An occasional series of practical recipes to cook aboard using the ingredients at hand.

BERGAMOT SCONES

A selection of common local produce in Grenada: plantains, cashew nuts distributed in recycled beer bottles, wax apples (no relation to real apples), bergamots, and handmade, pressed cocoa for tea.

Ingredients
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup white pastry flour
1 T baking powder
3 T raw sugar
1/8 t salt
5 T cold unsalted butter chopped into slices
1 fresh bergamot
1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
1/2 cup milk

The rind of the bergamot contains the distinctive peppery “Earl Gray” taste and scent. The juice is bracing in its tartness. This recipe for bergamot scones utilizes both aspects of the fruit in a rarified juxtoposition: the rind in the scone and the juice in the glaze.

Bergamots can be obtained from the vendors at the market in Gouyave, Grenada on Saturdays. Your correspondent recomends purchasing bergamots from the older lady at the back of the market. Four fruit typically cost ~ 1 Eastern Caribbean dollar or about 10 US cents per fruit (50 fold less than the Bay Area). Make sure that they are very fresh — preferably picked from the tree that day.

Instructions

1. Preheat convection oven to 425°F.

2. Zest and juice the bergamots.

Juicing the bergamots. (They are seedy little things but smell gorgeous.)

3. Combine flours, baking powder, sugar, salt, and zest in a food processor container and whisk together.

4. Drop butter pieces into dry ingredients and process until coarse crumbs.

5. Mix milk and yogurt together.

6. Mix the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients and knead lightly.

7.  On a floured board, form dough into a circle, ¾ inch thick.

8. Cut the circle into 8 slices.

Rolled out and ready to go.

10. Separate slices and place on an ungreased baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes or until light brown.

11. Mix juice of bergamot with 3 T of sugar and brush mixture on the top of scones in the last three minutes of baking.

Scones cooling on the rack. (With key ingredients: bergamot, yogurt, and flour shown in the background.)

Voila!

Note: Other citrus fruit such as lime, lemon or orange may be substituted for the bergamot to give a pleasant but inferior scone.