Ginger Tablet

Pancake Day and Rhubarb Curd

I can remember the day when my mother suggested we have pancakes for dinner. I thought she was crazy and absolutely wonderful. Shrove/Fat/Gras Tuesday/Mardi was never really invested with greater cultural meaning when I was young. For a few years at least, I saw it solely as an example of my mother's occasional, gentle eccentricities. Because growing up in the United Church there was never much talk of giving anything up for Lent. This was not a fat fest before forty days of misery and penance. Deprivation of any sort didn't really seem to be much of a thing at church. As far as I can remember, it was mostly people being nice to each other and sugar bowls just begging to have their cubes stolen during the after-service tea time. Eventually I realised that other people in our church also ate pancakes once a year for dinner and that they too just returned to their normal food the next day. 

Although there is now even less religious significance to this meal than there was when I was growing up, I still like to mark the day. It makes me think of my mom. I like the idea of a dinner that clears out the pantries and makes use of what's on hand. And I still feel like a naughty and spoiled princess who has somehow managed to get away with not eating her vegetables, at least for one day.

Tonight I made pancakes with two fillings. The first one was made of apple, raisins, cinnamon, pine nuts and very dark chocolate bits. It was based on Samantha Clark's pancake tip in The Guardian, but I improvised the chocolate and we ate it with sour cream. Extremely delicious. The second filling was a rhubarb curd, similar to a lemon curd, but a beguiling pale pink, and served with bright stewed rhubarb and more sour cream (we had some sitting in the fridge, we were just being frugal). This was also amazing. And I've wanted to try and make a rhubarb curd for a long time. It was on my list of things to do. It's a dorky list.

Now you can fulfill that ambition too. Bet you didn't even know it was in you.

Ingredients

300 grams rhubarb 

approximately 1 cup of sugar

6 egg yolks

a pinch of salt

half a lemon

100 grams of butter, cut up into chunks

Method

1. Cut the rhubarb into chunks and stew it gently in a bit of water and some sugar. This is to taste. Perhaps about 1/4  cup. Set aside when it's a bright pink pulp and all of the pieces have dissolved.

2. In a heat-proof bowl, whisk your egg yolks, 3/4 cup of sugar and the pinch of salt. Whisk them well. 

3. Set the bowl over a pot of simmer water. Not too hot, or your eggs will scramble and that will be gross. Just simmering. Just warm. Whisk the mixture.

4. Incorporate about a cup of the stewed rhubarb. Squeeze in the juice of the lemon half. A bit of zest is nice too. Keep whisking! Don't stop! You can add more fruit if you want, just taste it and see. But keep whisking! Do it for about 10 minutes. 

5. Once it seems nice and thick, take the curd off the heat and stir in the butter. Butter. Delicious butter.

6. Now use it or chill it. I don't know how long it will last in your fridge, but probably best not to push it. A few days. Eat it on everything. Eat it with any leftover rhubarb pulp you might have. Eat it straight from the bowl. 

Happy Pancake Day! I hope it was a soft and warm one.

Kedgeree, Absorption Style

Kedgeree is the kind of dish that seems entirely mysterious when you read about it in British novels. Both exotic and a staple, its the kind of food that protagonists fortify themselves with at breakfast before heading out to sea/off on the moors/away to do colonial things involving the Raj. No one thinks kedgeree without thinking about the Raj. It's also one of those words that I've read many times, but never really had the chance to hear or say out loud back in Canada. Sometimes, when my relationship with a word has been primarily visual, I'm not that careful to actually decode the correct sounds. So even though I read k-e-d-g-e-r-e-e, my mind says kedegree, as in rhymes with 'pedigree'. I know this isn't right, so now when I do say the word (it happens sometimes), I have to pause for a second, get the right sounds in place, and then proceed with the sentence. Overriding these transposed letters that my brain won't keep straight. Trying not to sound like an idiot. It's tiring.

But this is about more than just an intriguing dish with a tricky name. About once a week I want a simple and healthy dinner featuring lots of vegetables and fish. The truth is, if the oceans weren't so barren and poisoned, I would eat fish and vegetables for dinner every second night. Pasta would go in between. Food like this just makes you feel so clean and light. Plus it is excellent for dodgy digestive disorders. There's just nothing for your body to reject.

