Ginger Tablet

My favourite bowl of noodle soup

In Glasgow, anyway.

It's a noodle soup with duck and pickled vegetables. I have it almost every time I go to Asia Style, a Chinese-Malaysian restaurant located at 185 St George's Rd., and I go there more than any other restaurant in Glasgow. It was the unofficial restaurant of our MFA programme and it's seen many of our celebratory meals, farewell feasts and even a near-death experience. We're all a bit too fond of it and its staff to be horribly objective about the food. They have a gigantic menu and so unsurprisingly there are some items that are a bit lackluster. But there are some genuine gems there too.

Here's what makes the soup amazing:

• The broth tastes as though a whole herd of animals have been sacrificed in its rich depths. It's a deep brown, almost opaque liquid that is the hot and steaming deifnition of umami.
• The pieces of duck are succulent and generous.
• The pickled vegetales, mostly some kind of green, are a perfect moment of sharp clarity amid all the luxurious meat flavour.
• I can get whatever kind of noodle I want in it. I love thick flat rice noodles, but in Toronto they were mostly to be found in beef dishes that I wasn't too fond of. Here I can be a bit unorthodox and put them in my soup. They are really far too filling for this dish, but I can't help it. I love them and I love them in this broth and snuggled up to this duck.

You can find this bowl of noodles and many other lovely dishes late into the evening seven days a week served with loads of tea for less than six pounds. 

Searching for Scones

Moving to the UK has allowed this North American girl the opportunity to fulfill some lifelong goals first identified while flipping the pages of The Secret Garden or Mrs Dalloway and during the hours spent watching Pride and Prejudice.

The goals included:

1. Acquire a boyfriend with an English accent
2. Go for moody solitary walks in the mist amongst old and grey buildings. Or moors/seaside. Whichever is closer, really.
3. Use British slang without sounding stupid, but not when talking to people back home. Never ever doing it then.  
4. Eat a lot of scones while visiting ancient historical homes

How have I done so far? Well #1 has been checked off the list and #2 describes my walk to work most days of the year. #3 has been less successful, but it's a rare foreigner who doesn't at times sound ridiculous in their new setting. Sometimes people in Canada think that my accent has changed, but mostly they are polite when I refer to my flat and I do my best not to say mobile when I mean cell and pissed when I mean drunk.  

The fourth entry on that abridged list has proved trickier than I thought. The picture above was taken after an early morning bike ride. Having gone on an empty stomach, the last 5 miles of my ride were spent thinking about the scones at Pollock House, a lovely stately home in Pollock Country Park, and right on my way home. The upper floors of this house are a museum complete with an ornate library and an impressive collection of Spanish paintings and small William Blake's that you could touch if you wanted to (I didn't, but I wanted to). You have to pay to go into that part and so I've only been with my mom. Downstairs, though, they have a cafe in the incredible old kitchen. There are shelves of old pots and strange tools, beautiful green tiles and pitch black stoves, comfortable wooden tables and a large skylight, opening up the space. And when the weather is nice, you can also sit outside in the garden, snuggled up to huge planters of alarmingly fragrant magenta hyacinth and absorbing all light possible. A setting like that can only be made more perfect with than tea and a fresh scone (preferably fruited), something fatty to spread on its soft interior and a little pot of red jam.  The picture looks pretty good then, huh?

Well, it's deceiving. First of all, you will notice that the young lad serving me placed the butter right on the paper napkin on my plate. As my napkin cam pre-buttered, it was not great at its intended job to debutter me. And while the jam is there, and the tea was great, that large and fluffy scone was a pretty big disappointment. A dense scone is a terrible thing, generally made from over-mixing the batter after the liquid has been added. I know this because I make this mistake almost every time I attempt them. To get a light and fluffy one, the maker needs to be swift and judicious with the addition of liquid. Unfortunately, the maker of this scone didn't take that gamble and just added 1/2 c of baking soda instead. I exaggerate, yes, but every crumb tasted of chemically salt. A scone should not be salty. It should be barely sweet and moist. Salt should be provided by the butter alone. In this case I ended up omitting the butter and slathering the jam twice as thick to try and achieve balance on my tongue. Not a good compromise.

 Too much baking soda also affects the texture. A scone should fall apart in layers, not clumps. It should not look like bread. This was definitely bready. I know that the recipe they use is a very old and traditional one, but either someone was having a wobbly day in the kitchen, or it's time to raid the recipe cards of somebody else's granny.     

But this isn't a unique affliction. At a recent work event held at the Abden House in Edinburgh I had an equally underwhelming scone in another gracious old residence. This one was wholewheat, and I was prepared to accept that as it came sliced with cream and jam already cozy between it's layers. And it came at 3 o'clock when a the sight of a scone and a cup of tea can solve almost any problem. But again, it was bready and far too salty. There wasn't a crisp and rocky crust. It was like eating a slightly stale brown  roll with too much whipped cream.

