Ginger Tablet

Why there was no Oatcake Buddy last week - or don't fall for the Smooth new moves of Galaxy

My job involves a little bit of travel. Nothing too strenuous, but about once a week I take the train to Edinburgh. Scotland is quite svelte down here in the central belt, so to go from Glasgow near the west coast to Edinburgh on the east coast only takes 50 minutes. I can cross this whole country in less time than it took me to cross Toronto. This travel doesn't really affect my day, but the journey still leaves me feeling like an epic traveler, one who routinely goes to distant cities to do exotic things such as completing databases.

Last week I was supposed to go four days out of five, in addition to a jaunt up to Dundee for J's opening on Friday night. I didn't end up having to travel quite so much, but a number of hours were still spent on the train and in the stations catching up on the tabloids. Weeks like this throw my regular food patterns into chaos. Breakfasts turn into scalding cups of tea and stale croissant, lunch, especially at conferences, can be grim mayo-fests, and dinner becomes any food that will most quickly enter my mouth. So what do you have for a snack? Well, this is where an oatcake will really shine. They are nutty, healthy little crackers, filling, savoury and nutritious. But what to have with them? Spreads are messy, cheese is inconvenient, meats are perishable. I guess I could bring a wee salami with me and cut it up with my leatherman and make a snack out of that, but I'm tired at snack time and very prone to cutting my fingers in rather severe and dramatic ways and spurting blood all over a train just brings to mind visions of dry cleaning bills from numerous irate office workers.

The on-the-go snack that I turn to at times like this is a pack of oatcakes and a Galaxy bar. You don't eat them together, but at intervals. The Presbyterian bland crunch of the cakes gets exploded by a piece of not-quite-chocolate and almost-too-smooth super sugar. One small bar and six crackers has enough fuel to allow a human to survive comfortably for eight days on the top of the highest Munro (approximately). And if one were in that situation, the contrast between stupid indulgence and sensible food stuff would keep the mind engaged as well. That's important when you are stranded.

I reverted to this snack at the end of the week as I made my way up to Dundee (being in Dundee is sort of like being stranded on a high mountain with very thin air and no access to clean water). The Galaxy package alerted me to the fact that it had a new shape and a "new smoother texture". The shape had a more pronounced wave indentation that instantly looked like an attempt by the makers to reduce the total amount of chocolate in the bar. I don't think this is actually the case, but it's an interesting insight into my paranoia. The new smooth taste on the other hand...Galaxy is already a very smooth bit of chocolate. I don't think adults are supposed to eat it. It has an exceptionally high concentration of dairy and sugar and only a passing interest in cocoa products. As our taste buds die out with age and, much like our hearts, become bitter and difficult, the only thing an old tongue should be able to register when eating a Galaxy bar is aggressive sugar. There's no nuance. It's the chocolate version of what my parents used to call "Kiddie tea" which was mostly milk, enough sugar to rot my tiny baby teeth and a brief kiss with a tea bag. I loved Kiddie tea, and now and then that's the kind of soothing coma I look for in a chocolate bar. But the smoother taste Galaxy has found a new love with what tasted like palm oil, started cheating on the dairy and is still going at it like rabbits with the sugar. Cocoa has been left out of these affairs. It was smoother, but smearing moisturizing cream on my tongue would be smooth, too. I'm not sure that smoothest is best.

This "chocolate" bar had an inordinately longer life in my possession than any other chocolate bar I have ever purchased. It was nibbled on during the train ride, spent some time at the bottom of my bag, and moved to my pocket where it was finally finished in a fit of Christmas shopping stress a couple of days later. It didn't relieve the stress. I'm very sad to say that I can no longer recommend this combination as the snack for train rides and outdoor excursions. Of course the oatcakes quietly held up their end of the bargain, but it will need a new traveling companion in the future. 

But let's not talk about these disappointments anymore. Instead, here are some pictures that illustrate what former art students will do when their boss encourages them to make Christmas decorations and they have access to a coloured paper.

How to Celebrate Chanukah in Glasgow

Celebrating Chanukah in Glasgow presents challenges. It wasn't something I had every tried before, but I attempted this year and it was pretty successful. Here are some tips:

1) Relax - no one will know what you are doing.

I have a pretty diverse group of friends in Glasgow, but not very many of them were Jewish. On the invite list there was a total of 1.5 jews and the .5 didn't show up. I don't even add to the numbers as I celebrate because of nostalgic, complicated family ritual and not actual lineage. So while there are downsides to this, like how stupid the Chanukah story sounds when you are trying to remember the details without access the Wikipedia ("Well, there were these bad guys who did very bad things to a temple once, somewhere..."), but there are also bonuses. Mainly that no one (or only one other person) is comparing your Granny's matzoh ball soup recipe to their own grandmother's. And this is good, because there is only one kind of matzoh ball that should be eaten and it's the one made in strict accordance with Granny's wishes ("DON'T ROLL TOO HARD"). While I'm pretty confident that they are the best in the world, it's best not to get into a debate with someone else whose opinion would only be clouded by sentiment.