I have a standard recipe that I normally turn to and which we can discuss at a later date, and it's a lovely colourful plate of food. But I wanted a change. I wanted something involving fewer ingredients. I decided on kedgeree.  The dish as it is understood today is a corruption/amalgam of both a Scottish dish and an Indian dish that gained popularity during the time of British rule and then was brought back to the UK where it is still eaten fondly. It was traditionally served for breakfast made with just-caught fish. 

Typically the dish involves frying cold, cooked rice in onions and spices and serving it with parsley, boiled eggs and smoked white fish (often haddock). Guess which parts Scotland and India contributed to the mix. Now, I love fried rice, but I wanted a less greasy meal. So instead I approached my kedgeree a bit like a risotto. I started the onion and uncooked rice and spices in oil and then added broth until everything was cooked. Not only did this make for a bit of a lighter dish, the flavours of the spices had a chance to really infuse the rice over the longer cooking period. It worked - this method is good. It was delicious and it made me feel Victorian for half an hour.

Two things:

1) If I had some already-cooked rice in the fridge, I would do it the fried way in the future. 

2) This is an excellent application of pre-mixed, mild yellow curry powder. Every once in a while this spice blend is the ticket. I know it lacks cred, but it's taste and colour are so specific, in an application like this there's no sense in messing around with anything more complicated. Get the old, mostly forgotten jar from the back of your spice rack and use it with abandon. Bright yellow!

Ingredients:

(serves at least 4)

4 boiled eggs

400g smoked haddock (thanks Grier)

one chopped onion

approx 300g (long grain) rice

yellow curry powder (or your own precious blend)

chicken/vegetable stock

parsley

cream/whole milk (optional)

Method:

1. Boil your eggs if you haven't done this already

2. Gently fry the onions in some oil, add some salt and the curry powder. I ended up adding loads during the cooking process, so just adjust as needed.

3. Add your rice, coat the grains in oil and after a few minutes, ladle in some stock.

4. Continue to add stock and stir the rice until absorbed, just as you would if you were making risotto. Stop when the rice is cooked through, but before it gets mushy. This will take about 20 minutes.

5. 10 minutes before the rice is done, place the haddock in a pot and just cover with water. Bring to a boil and lower to a simmer for approximately 6 minutes. Take the fish out, remove any skin and bones, flake the flesh and reserve.

6. Once the rice has finished, stir in the parsley, a bit of cream if you want it, adjust seasoning and add the flaked fish and chopped egg.

7. Eat!

A Salad of Seduction

 

Ugh. We're back at that time of year when dubious claims about the aphrodisiac qualities of pretty much everything are touted and our tongues' erogenous zones are endlessly charted. Stupid Valentines Day. Even as a loved up, shacked up girl, I think it's all a bit of a pain. Chocolate recipes everywhere start to make my eyeballs feel cloyed. Obvious, clicheed ideas of food sensuality just end up feeling like textbook lessons. I can't imagine a really exciting, hot night coming from any of these how-to guides. Of course small, spontaneous tokens of affection are always sweet and always encouraged, and I do have some plans to make an elaborate breakfast, convince J to go out for the paper and then have a lazy morning. But after that I'll probably just try to get on with my life. Grand gestures are exhausting.

But just in case you think my heart has turned to coal, there is a new crush in the kitchen. We've been quite taken with this little number over the past few days. It's an herb salad that comes from the one cookbook I've really lusted after recently, the pretty newly released Ottolenghi Cookbook. I can't remember the last time I flipped through the pages of a cookbook and was curious to try not only the meat dishes, but also the numerous vegetable dishes, the salads and the pastries. THE PASTRIES. I dropped a few hints about wanting it for Christmas, but J firmly objected to the photographs in the book. They are numerous. The composition is sometimes arranged so that the actual food is barely in the frame. There are loads of pictures of blurry people. Yes. Yes. Yes. I could clearly see all of this as well. But I had faith that our dinners would truly benefit from bringing it into our home. He wasn't swayed. I'm an independent lady with a well-used amazon account. 

