Angelo’s Wild Kitchen – orange ginger & date scones

This awesome gluten-free recipe with a twist on an old favourite is from Angelo’s Wild Kitchen: Favourite Family Recipes

Orange Crystalised Ginger & Date GF Scones

Prep: 30 min, Cooking Time: 15 min, Makes 5

Originating in Scotland around about 1500, the humble scone sure has been played with as a recipe, but the reason we love them is still the same – they make a good, hearty, filling, scrumptious snack or part of a meal. In New Zealand, scones have been dished up to thousands of hungry farmers for morning tea for years. If a scone can keep a Kiwi farmer going, what will they do for your kids!

Ingredients:

• 2 cups GF self-raising flour
• ¼ cup coconut sugar
• 75g butter
• ¾ cup orange juice (freshly squeezed is always best!)
• 1 cup whole pitted dates
• 175ml buttermilk
• ½ cup crystallised ginger
• Orange zest

Method:

Preheat oven to 170°C.

Place flour and sugar in a large bowl. Mix butter into flour by ‘rubbing’ with your fingers until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.

Warm orange juice, dates and buttermilk in a small saucepan over medium heat and let curdle.

Pour buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture and mix through. Add crystallised ginger pieces and mix through.

Place baking paper on baking tray. Separate the dough into 5 roughly equal portions and place on tray.

Place orange zest on top and bake for 15 minutes.

Angelo Georgalli starred in the TV cooking show the Game Chef and wrote a cookbook of the same name. It was a wonderful opportunity to share his passion for the great outdoors and for great food.

But since having children of his own it has become very important to him to also teach our kids to appreciate, love and be passionate about nature, the wild, the great outdoors-and real good food. So his recipes in his latest cookbook Angelo’s Wild Kitchen: Favourite Family Recipes are wholesome and nourishing. And there are plenty of gluten-free, vegetarian and dairy free options.

All meals are covered, from breakfast to dessert. The first recipe is for eggs benny and salmon (still my café favourite). This I must try!

Everyone needs to eat plenty of greens.

”We all know how good they are for our bodies, but do you know how good they are for your mind and soul?” he enthuses. His super-duper wok-fried veges are packed full of them.

The Cauliflower Cheese and vine tomato bake is spiced with fennel seeds and turmeric and has a crust made from paprika, pinenuts and Gluten Free breadcrumbs, a healthy twist on an old favourite.

The Greek Fish Stew (do ask your fishmonger for sustainable fish) sounds super tasty and wholesome. It reminds him of the scents and flavours that are carried on the breeze in the Greek Isles. But I shall give his retro Prawn Cocktail Salad a miss. I left that one behind in the sixties!

The meat recipes are plentiful and varied. The sticky BBQ pork ribs sound finger licking good. The venison with blackberry sauce and roast beetroot is perfect for a special dinner. And the rib eye steak with creamy mushroom sauce and courgettes would surely be the way to a man’s heart.

Everyone deserves the occasional treat! The Pavlova with caramelised rhubarb filled with cream mixed with mascarpone, icing sugar and vanilla sounds scrumptious!  And it would be a perfect way to use up some of that rhubarb in our garden.

Angelo is living his dream life in Wanaka with his family and is sharing his love of cooking, hunting and fishing with those who come to stay at his luxury lodge in the scenic Cadrona Valley. This cookbook will be a way his guests can take some those memories home with them.

But let’s face it, most of us aren’t game enough to head into the wilds to shoot and hunt nor are we likely to go foraging for edible greens for our dinners.

However, he suggests we can bring the Wild into our kitchens by growing our own edible plants in pots, going to Farmers’ markets and our local organic wholefood store and getting to know our local butcher. They’ll be able to tell you the farms where their meat came from.

And we should get supermarket savvy. They are joining the real food revolution and most have really great organic and wholefood sections.

By the time we have gathered our healthy ingredients we should have worked up enough of an appetite to cook and eat some of his tasty, wholesome and hearty recipes!

Angelo’s Wild Kitchen, Angelo Georgalli, Beatnik Publishing, RRP $50 www.beatnikshop.com, Photographs by Sally Greer

Reviews by Lyn Potter

Parent and grandparent, Avid traveller, writer & passionate home cook

Read more by Lyn here.