2) Improvisation will be necessary.

We celebrated last Sunday a few days before Chanukah officially started. This is because that's when A (who is Jewish for real) was free and I wasn't working. It was better to be able to spend the day getting ready and making some really nice things then to try and do something large and celebratory after work. That would probably have involved everyone eating toast around some tealights.

Because we were already taking liberties with the day, A and I decided that we could just light all the candles in one go. No one else there would care and it would look prettier.

(Because of Alexandros I happen to have a menorah.)

If you can't find the proper candles, use birthday candles because they'll fit in the holders and if you buy the ones meant for old people's birthdays they even look classy. They also burn down really, really quickly which makes it a brief, but dramatic event.

We did this after dinner and a few glasses of wine. Doing it in this reverse order meant that A and I actually sang the blessings surrounded by our friends and uninhibited thanks to the wine. Again, it helped that they didn't have any expectations or functional knowledge of Hebrew, but to my absolute delight, we remembered the words (or somewhere close to the correct phonetic sounds, in my case) and even sang them to the same tune. I forgot the verse that you only sing the first night, but since it wasn't even the first night, it didn't matter anyway.

3) Plan a head.

There is no way matzoh meal exists in Glasgow, but I can easily bring a box with me back from London. I try to do this now and then so I always have the possibility of matzoh ball soup. I really rarely make it, but the box sitting in my cupboard makes me feel more at home and a bit cozier.

I made some extra soup stock the other day because I had an incling that I might want to make a Chanukah dinner in the future. I don't make stock often, but it's useful to do it at some point in the fall, so you are prepared for any holiday you might want to celebrate.

Sour cream is a hard beast to catch up in Scotland. It seems to only roam in a couple of the larger supermarkets. I made sure to plan a bike ride to one to a store laden with sour cream tubs into my morning.

4) Play to your strengthes.

There is one major trait that Glasgow and Chanukah share: they both love to fry things in oil - especially potatoes. This means that the most important aspect of Chanukah dinner, the latkes, will be a breeze to make. And since every culture seems to understand the importance of frying potatoes in some form or another, all of your guests will like them too. I must have made about seven dozen for eight people and they were almost all gone. Just enough for a couple of snacks in the next couple of days. I really think there is a future for latkes in Glasgow. You could have a latke supper, with maybe four potato pancakes stacked on a portion of chips. Add some salt, vinegar and maybe some curry sauce and you'd have quite the meal. It's a culinary miracle waiting to happen.

Other things fried in oil are easy to find here, too. Like doughnuts. My family doesn't usually eat doughnuts ay Chanukah, but as I was already making a lot of other food, I picked some up at the megastore for an easy dessert. Unfortunately doughnuts aren't very traditionally Scottish and they chose to make them in some pretty weird flavours. I got one pack with tiramisu custard filling and one with rubarb and cream. They were slightly stale and had about a scant teaspoon of dodgy cream filling in them. Most of them managed to escape our stomachs. Next year everyone can just eat more latkes.

5) Make more of it yourself.

It's always surprising to not be able to buy things that you absolutely took for granted back home. Like applesauce. It means something different here, and looks more like canned pie filling. I haven't tried it. It was necessary, therefore, to make some homemade stuff for our latkes. Applesauce is a pleasing sauce to make; it's really simple and if you leave the skins on it turns pink. You can also adjust the seasoning and spices and sweetness and end up with just the consistency you want. It's much more delicious than the bottled kind, but it is another pot boiling away on the stove and one more reason to start cooking in the morning.

The other thing that I have never found is anyone who makes challah. Apparently there are somewhere between 5000 and 6000 Jewish people in Glasgow (or just under one percent), but none of them seem to own a bakery. I've always wanted to make one myself, so I decided that this was the time. Besides, thanks to rule no. 1, if I screwed it up, no one would know except A and she would be too polite to say otherwise.

But look at this:

It looked just right! And smelled really perfect, too! I used a recipe from Epicurious, and the whole process wasn't that hard. The texture wasn't exactly the same as the challah in my dreams; I would have wanted it slightly moister. I'm not sure if I would adjust this recipe, though. It could easily be differences in UK flour, or my oven being the wrong temperature, or an error on my part (that's hard to imagine, though). More experimentation is necessary, but it was certainly a heartening first result. Plus, the next morning I had challah toast with Ethel's apricot and almond jam for breakfast and that alone was almost as good as the whole dinner the night before.

6) Forget about some things.

We couldn't find any dreidels. Although I can't say I honestly looked that hard. But given that I've never seen any in my 2.5 years here, I don't think they exist. We could have tried to convert a normal top or some dice, or had I thought about it a day or two earlier, I could have made one out of clay, but in the end we just didn't play. Just cracked open another bottle of wine instead.

We also didn't have any appropriate music, so we listened to Charlie Brown's Christmas. This is approved Chanukah music in my family where we have a decidedly Seth Cohen approach to the holidays, so it felt appropriate anway.

On the other hand we did have these bad boys courtesy of A:

So who's complaining?