I love it. I took it to bed with me the morning I got it and read every page. This was one of the recipes I was most excited to try out.

Now, salad is not the food of love and I am not going to argue otherwise. But this salad made of the picked leaves of basil, dill, parsley, coriander, tarragon and some rocket topped with butter-fried nuts and a citrus dressing will put a spring in your step and a smile on your face and a song in your heart. The mix of herbs seems strange at first, but it makes a lot of sense in your mouth. There is clarity and truth in this combination. If you are planning a big Valentines dinner,  I'm suggesting this as a palate cleanser in between your slinky oysters, rich meats and deep chocolates. If you don't care about any of that, you should still try it. It'll make you feel healthy and vigorous, but with a hint of fried-in-butter. And who doesn't want to feel vigorous and a little bit rich right now?

I'm not going to type up the recipe because I really want to go to sleep and I think you should buy the book. It's on sale right now even. But if you're not yet sold, you can check out the blog. There are a few recipes on there that look very tempting, too. You could even improvise from the description above. Whatever. It doesn't matter. The bottom line is that if you want to feel fantastic, just put it in your mouth. 

And that is the most suggestive sentence I have ever written on this blog. The end.

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(I've been very actively working on my new web project (www.katiemcgown.info), so if you feel like things are too quiet here, go there. It's being updated e.v.e.r.y. s.i.n.g.l.e. d.a.y.)

Mussels, Fennel and a Barely Cream Sauce

 

Few things instill in me a greater feeling of fear, uncertainty and dread than the sound of a mouse scratching unseen in a corner. Especially when you were under the illusion that you were co-habitating with no such creatures. I hate living with mice. I hate trying to kill them. I hate that my lease won't allow me to get a cat that could patrol the perimeters of our flat, releasing its killer pheromones and dissuading little rodents from investigating our pantry. I've lived in places that were overrun and I am now scarred and scared. 

But Saturday afternoon, that's exactly the sound I heard.

After an exhausting afternoon foraging and shopping, I came home, dropped the shopping bags on the floor of the living room and slumped down in front of my computer for a few restorative minutes. I find the exhaustion that comes from shopping exceptionally mysterious. I feel far more drained going to a few stores than I ever do going to the gym or after a day at work. Something about the noise, the poor show that humanity puts on while they shop, the slow pace, the absence of the endorphin rush that comes from real exercise. This combination turns me into a vegetable capable of little more than facebook-surfing for a least 45 minutes. Even taking off my coat is just too hard.

It was in this state of advance slothfulness that I first heard the tiny bastard rodent. It seemed to be chewing electrical cables behind J's computer. While I was of course concerned about the damage it was causing, I couldn't help think that it was there because of J's errant toast crumbs. He had inevitably brought this beastie upon us and I wasn't going to worry too much about the technological fallout. Maybe he needed a lesson in consequences. I went through all of the possible mice-killing methods, made a note to thoroughly check the kitchen cupboards and came to the conclusion that we should probably move.

Then I remembered the bag of living beings in the room. It wasn't an industrious mouse, it was a kilo of mussels. Opening, closing, bubbling, somehow jostling. Inspired by a the picture of clam fettuccine in Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries, I had journeyed to the Blas Store, a perfect wee fish, seafood and game emporium just off Dumbarton Road on Hyndland Street. Although they had sold out of clams early in the day, there was still a bag of fresh mussels. And so a kilo was measured into a plastic bag and away I went.

Now I know that mussels are alive when I buy them, but I always forget that there will be the corresponding movements and sounds. I certainly never realised they could sound like mice. I would bet that they make a far better bowl of fettuccine. Because this was a very good bowl of fettuccine. The fennel and tarragon paired with the wine and mussels is so perfect and delicious. Their bright orange flesh and the pale green leeks look beautiful wrapped around the pasta strands. The cream is there just for body and mellowness, but there is not enough to clog the texture of the flavour of the sauce. It felt cleansing and filling. We wept when our bowls were empty.

