counter or a cutting board or whatever you like (lightly floured to prevent sticking) and start gently rolling it out to your desired thickness. Remember that dry and kinda crunchy at the edges are solid scone hallmarks, so don’t go too thick or too thin. Like, it’s gonna rise in the oven, man, you just need to think about scones you’ve liked and eyeball the size based on approximate hypothetical rising-ness. This sentence makes perfect sense to us, so it should to you, too, because we’re dumb.

We don’t know who decided scones would be basically triangular, but cut that hand-flattened dough into triangles like you’re cutting a pizza or something. Or, honestly, if you prefer other shapes, make a trapezoid; we don’t give a shit.

Depending on what size you cut ‘em, you can get like eight to 10 of those bad boys going. Now, place ‘em on the parchment papered baking pan/sheet and throw ‘em in the oven. If you’re at higher altitudes like we are in Santa Fe, you might need to stay vigilant and check ‘em, but it should take roughly 12 to 15 minutes for them to start looking golden brown and delicious. When that happens, and when they’re a little firm to the touch, you’re good to go. Pull ‘em out, let ‘em cool, go nuts. As always, if you make ‘em, send a photo!

Oh, and what makes these scones Scottish? Fuck if we know. Just make them. Or don’t.

This is scone-adjacent, right?

Also

In “Oh, that’s cool,” news, Maria’s New Mexican Kitchen Manager Christopher Redmond took to Facebook recently to announce the iconic local eatery will be lowering food prices, with drinks soon to follow. Redmond also says Maria’s will kick off a daily happy hour from 2 to 6 pm, though he didn’t get into what special deals that might entail. Like many of you, we remember a time when Maria’s was not owned by local conglomerate Santa Fe Dining (they own Rio Chama and some others, too), which is to say we think it was once a lot better and we hope this signals a return to glory.
OK, so this is in Taos rather than Santa Fe, but we know you nerds are always driving up there for this or that, so get pumped when we tell you that Taos-based food truck Filipino is reportedly super-great. The brainchild of married couple R-Beth and Thomas Sanchez, Filipino serves up—get ready for this—all kinds of Filipino food, and even has plenty for vegetarians.
We just now learned about home bakery biz Fistful of Butter, which we think is a super-cool name, and now we’re kind of like, “Oh, dip, they have English muffins full of nooks and crannies?!?!” Here’s what we know: You probably have to be on Facebook to see when they do stuff (here’s that link again, just in case), unless you run into them at pop-ups in the wild, which feels like another have-to-be-on-Facebook thing. Anyway, they’ll announce via that page when they’re doing stuff, then you can order by emailing fistfullofbutter@gmail.com to place your order. Payment goes down via Venmo. Now that we think of it, you could probably get on a mailing list if you email that address from before. Try that. And while you’re mulling it over, think about how the last pair of offerings included those English muffins we talked about a few sentences ago and Italian breadsticks. As we have bought many tamales from people in grocery store parking lots over the years (MANY tamales), we support the home biz revolution!
With the 2024 International Folk Art Market just ‘round the corner—and this year being the market’s 20th Anniversary Folkstravaganza—a title we just made up and is in no way official—potential food vendors might want to apply to ply their wares when it drops July 11-14. “But how, The Fork?! How do we apply?!” you are probably screaming into your phone or iPad. Easy: Find the application here. And make sure you read it carefully because there’s a lot to consider.
Sky Coffee/Sky Railway/Nuckolls Brewing Co. owner Bill Banowsky dropped us a line to let us know the Nuckolls crew will kick off a new venture called Sky Pizza on April 3. How does it work? Welllllll, it’ll be neopolitan style from a special trailer that wends its way into the Nuckolls beer garden. That’s all we know for now, so, in summation, get ready for pizza.
Three cheers to local barista Kayla Herrera of Iconik Coffee Roasters who, along with only nine other coffee-smiths, will head to compete at this year’s US Coffee Championships for latte art (think swans and tulips made from foam and such). We’ve actually met Herrera plenty of times because she formerly worked at sadly-gone downtown coffee shop Ecco, that once served coffee and gelato right next door to the old SFR offices. Considering how she’s up against big city baristas from San Francisco and Chicago and wherever (read, assholes, probably), we are rooting for her extra hard, too! In our experience, you can mostly find Herrera working at Iconik’s Red location, being its newest. Don’t bug her, though. Seriously.
Looks like Lena Street vegan restaurant Root 66 is for sale, at least according to this Craigslist ad titled “Own a Vegan Café in Santa Fe, NM!” that includes a map with the Root 66 address. According to the listing’s highlights, there is “SO much potential for continued growth,” and a “wonderful customer base.” Don’t call them, though, the listing says. Send an email.
Heads up that downright beloved steakhouse Market Steer’s final week inside Hotel St. Francis comes to an end on March 30. In case you hadn’t heard, chef Kathleen Crook and company are moving on to the former El Mesón building on Washington Ave., and it could be a minute before they’re back up and running. Know that.
Lastly in locals-only news, this one’s for reader Ashley B., whose somm-mom (which is to say, her mother is a sommelier) was wondering about a little something. Ashley B. says, and we quote, “I could have sworn I read in one of your recent newsletters that NM was working on a cheese association or something of the like.” You’re not wrong, Ashley! Though we can’t remember if we mentioned this previously or not (we write a lot of stuff), there is most definitely a burgeoning Cheese Guild, about which you can learn more here.

