The Small Center

I have found this pawn structure to be absolutely dreadful to play with the black pieces. Breaking out with ...d5 is almost never possible because the king is constantly under pressure and ...f5 will probably lead to some nasty mating attack on your light squares. 

So Black ends up scrambling to trade off a bunch of pieces only to get an endgame that isn't very interesting anyway. The entire game seems to be an exercise in patience while White has all the chances there are. Usually on the White side of this I make it a point to castle kingside because I think the restricting nature of this structure is advantage enough. Opposite side castling actually gives Black something to do! 

Is there anything that Black can do in these positions apart from passively defending?

Target the e pawn on the half open file?

I'm sure master games against the Scotch would help.