There's a bit of work in preparing this dish because the mussels, first scrubbed and then steamed with leeks, fennel and wine, are then taken out of their shells and added back to the sauce naked. Unlike tiny dainty clam shells, these would prove too awkward to mix right into your cooked pasta. It's just a lot easier to eat this way, even though it's a lot more fiddly. I ended up buying twice as many mussels as I needed, so after they were cooked and de-shelled, I threw half of them in the freezer (with some of the cooked leek and fennel). This means that out of one labour intensive dinner, I will have a much faster one in the future. I'm already excited to eat this again surrounded by a stunning lack of vermin.

Ingredients

• 500 grams of fresh mussels (or use 1kilo for 4 servings, or leftovers for the freezer)

•  one leek

• fennel bulb (I used half of one because that's all I had, you could use a whole one if it wasn't too large)

• A couple of finely chopped garlic cloves

• olive oil

• butter

• white wine

• tarragon

• a splash of cream

• pasta

Method

1. Place your mussels in a large bowl and fill it with cool water. Let them soak for a bit. Prepare another large bowl of water and start pulling the beards (the fibrous bits) off the mussel shells. Once cleaned, place them in the second bowl.

2. Chop your fennel, leek and garlic. Heat up some olive oil and butter (you determine the amount, you need maybe 1.5 tablespoons of each) in a pot that's big enough to hold the mussels, and add your chopped vegetables. Let them cook and soften and get transparent. Add a glug of wine.

3. Drain the mussels, add them to the pot, cover it fast. Leave it. After five minutes or so you can lift the lid. The mussels should be cooked and the shells should be open. If there are any that aren't, throw them away.

4. Using a slotted spoon, remove the mussels from the pot. Take the meat out of each of the shells and reserve it. Roughly chop it if you want. If there are bits of leek and fennel clinging to the shell, save those too. Throw out all of those shells. Or make a beautiful craft project. 

5. While this is going on, you should have quite a bit of liquid in your pot. If not, add some more wine. Let it continue to cook and reduce.

6. Put some water on to boil for your pasta. You probably want fettuccine or linguine. When the water is ready, throw in your pasta of choice.

7. While the water is boiling, add the mussels back to the liquid in the lovely leek pot and slowly add a dash of cream. You really don't need that much. It will just go white; it won't get too thick. Adjust seasoning; you probably won't need salt, but you might want some pepper or a couple of chili flakes. Add some chopped tarragon right before the pasta is done.

8. Toss it all together. Add grated parmesan if you're uncouth like me. 

Sleepy Burns Night

The important thing to remember when making haggis, neeps and tatties is to keep it simple.  

Basically the meal consists of three boiled things.  

All you need is three soft piles of mashed potatoes, mashed turnip and hot and spicy haggis.

 

Plus a glass of whisky or two.

   

Yes, Burns Night is often a much grander affair, certainly a lot more elaborate than the lazy Sunday dinner that we just had. And all of that ceremony can be wonderful too. But it's not strictly necessary.

 

Our one embellishment was an onion, whisky and rosemary gravy that was a lot more delicious than it looks.

I'm sure if Robert Burns is up there somewhere, the idea of thousands of people eating haggis on the 250th anniversary of his death must be pretty absurd. But really, endless people eating a simple, economical and delicious meal in your honour is a pretty great tribute. Happy Birthday! I'm full of haggis, thankful for all poets everywhere, and ready for bed.

Veal Good Food

 

Scottish food week had to take a short break because of illness. It wasn't anything very dramatic, but there was a pronounced lack of appetite and therefore not much of interest happening in the kitchen.

But it's all better now. In fact things are pretty wonderful. The early signs of spring were out there in the sunshine today. Coming across those first branches covered in tentative pink blossoms in the last days of January is miraculous. Green shoots cropping up, snowdrops stretching out. Yes, tomorrow there will be rain and the days are still endlessly dark, but it's difficult to find something that better epitomizes hope than these first flowers. And if they happen to arrive three months earlier than they do in your home country, then you are liable to think that this is a good place, that this is just fine.

 

(Hyacinths. An impulse purchase from Woolworth's closing sale, planted in early December)

I went to the farmers' market  and the local shops this morning and came back with tarts for brunch, homemade jams, my favourite rye bread, a haggis for tomorrow, a newspaper, a new cookbook and a pound of stewing veal.