So a quest has begun for a great scone in an amazing setting. I'm sure this is possible, but thinking back I am not sure if I've hit upon a contender yet. I fear that as scones do not keep well, people preparing them for large numbers of people over extended periods of time tend to mess around with the basic make-up of the scone. Sometimes they are like bread and sometimes, if you get one at a coffee chain for instances, they are too sweet, more cakey, like a muffin of a different shape. Both variations keep far better, but neither is acceptable. But when I find a place that is willing to make small batches of fresh scones, I'll let you know. I might just give it another shot myself.

p.s. If you do visit the cafe at the Pollock House, their gingerbread is really, really wonderful. It's want I normally have and it's what I will now revert to.

Pictures from Passover

On Sunday night I took surreptitious pictures of our Passover Seder. We used the most delicate Passover dishes and this year as my grandfather called out the ten plagues, I managed to keep up and dropped ten tiny stains on my plate.

 

I managed to drink all four glasses of wine as well. Elijah must have helped me a bit.

Once again my internal glutton squashed my internal photographer and by the time the camera came out, my matzoh ball soup was gone.

In a tribute to my father, I put salt in my soup without even tasting it first. I'm sure it needed it.

And while I spent most of the weekend anticipating this brisket and tzimmes, braised together in an incredibly tender, flavouful and unphotogenic heap,

the real reason I made the five-hour journey to London was to hear my grandfather sing.

Glasgow International: The Quest Begins

Last night Glasgow International opened and I dutifully went to all of the shows I could sneak my way into. Here's where I found free booze:

Jim Lambie at GoMA

I was excited about this. I thought it might be swish. This is a major show in a major space by one of the Glasgow art titans. I had fanciful visions of champagne and canapes. That was before I heard they were expecting 3000 people. Then I had visions of long queues and feeling stuffy. Unfortunately, I was eerily psychic.

This is what's appropriate at a large-scale opening: You walk into the main exhibition area and scan the work and the crowd and figure out where your friends are. Once you have established the location of your community, you join the queue for drinks. If this queue exists at all, it should be just long enough to scan the room for art and friends and enemies once more and perhaps have a little flirty banter with the person ahead of you. Then, armed with your beverage (preferably a special cocktail, nice beer or drinkable wine) you can swoop over to your friends and laugh and point at the people art around you (in an amused and constructive way).

This is what actually happened: We arrived quite early and had to line up to get into the main room. Once inside, we could see no art nor individuals in the heaving mass of humanity crawling about the hall. There was an epic queue for drinks, and since the art was invisible, we didn't even pretend to look for it. After waiting for a long time in the stagnant line, it started to move quickly. This was because they had run dry. Half and hour in. Not a good sign. A stampede to the upstairs bar ensued. I sent J and tried to look at art. As there was no alcohol in the main room anymore, half the population cleared as well and it was possible to at least catch some glimpses and spot some friends. J never came back down, so I had to go upstairs to the permanent collection (i.e. not what I was there to see). He was pinned into a room choked with people all desperately glugging. This wasn't even a sign of the alcoholism of the nation, everyone really was just hot and thirsty and tired by now. I grabbed my glass of wine from him and immediately got back in line for a second one. Good thing, too, because they were out once more a few minutes later.

Now, I know it's not my inherent right to expect a glass or two of wine at a regular art opening. But this was a big event on the social calendar. Stops should have been pulled. It was reasonable for me to expect magic. If you are going to print that many invitations, you need to expect that many people and plan for them and not make them feel like inconvenient cattle. It is not appropriate for your guests to have to wait so long for a drink. Some of them were probably important, even. And having security guards barking at us and barring us from already-crowded rooms was awkward. We were invited attendees, not bargain hunters banging down the doors at 6 am on Boxing Day. A little civility would have been nice. 

Poor form GoMA.

4 out of 10 glasses

Jonathan Scott at the Glasgow Art Club

Perfectly appropriate variety and quantity for a smaller opening scheduled in between bigger events. Plus nice washrooms.

8 out of 10 glasses

xxx

Jim Lambie's Afterparty

The real afterparty had a stupidly rigid ticket system. These puppies were hard to come by and each invite only admitted one. Poor. People need to bring dates.

Anyway, just up the way from that party, Jim Lambie opened one of his studio spaces, brought in beer and a DJ, curated a wee show, and threw a bunch of glitter on the ground. Anyone was invited. I didn't stay that long because I had a ticket to the real party (thanks A!), but I thought it was a super generous gesture and I liked the glitter and the art.

9 out of 10 glasses

The GI Launch Party at the Social

Studio Warehouse has installed a bar in their gallery for the duration of GI and this was the first event. It was pretty good, ample drink tickets for a range of beer/wine/cocktails, DJs in the slick indoor bar area, live bands playing under the railway arches outside. There were even waiters carting trays of snacks in a startling admission that we cannot live by free beer alone. Loads of pretty people, but not enough for toes to be trampled. It felt like an amped-up version of a typical Glasgow art scene party and I guess that was an appropriate vibe for the evening. The dancing was quite late coming, only getting started as I was leaving (these are not related facts) and I also was not a fan of the strict ticket system, but as all my dear ones managed to score some in the end, I'm only deducting one glass for that.

