First dates & photo opportunities

A lovely tea-pot in Hatch & Sons

If there's one thing I hate, it's having my photograph taken. Some people are naturally photogenic - strike a pose, any pose and they look fabulous. Not me folks. Point a camera at me and I immediately feel ill at ease, with all natural facial expressions becoming awkward and frozen. The result tends to be one of three things when I have to 'pose' for the camera: me with a forced smile that looks more like a grimace; me with a grin and manic expression worthy of the Joker in Batman; or me with a grumpy /slightly pained expression where the camera has caught me in between the cheek-aching forced smiles. 'Don't pose. Just be natural!', I hear you say. Unfortunately, in the no-pose scenario the camera has a tendency to catch me mid-sentence, as I turn to say something to my companion, eyes half closed as I blink. Usually I end up looking like the runner-up in a gurning competition or with the gormless expression of the village idiot (not a good look, trust me).

At best, the camera might catch me with my natural resting face, which is pensive verging on serious. (Even when I'm thinking pleasant thoughts and I'm perfectly happy with life in general, strangers have been known to tell me to 'Cheer up love, might never happen!'). It's been this way since I was born, with the majority of my baby photos capturing my rather solemn mien (laughing hat photo in recent blog post aside). In most of them, I stare imperiously at the camera with large serious eyes, in a 'We are not amused' kind of way, while photos in the ensuing years capture a quiet, serious child, with no wild antics or crazy poses (unlike my siblings). 

Now given that I've never really liked 'performing' for the camera, you can imagine my dread last Saturday, the day of our professional family photo shoot. It was a birthday present for my Mam, as we haven't all been in a photo together for years. So there we were - the parents, nieces, sisters and husbands - up early on a Saturday morning, washed and dressed and looking as presentable as possible. Happily, the photographer was very friendly, put us all at our ease and made us laugh for the photo (incredibly, I am neither gurning nor weirdly manic looking). Somehow, in less than half an hour (that was one speedy photographer) we managed to get a pretty good family photo that will soon be hanging in pride of place back home for all to see (so all the more reason to be grateful that I don't look like the village idiot again).

As a reward for such an exhausting experience (all that smiling!), we retired to Hatch & Sons on Stephen's Green for a late breakfast. If you haven't been, it's a wonderful cafe in the basement of one of the Georgian townhouses along the north side of the Green, beneath the Little Museum of Dublin. The style is a softened industrial chic meets old-fashioned kitchen, with the grey painted cabinets and panelling and the bare wooden floor a nod to its 18th century heritage. It's informal rather than fussy and a welcoming, comfortable place that strives to celebrate and serve all manner of Irish artisanal food (and with ten of us sampling the menu, I can report that it does this very well indeed). 

The rest of the family ordered extremely tasty hot breakfasts (the sausages served in a soft, floury Blaa come highly recommended), but I wasn't particularly hungry so I went for the scone and coffee deal (very good value). The chalkboard menu declared that the scone of the day was a Date Scone, which seemed an unusual pairing (much as I love dates, it would never occur to me to put them in a scone and in all my years of baking, I've never once seen a recipe for them either). But a scone is a scone, I thought, and as mentioned in a previous post, I do love a good scone. 

Stocks for Scone Offenders

The scone, when it arrived, was most unprepossessing. It was the size of an average home-made scone (middling to small in scale) and looked like it might have spent a few minutes too long in the oven, being a rather burnished, nutty brown colour. I was slightly concerned when I felt that it was warm - as a rule, if a scone has been reheated, you can be sure it's been zapped in the microwave. Since the result of this is a steaming hot scone with an unpleasant rubbery texture that worsens as it cools, I'll take the unheated version every time. (As an aside, if I were Queen of the World, reheating a scone in the microwave would be punishable by a spell in the stocks - naturally, as Queen, I could insist on there being stocks in all town squares in which we could place the offenders and pelt them with hot, rubbery scones fresh from the microwave). 

But back to my Date Scone. On closer inspection (a tap with my finger nail), the scone had an oven-heated crispness rather than a nuked, yielding sponginess. Even better, when I cut it in half to butter it, it was still soft and moist and not a bit over-baked. Eating my first mouthful I realised that the nutty brown crust was probably the result of caramelised brown sugar and chopped dates. The belated realisation that this was a darned good scone indeed is the reason why today's photos feature a half-eaten scone and not the intact, uncut version. I was so under-awed by it when it first arrived that I had no intentions of either taking its photo or discussing it in my blog. How wrong I was; this was an altogether wonderful scone to go with a particularly good cup of filter coffee (in most establishments 'good filter coffee' is an oxymoron, but not here). 

Date scone served warm with Glenilen butter

I have since tried to re-create my first date scone experience, but ended up with fluffy white scones with dates in them rather than 'date scones' per se; nice in their own right but definitely not the delicious Date Scone a la Hatch & Sons. I may need to add an egg (less fluffy, more soft and cakey) and experiment with muscovado sugar or even a date syrup to achieve that caramelised crust and hint of toffee flavour in the scone. I don't think you can ever completely recapture the magic of a (successful) first date, be it in a scone or one of the romantic variety. But that doesn't mean to say you can't try. I've had a nice-but-not-quite-the-same second date (successful marriages have been built on less). Third time lucky? I'll be sure to let you know.