Veal. So delicious, and yet so strangely elusive in Scotland, a land of beef and dairy. When I first moved here I couldn't understand why I could never find veal in any store or at any of the butchers I visited. It's not served in restaurants here, the popular chefs don't often talk about it. Why was this? I still don't quite understand. Yes, I understand that veal is often raised in pretty awful conditions, but really, is the meat that's consumed most of the time that much better? Did those animal cruelty campaigns work that effectively? If so, I'm pretty impressed. Is it the baby animal thing? In a land that's ravenous for lamb? J is certainly treating me like a baby-eater right now. Is it just not traditional? I have no idea. There just seems to be a tacit agreement that veal is one meat too far.

But we, the inhabitants of Scotland, should eat veal. Not the white stuff, produced by crating a calf so it can't move and then feeding it a liquid diet low in iron to make the meat tender and pale. Nope. Don't eat that. It's been illegal to raise veal in those conditions in the UK since 1990. But get yourself some "rose" veal (again, imagine an accent. It's like the wine). The stuff I just bought is free range and nursed by a lady cow and had room to roam and have a nice life and develop some muscles. And that's nice, because these are male dairy cows so if they weren't raised for food, they would just be killed days after birth. They're not that useful for dairy farmers understandably. And if they're not killed, they're shipped to Europe where there is a market for them and where they could very well be crated. Instead, a few months on a picturesque farm in Dumfries and Galloway isn't that bad, is it? (The BBC has a pretty interesting page on this debate, here.) 

If you're in Glasgow, you can buy veal from the nice people at Sunnyside Farm at their market stall. They have a website where you can read about the various sheep, cow and pig breeds they have, but be careful, they have a gallery of pictures of their critters and that's a tough thing to look at before dinner. Unlike their meat, which is a tender thing to eat for dinner. Honestly this veal is beautiful. It's some of the best I've ever had.

I just made a light stew of veal, carrots, leeks and cavola nero, with some finely chopped dill shoved in there close to the end. Normally not an herb I would reach for in that context, but I am loosely basing this meal on a remembered stew my father and stepmom used to make for us. Chunks of veal, carrots, dill and pasta in a delicious and light broth. Those tastes are a nostalgic little bundle for me. I served this over some buttered pasta I just made that incorporated a little rye flour for some slight textural heft and more chopped dill. It was a pretty satisfying meal. Meaty and flavourful while still feeling healthy. And that veal. My goodness. The tenderest little chunks.

And so I would like to advance Veal and Leek Stew as a new Scottish classic. As the BBC website says, as long as there is dairy there'll be unwanted male calves. The least we can do as active meat and dairy eaters is to make sure they have a nice life and give them a delicious send-off.

Ingredients

1 pound of veal chunks

2 leeks, chopped

2 carrots, chopped

3 cloves of garlic, chopped

bay leaf

A bit of white wine

one slender head of cavola nero (or any of kind of kale), cut into thin slices, delicate pieces

dill

Method

1) Add a bit of oil to a big pot, heat it up, add your veal and loads of salt and pepper getting it all over the chunks.

2) Once the meat starts to cook a bit, add your leeks. Let the meat continue to lose its pink and the leeks get soft. About 10 minutes. During this time you can add your carrots and garlic.

3) Fill the pot up with just enough water to cover the meat and vegetables. Throw in the bay leaf.  Bring to a boil and then reduce the heat to a simmer. You're going to want it to simmer for about 2.5 hours. Believe me. Mmmm.

4) About an hour before serving, throw in the kale and some dill. I added another whack of fresh dill right at the end as well, because I wanted a pretty fresh, kicky flavour. I also added a bit of white wine I had just to top up the liquid levels a bit.

5) You can use this time constructively to make your own pasta. Or you can log onto Facebook. No one's judging.

5) Once your house smells amazing and you can't resist it any longer, adjust seasoning and serve this beautiful stew over some buttered noodles, mashed potatoes, or any other starch of your choice.

Extra Credit: Did you know that the thing that differentiates a Scottish leek from all others is how (long and pale it is? It's the David Bowie of the leek world! ) Update: Woah. I'm totally wrong about this. It's the other way around. The Welsh/English leek is longer and paler. The Scottish kind has more dark green leaves, which are used to create deeper broths.

