The Full Scottish with Tattie Scones

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Two large heavy-based frying pans or skillets
• •Potato masher
• •Rolling pin
• •Wide spatula or fish slice

Instructions

1. 1

   Boil the potatoes

   Put the potatoes in a pan of cold salted water. Bring to a gentle boil and cook until they fall apart when prodded with a knife. This takes fifteen to twenty minutes depending on how small you cut them. Drain thoroughly and return to the warm pan. Let them sit for a minute with the lid off so the steam escapes. Wet potatoes make heavy scones.

2. 2

   Make the tattie scone dough

   Mash the potatoes while they're still hot. No lumps. Add the butter and let it melt into the warmth of them, then work in the flour and salt with a fork until you have a soft, pliable dough. It should come together without sticking. If it clings to your hands, a touch more flour. If it cracks and crumbles, the potatoes have dried out too much, so add a small knob more butter and work it again.

   The dough is best handled while still warm. Cold tattie scone dough becomes stubborn and cracks when you roll it. Work quickly and you'll be rewarded.
3. 3

   Roll and cut the scones

   Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and divide it in two. Roll each piece into a round about half a centimetre thick. Cut each round into quarters. You're after flat triangles, not tall ones. Dust them lightly with flour and set aside on a board while you deal with the fry.

4. 4

   Start the bacon and tomatoes

   Set the oven to its lowest setting and put a large plate in to warm. Get two heavy pans on the hob, one large, one medium. Put the bacon in the large pan over a medium heat. No oil needed. The fat renders as it cooks. Lay the tomato halves cut-side down in the other pan with a little oil and a pinch of salt. Let them sit without fiddling. You want colour on the cut side, not a stirred-up mess.

   The choreography of a full breakfast is the only real skill here. Everything finishes at different times. The oven on low with a warm plate is your safety net. Use it freely.
5. 5

   Fry the Lorne sausage and black pudding

   When the bacon is close to done, the fat golden and the edges crisping, move it to the warm plate in the oven. In the same pan, with all that rendered bacon fat, lay in the Lorne sausage slices and the black pudding. The sausage wants three or four minutes a side until properly browned. The black pudding needs less, two minutes or so, just until the outside is crisp and the inside is warmed through. It can go from perfect to dry in a blink, so stay with it. Transfer both to the warm plate.

6. 6

   Fry the haggis and mushrooms

   The haggis goes in next. Same pan, same fat. It will try to crumble at the edges. Leave it alone. Two minutes a side, enough for a crust to form that holds the slice together. Set it on the warm plate. Add the mushrooms to the pan with a knob of butter, season with salt and pepper, and cook them hard. You want them golden and concentrated, not pale and sweating in their own liquid. If the pan is crowded, the mushrooms will stew rather than fry. Give them room.

   The order matters. Bacon first, for the fat. Then sausage and black pudding. Then haggis. Each thing seasons the pan for the next. The mushrooms go last because they drink up all that flavour.
7. 7

   Cook the tattie scones

   Wipe the medium pan clean and set it back over a medium heat with a thin film of butter. When the butter foams and starts to quiet, lay in the tattie scones. Cook for three minutes or so a side, pressing gently with a spatula. You're looking for a golden, slightly blistered surface and a soft, giving centre. They should smell of toasted potato and warm butter. If they're browning too fast, lower the heat. Move them to the warm plate when done.

8. 8

   Fry the eggs last

   The eggs go last, always. Add a small knob of butter to the pan. When it foams, crack the eggs in. Season with salt. Cook them gently, spooning the melted butter over the whites if you like, until the whites are set and the yolks are still soft and trembling. This is the one thing you cannot hold in the oven, so everything else should be ready before the eggs go in.

9. 9

   Assemble and serve

   Pull the warm plates from the oven and build each one: bacon, Lorne sausage, black pudding, haggis, two tattie scones, mushrooms, tomato, the egg on top where the yolk can run into everything below. Toast on the side. Put the plate in front of someone. There are few better feelings than that.

Chef Tips

• •Find a proper butcher who makes their own Lorne sausage and black pudding. The supermarket versions are a compromise, and this is not the morning for compromises. If you live somewhere that sells haggis in a skin, buy the whole thing and slice it yourself. It holds together better than the pre-sliced sort.
• •Tattie scones are forgiving. The dough is more feel than formula. If it seems right, it probably is. Roll them thin enough that they cook through in the pan without burning, thick enough that the centre stays soft. Half a centimetre. Roughly.
• •The single most useful thing in your kitchen on a fry-up morning is the oven set to its lowest temperature with a plate warming inside it. Everything that's ready goes in there while you cook the next thing. Without it, the first items are cold by the time the eggs are done, and a cold fry is a sad one.
• •Don't wash the pan between the bacon, sausage, black pudding, and haggis. Each thing leaves behind flavour for the next. The mushrooms at the end inherit everything that came before them. This is not laziness. This is good cooking.

Advance Preparation

• •Tattie scones can be made the day before, cooled, stacked between sheets of baking parchment, and refrigerated. Reheat in a dry pan for a minute each side. They're nearly as good.
• •Tattie scone dough also freezes well for up to a month. Roll and cut the scones, freeze flat on a tray, then stack in a bag. Cook from frozen, adding an extra minute per side.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 630g)