Potato Farls (Gluten Free)

Happy Valentines Day!  These farls or potato bread as it is referred to in our flat is a somewhat romantically inspired recipe as my partner is from Belfast and loves these as part of a traditional fry, unfortunately my lack of organisation ended up shoving a buttered one in his face before I deserted him for Brum today but the thought was there and he plans to cook himself a little fry with the leftovers later tonight.  I was also planning to be all sickly sweet and try to cut them into heart shapes but again due to time constraints I opted for the more traditional round and  wedges of farls, but it’s  not a bad idea to cut these into shapes as they are quite delicate and difficult to transfer and turn in one big round so I would in future, perhaps, do circles or cut into wedges or squares before cooking to save the faffing around with rolling pins and plates.  So in brief potato bread is my romantic gesture of the day – who said romance is dead?

Gluten Free Potato Farls

These are dead easy to whip up, I somehow managed to do these all whilst simultaneously packing bags for Brum, managing the screams of an excited toddler’s growing anticipation of grandma and grandpa arriving at the gates and leaving the biggest pile of washing up known to man for my dearest, I said it before but who was it who said romance was dead?

Right enough gabbling and onto the recipe…

Ingredients:

• 4 medium sized potatoes ( rough unpeeled weight was 650g if you want to be precise but I don’t think you need to bother with something like this)
• 3 big heaped dessert spoonfuls of plain gluten free flour ( I used Dove’s Farm)
• A big (I mean it) knob of butter and more for serving

Method:

Peel, then boil the spuds until tender and mash the living daylights out of them, season generously, whack in the butter and mix.  Stir in the flour then tip out onto a floured board.  Now it is quite hot still but this is where I pretend like I have asbestos fingers (I don’t) and then realise I don’t and ‘ow OWWW!’ my way through a little knead to makes sure all the flour is incorporated, clearly it would be much simpler and pain free to let the damn mash cool first but what’s a little pain on the route to potato bread pleasure hey?

score the farl shapes whilst cooking...

Put a heavy based frying pan on the hob and set to medium.  Grease the pan with a little oil and then get onto rolling.  Flour a rolling-pin and roll out into a roundish looking shape, then transfer carefully to the pan ( this is where you could lose half the farl so I recommend a plate or a rolling-pin to help with the manoeuver) if it falls apart don’t worry it is easily squished together or made into smaller pieces, it still tastes great so worry no more.  Fry for about 8 minutes a side until deep golden brown then serve amongst a selection of your finest fried breakfast finery, on their tod with lashings of butter, or with jam as I guzzled down this morning or all posh with a twirl of smoked salmon and a big blob of creme fraiche.