 

(Scottish on the left. Clearly.)

Potato Scones, Baking with Whisky

         

(ugh. horrible picture. horrible dark winter and lack of natural light. very, very pretty pan)

I love potato scones. You can make an excellent breakfast by frying up a couple of them and topping them with some fried tomato and slices of smoked salmon. They are the perfect textural addition to a bacon roll. They make for a very indulgent grilled cheese sandwich. 

I'm going to go back to buying them at the store.

To make potato scones you simply mix some flour into some mashed potatoes and cook them on a buttered griddle. The advertised ratio of flour to potato is about 1:5. I tried this easy recipe the other day and it was a disaster. My dough was really, really wet so I had to add quite a bit more flour than suggested just to get it in any kind of shape. The recipes said to roll it out and cut circles of dough to fry up. I was sort of squishing disks directly onto my skillet. They stuck and would absolutely not be turned. I then remembered that I now own a very beautiful copper-bottomed non-stick frying pan so I tried them in there. This was better. I still had to drop rounds of dough onto the pan and flatten them out with my spatula, but at least they were browning nicely and somewhat willing to turn. I expected to make a huge pile. I ended up with three. All the rest of the dough ended up in a half-charred lump. And they were only ok.

I guess I'll try again in the future. There was one that was almost tasty and the promise of that could be enough to battle again. The texture/taste was softer and fresher than the ones from the store. But a whole package of those ones only costs about 49p. That's not a lot of money to spend to save a pretty big pain in the ass.

Moving on.

Let's say you want to do some baking and you want to use whisky. Personally, I like baking with Jack Daniels, but if I felt the need to keep it Scottish, I would use Bell's. Bell's is a blended whisky which means that it's a mutt. Unlike a single malt which only comes from a single distillery, a blended whisky is from many sources and this makes its character less defined. In the case of Bell's you get something quite sweet and smooth, i.e. something that's not going to make your cake taste like peat. Plus the blends are way, way cheaper and if you're going to be masking the subtleties with chocolate, fruit and mounds of sugar, you don't need the expensive stuff. You should add a tiny bit of water to a nice single malt, you should never add cake batter.

Cullen Skink, Old Pulteney

 

Cullen Skink. Quite possibly the most intriguingly named soup on our fair planet.

This smoked haddock chowder is also fantastically delicious, creamy and indulgent despite it's lack of cream and is a breeze to make.

I made a batch on Sunday while simultaneously baking J a birthday cake, cleaning the kitchen, making potato scones, hearing J's recent tales of London and looking at the accompanying pictures. I was also listening to the radio and worrying about our broken boiler and performing some light scheming and negotiating quite a hangover from a girls' night that involved martinis so dirty they were actually obscene. Basically this recipe is difficult to screw up and tastes far more involved than you ever have to be in putting it together. Serve it at the start of your Burns Supper.

The best bowls of cullen skink I've had have come from Cafe Gandolfi's and it's their version I aspire to. Unlike a lot of recipes, they add a tiny bit of tomato to their soup. I think this is essential. You want a bit of acidity in there to cut the creamy, smoke flavours. It makes you love the creamy, smoky flavours even more. Likewise, lemon is mandatory. As is the bright parsley. There aren't a lot of ingredients to this soup, but if one were removed its character would suffer.

You'll also find some recipes that call for cream and diced potatoes instead of milk and mashed potato. I would stick to this version. The texture is far more interesting and the milk allows the smoked haddock to come through without being choked by dense cream.

I've adapted my recipe from this source since I think it's the simplest way to get the best result and it's not a bad approximation of Gandolfi's.

Ingredients

• A little less than one liter of whole milk

• 400g/1 lb of smoked haddock (not the dyed kind)

• 1-2 bay leaves

• one diced onion

• 1-1 1/2 cups of mashed potato (made according to taste)

• parsley (save the stems)

• 1/2 a seeded tomato, cut into small and delicate chunks

 

Method

1. Gently bring your milk to a simmer, add the bay leaves, the parsley stems and the fish. Poach the fish for approximately 5-10 minutes. Remove from the heat and let the fish further infuse the milk for about 5 or 10 more minutes.