Welcome to the start of the Chrismukkah Season!

The Nigella Express Drinking Game

If you happen to be watching Nigella Express next week (BBC 2, Mondays, 8:30) and want to make it a more drunk and interactive experience, try this game:

1. Line up at least seven shot glasses filled with your poison of choice. When Nigella starts a new recipe, try to take one shot every time she opens a bottle that clearly comes from Marks and Spencer's and dumps the whole thing in a bowl. Don't worry if you can't keep up the first few times! That's a lot of drinking!

2. If Nigella makes a recipe that doesn't have a base of mayonnaise, butter or full-fat cheese, whisk one of your fingertips in your stand mixer. Make coy eye contact with the mixer as you do this.

3. When Nigella returns home from the shops on a public bus (conveniently filled with extras) or gives you cost-cutting tips (like saving exotic-looking food tins from your travels all over the world to use as vases at your next party so that you only need a couple of blooms in each one to make your house festive), thus showing us that she has the "Common Touch", crack open a can of whatever beer was on sale at Londis and give it to your poorest actor friend that you've hired for the evening to be your stand-in. Make him/her drink it all in one go. Laugh alluringly when they spill a bit on their shirt. Bat your eyelashes.

4. When Nigella suggest time-saving techniques like buying prepared produce instead of getting a knife out and doing a teensy tiny amount of preparation yourself, all the while spending about 4 times the amount of money, take a shot glass of sambucca and a fiver. Rip up the fiver and place the bits on top of the shot glass. Light the money/alcohol on fire. Down in one!

5. Every time that Nigella chops something (or uses a knife at all, really), poke one of your eyeballs out with a vintage and kitschy cocktail stick. Sigh at the sensual squelching sound.

6. Hit yourself on the head every time the camera strays below Nigella's waist and you think to yourself, "Sweetie, you've put on a couple, huh?" Have a raging internal debate about the positive ramifications of a woman rejecting societal pressure to be skinny and still being beautiful vs. the health risks of ingesting the amount of saturated fat that Nigella seems to endorse while still eschewing exercise. Tell yourself that at least she has a slim waist so she's not building up the "dangerous" belly fat. Determine whether or not a slight waddle can be sexy. Did Marilyn waddle or wobble? Is there a difference? Hit yourself on the head again. Feel like a failed feminist.

7. Have the person on your right pour a whole glass of wine into your mouth when Nigella checks her fake email, or applies make-up to an already-very-made-up face to prove that because of her casual and effortlessly fabulous recipes she is perfectly relaxed and ready to entertain all of her "friends" who are about to come over to her "house".

8. Close to the end of the episode, heap piles of bread, meat and mayonnaise on the coffee table (bonus points for anything from M&S!). Get everyone watching to make their own "Nigella pretending she's having a midnight snack of the leftovers" snack. The person with the construction closest to Nigella's has to eat everyone else's while taking huge bites, and sometimes chewing (alarmingly and inexplicably given their posh background) with their mouth open. They must then consume all remaining alcohol. Everyone else should shudder slightly, feel mildly revolted and have a less-raging internal debate about the sensuality of indulgently consuming food vs. simply too much information and too much mayonnaise.

That's it!By the end of this you (and your stand-in) should be drunk, short a few fivers, full of mayo, but with all your fingers and eyeballs intact!

(Seriously though, I like Nigella. I think she's a flamboyant and engaging character who has made some good tv shows in the past, and whose cookbooks tend to be pretty interesting. I'll eat her lamb shanks anytime my father cares to put them on my plate. This new series makes me swear at the telly, though. And it's not because it's not her real kitchen but a set, or that she says things that make you wonder what exactly her grip on reality is like, or even that the producers got her to use white emulsion instead of cream because it looks better on film. Whatever. It's TV and that's her character. My problem is that Nigella is super, duper rich and super, duper influential. What people don't need is someone with an absolutely immense amount of wealth and power pretending to know what it's like to need to make food fast. Her recipes are unhealthy, expensive and really, really lazy. And loads of the products she buys already-prepared are going to be pretty hard to source outside of Belgravia. She's not giving people any transferable kitchen skills, she's not giving them economical options, she's not thinking about any of the larger social issues involved with food consumption. She's just opening bottles in soft-focus.

I don't want Nigella to pretend to be a "real" woman anymore. Even with a big ass, she doesn't qualify. She has an insanely privileged life and I would much rather watch a show where she makes crazed banquets and manages to find the rarest and most expensive items to make sumptuous and incredible meals. "Express" is just lazy and boring. It's an easy cash-grab that won't challenge anyone's food habits and suggests that ease is the ultimate goal in the kitchen. Pretty disheartening.

P.S. Funnily enough, the book looks ok. For those versions of the recipes you are required to chop things into small pieces and actually take the pomegranate seeds out yourself instead of buying them in a plastic tub. If I had missed the series and only seen the book, I wouldn't have an issue at all. I would still much rather see a book called "Nigella makes forty meals a day for one hundred days and they all involve gold-leaf in some way or another", but that's just me.)