For the cheese-lovers out there.

More Tidbits

“Oh, no! Chick-fil-A is going to stop serving antibiotic-free chicken!” is a sentence we would write if we’d ever once eaten at the popular chain. Since its overlords insist on its being a garbage company of the most homophobic proportions, however, we have never been once and couldn’t possibly care less about what happens with that chicken. If you don’t care about queer folks to the point that you like to eat at Chick-fil-A...well, tough blow. As for the rest of us? Let’s donate to queer causes like this one in Chick-fil-A’s name!
We’re on team “Star Wars is fine, but let’s not get carried away by talking about Joseph Campbell and Robert Graves in regards to its lasers-in-space-ness and shit,” but if you’re one of THOSE people, please know that milk brand TruMoo will soon offer Star Wars-branded Blue Milk in stores across the country ahead of May 4th (as in “May the 4th be with you.”). We can’t promise it’ll come to Santa Fe, but one never knows. Anyway, it’s blue milk—y’know, like the kind Uncle Owen drinks on Tatooine before Lord Vader melts the guy’s stupid face off. Now you know.
Dateline—Paris, France, where 200-some-odd waiters entered the recent Course de Cafés, a grueling endurance contest wherein trained servers compete to see who can carry a tray with coffee, water and a croissant for 1.2 miles without totally blowing it. Honestly? Sounds like a fun thing and we hope the real winner of the day was friendship.
PSA: Dairy Queen announced it will offer special Blizzard treats this summer (think ice cream served in a soft drink cup for some reason), and it’ll announce ‘em on April 1. OK, so we see this is a joke thing, right? Right. Turns out DQ has been known to announce fake-ass over-the-top Blizzards for April Fool’s Day. The good news? The company will still offer up some real Blizzards, including the Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Party and the Ultimate Cookie. We guess there will be cookies in those. Cool.

A totally scientific breakdown of The Fork’s correspondence

In this week’s print edition of SFR, music and party events take over food coverage to give the regular food writer a little break from eating rich foods for work. We’d point out that job isn’t super-tough, but we are but a voyager on an endless sea of nightmares. You can read lots of food stuff right here, though.

Number of Letters Received: 28

*Smooches to all of you!

Most Helpful Tip of the Week (a barely edited letter from a reader):

“You never tried a donut?!”

*Oh, we tried a donut. We tried a donut big time.

Actually Helpful Tip(s):

“I was excited to try the new donut shop, Craft Donuts, since I grew up in my parents’ donut shop a century ago. First, it is a “cake donut” shop, not a real donut shop—but that’s OK since they own it and call it whatever they want. They fry the donuts in a fryer used at carnivals for funnel cakes, and as they do not have the temperature high enough, the dough allows too much of the grease into the donut. That is why you have heartburn, and to think that some of your readers didn’t even know you had a heart!”

*Reader Patrick M. totally validating our feelings from last week’s edition of The Fork. Grazie, Patrick!

Stay fresh, cheese bags,

The Fork