2. Fry up your onions until they are just soft while all of this fish action is happening.

3. Fish out the fish from your milk. You can strain the fish/leaves/stems if that's easier, but I keep the milk in the pot and just use a slotted spoon to remove the chunks. Throw away the stems/leaves and then break the fish into small chunks discarding any unappetizing skin and bones. If you took the  milk out of the pot, put it back in now.

4. Put the deliciously fishy milk back on the heat and add your mashed potatoes. Also those onions. At this point I would cook it for a few minutes, maybe 15, to further thicken and reduce the liquid.

5. Reinsert your fish and the chopped tomato. Let them get nice and hot. Add some chopped parsley.

6. Serve it up with loads of pepper and some lemon wedges.

Do you know what whisky might be nice with this soup? Old Pulteney, a new favourite of mine that comes from Wick in the far north of Scotland. In the olden days you could sometimes only get there by boat! Even though it's on the mainland! Remote! While this whisky does not have the same smoky, peaty character as the Islay whiskies I love, it is quite mellow and smooth, being matured in old bourbon casks. Sometimes you need mellow and smooth. But because it's also matured right by the blustery shore, it has a this salty kick right at the end.  That makes it a really fantastic mouthful. A hot flask of soup and a cool wee flask of this whisky on some bracing sea shore. That would be perfect. That could possibly be my weekend.

Coconut Tablet, Bunnahabhain

 

And so I begin a week of Wonderful Scottish Food on the most depressing day of the year. Some would say that was fitting, but those people should be ignored. Instead let's blot out all the pain and negativity with a little bit of sugar, with a tiny piece of Coconut Tablet. Something that, if you were planning a Burns Supper, would be a great way to end the evening accompanied by strong tea or coffee.

Tablet is a pretty easy thing to make in theory. It involves throwing whole packages of things in a pot and turning on the heat. Normally one bag of sugar, one tin of condensed milk and 100g of butter. That's the kind of recipe you can memorize and then magically produce whenever you fancy it. These are the recipes that you can make for the younger generations of your family and when you die, because there's no written record of the culinary trademarks, they all mourn your death terribly, crying to the heavens because they will never again taste whatever it is that you made so well. In this case: tablet. When they themselves try to make it, they will just cry more; as simple as it seems the difficulty lies in knowing the stages of tablet and being able to accurately predict when it will be done. They'll definitely get this wrong for a while. It is this kind of post-mortem adulation that I wish to inspire one day; it's the only kind of legacy I care about leaving. So I'm getting the recipes right, right now.

In thinking about tablet and tablet-making, I often wondered (well, a couple of times) what would happen if you substituted a can of coconut milk for a can of condensed milk. Let me tell you what happens: for a long, long time things appear to be progressing completely normally. Having mixed all of the ingredients together and brought them to a boil, you lower the temperature and mix it now and then letting it simmer for about 20 minutes. In the middle of this you get the most delicious caramel you have ever laid tongue upon. In this case, as it was coconut flavoured caramel, it is excruciatingly delicious. But you don't stop there. You continue to stir until it turns golden and wee sugar crystals start to form and then you take it off the heat, beat the life out of it and quickly pour it into a pan. Except that when you make tablet with coconut milk it doesn't turn golden. And suddenly you're stirring it and there are definitely crystals forming and you are moments away from ruining the batch when you quickly beat the life out of it and pour it into a pan. This perhaps because of a higher water content or a slightly lower sugar content in the recipe. Regardless it is actually quite good; the results are lighter and crumblier than normal and a more delicate hue but the coconut perfume is pervasive and compelling. And think of the other flavours you could add to it - ginger, lime, a drizzle of dark chocolate. Maybe some toasted coconut shavings on top. Rum. Stirred in just after taking the mixture off the heat, any of those would be divine.

If you are making tablet for the first time I sincerely recommend this site. They are more thorough than I would ever care to be.

It's fitting to eat severely sugary food on Burns Night, after all if not for the publication of his poems, Robert Burns was days away from sailing off to Jamaica, to a sugar plantation, to become a slave driver. Technically a "bookkeeper", but as he was going to be in charge of "assets", the job would have involved a great deal of brutality. Instead he managed to avoid the financial and personal situation that was making this appalling choice somehow palatable. Instead he became a national poet and a supporter of abolitionists. So eat a bit of tablet in recognition of our profoundly human ability to be fallible and wrong, of a triumph of art, of the exploitation and atrocities that bankrolled western Scotland and brought in the mounds of sugar. Eat some because it is delicious and because the past is forever complicated.

But back to us, right here, right now. Let's say you are having a bad day, maybe the most depressing of the year. A little bit of whisky could make it a little bit better. If things feel particularly bleak my favourite remedy is a half pint and a shot of Bunnahabhain. Bunnahabhain is an Islay malt and those ones are noted for their peaty and smoky flavour. Being mostly ignorant, I like to think of this malt as being "balanced" because it has smoky, peaty, sweet and smooth aspects. Really this term is reserved for malts that are more cohesive. Rounded and smooth ones from the Highlands. But I feel there is a balance in the way that each taste replaces itself one by one in every sip. I find the slowly changing character of the drink hypnotic, there is a narrative in each swallow. I wouldn't drink more than this to take the sting out of a blue day, this will be enough. And I would drink it at The Pot Still, a small pub near the train stations filled equally with business men and bemapped tourists holding their glasses of whisky with sharp fear. The walls are a dirty warm pink, the ceiling moulds excessive, the wood is dark, the whisky is abundant and miraculously there seems to always be a tiny table in the corner, empty and ready for you.

Birthday Marmite

It felt like the right time to give Marmite another go. I get asked about my feelings for this slick salty mess fairly often and I generally say that I simply don't know, that it's been a while since I tried it.

In truth I always assumed that I hated it, but as it last touched my tongue many, many years ago, there was always a chance that my taste buds had matured (or deadened) and would now accept this condiment. So to be sure, I had an early morning fling with Marmite once again in recognition of a special day.

Today is my stepmother's birthday and she was the person who first brought Marmite into my life. My stepmother is made from strong stuff and generally starts the day with a potent smear of something smelly on hot toast. Marmite, anchovette, stinky cheese.  She is not one for fruit cascading delicately over granola. That's a breakfast for those of us who are weak in the morning. For those of us who would probably choose to survive on cake alone before 11 am. I've had cake and fruit for breakfast twice this week already. 

But I can be tough now and then, especially when it reminds me of home and of a person I miss.

This is what I prepared for myself this morning:

It's a deconstructed cheese and marmite toasted sandwich (obviously).  It was important to have two halves because I needed a safe space to run to in the event of a Marmite apocalypse in my mouth. I needed to have some strong cheddar (one of my oldest friends) within close biting distance.

What you can't see in this picture are the deep pools of butter that the Marmite is resting on. This was the key, my British friends told me, of gradual Marmite acceptance. A great deal of butter and a thin smear of Marmite. The ratio can then slowly balance as you become accustomed to ingesting black sodium paste.

What you can see is Marmite's little trick of looking like chocolate spread. Asshole.

Before I tell you how I felt about this breakfast, let me tell you a few things that I like about Marmite:

• the packaging, especially the bright colours and dark, ominous glass
• the B vitamins it's supposed to contain
• the glossy, thick, smooth texture that looks like printing ink

But here are my feelings about Marmite on toast:

Still revolting after all these years. Still like sucking on a bouillon cube. I couldn't taste the butter underneath. I was crying out for the butter! The Marmite just masked everything with it's aggressive vegetably salt. I ate half of the piece of toast. I tried to eat it all, but my jaw would not open to accept it. I had no control over my body's reaction.

There has been a salty taste in my mouth all day.

Is this the end for me and Marmite? I'm not sure. In the past I've had some success with learning to love things I hate by repeatedly trying them. Hating them, hating them, hating them and then suddenly, one day, getting a little urge to try again.  A little craving that can be nurtured into full-blown acceptance. You never know.

So my darling stepmom, please see this masochistic act as a way of remembering you today when we are so far apart. I'm sorry that Marmite is still not a shared love. I'll have some cake for you tonight instead. And maybe tomorrow morning as well. Happy Birthday!