Good job, folks!

8 glasses out of 10

I'm already tired, but there's three more days of this. Will anyone achieve 10 glasses? Stay tuned...

The First Ever "Outstanding Achievements in Providing Free Booze" Awards

Food is not a priority this week. Instead, all nourishment will be gleaned from contemporary art and free beer: it's Glasgow International again!

This festival kicks off this weekend and runs until the end of April. You can read about the shows and events at the official website.

And since every gallery and loads of alternative venues will be hosting new shows, there are a lot of openings to attend. This translates into a lot of free beer to be consumed.

While I will be formulating loads of incisive, harsh and lazy opinions about the work on display, that's not what I'll be sharing with you. Instead I've devised a basic system for evaluating the quality of the alcoholic offerings at each of the openings. Each event will be marked, and the results will be posted as quickly as my hangover will allow me near a computer. My awards for Outstanding Achievements in Supplying Free Booze will be declared on Monday.

Events will receive a mark out of 10 for each of these criteria:

* Amount

* Quality

* Variety

* Correct Serving Temperature (i.e. is the beer cold? does the red wine feel a bit sweaty?)

* Availability of Correct Serving Vessel (i.e. did they run out of glasses for the wine?)

Special awards may be given for:

*Most obscene amounts of hooch

*Best sponsorship arrangement

*Prettiest people drinking free alcohol

*Horniest/Funnest party as a result of the free alcohol

Everything kicks off tomorrow night, so watch for the first post on Friday. Until then, pray for my liver.

Losing an Hour, Gaining Wild Garlic Breath

The morning when the clocks go forward is possibly my least favourite morning of the year. I wake up already an hour behind, those sixty minutes cruelly stolen. It makes no difference that I gain it again in the fall. I couldn't care less about the extra daylight that evening. At that moment I really feel that missing hour and all of the activities that could have filled it up. This evil, short day just dares me to try and get anything accomplished in 23 hours. Clearly impossible. Plus it always happens on a Sunday, the day of the week forever fraught with latent homework-related fears and other phantom anxieties.

After (a ridiculously late) breakfast Sunday morning, I flopped myself on my bed. J asked what I was going to do that day before our dinner plans later on in the evening.

K: I don't know. Nothing, I guess. I don't have time to do anything. I guess I should go into my studio.

J: That sounds like a good idea.

K: Except I don't have any good ideas for art anymore cause I'm stupid.

J: Oh, don't worry, I don't think the world actually has any new ideas to offer.

K: Maybe I'll go for a bike ride.

J: Sure. Where would you go?

K: I don't know. Around the parks. Maybe not. All the trails are stupid. (pout.pout.pout)

J: (casting an appraising glance around my less-than-tidy room): You could do laundry.

K: Stop trying to find activities for me.

J: Do you feel like your life is a bit pointless right now?

K: Yes! Everything is stupid and I never get anything done.

J: OK. Good. Well, I'm going home now. Let me know what time we're having dinner.

K: (Dives under the duvet. Pout. Pout. Pout)

The lack of an hour had triggered an existential crisis and my response to it was decidedly shallow. The train of thought went something like this:

"My life is currently stupid and I don't have any new projects that I find exciting and the books that I'm reading are fine but not exceptional. How can this be solved? Well, it can't be. Nothing will ever be exciting again. I ate all of my fantastic fruit compote and I miss it already and I want to eat it forever and ever. I'm dead without it. And I'm excited to wear my new shoes (thanks Mom!) to dinner tonight and it's really stupid that I have to wait seven hours to do that. I will never have another fulfilling activity again so I have to console myself with compote and shoes but I can't, so I'll just lie on my bed and pout."

Seriously. Anxiety-driven pouting is one of my fortes. It was definitely time to kick my ass into shape.

Not wanting to face my studio, I opted for a bike ride. I would try and find new bike trails and go up some steep hills and try my hand at a bit of early spring foraging. I like the idea of foraging. You get fresh, sometimes tasty and sometimes weird stuff for free. It's a skill you can use in the post-oil age. That's what I'll be doing when I'm not darning your socks. You can forage during bike rides, too. And it's free. J says that foraging makes us horribly cliched Guardian readers, led by Hugh to go trample in the fields and hedgerows looking for dinner, convinced that we're saving the world. But I don't care. I am willing to let Hugh lead me. Plus, secretly J likes foraging for all the reasons I do (especially the free part). So equipped with a map, my copy of Food for Free and having memorized this weekend's Guardian article on collecting wild garlic, I set off.

My book and the article said that this wild garlic was plentiful right now. That it's an easy thing for the novice forager to find. My thoughts upon entering the large country park near my house were not optimistic though: I didn't see any of this stupid garlic anywhere. It was supposed to look like lily of the valley leaves, but all I saw were rhododendrons. So I kept on riding, long enough for my legs to start aching a bit as I wove through the hilly trails, trying valiantly to not hit the pedestrians and their dogs.

Eventually I got to the river. I had never been down this path before, and although it was pretty packed with Sunday strollers, the banks of the river were thick with bright green leaves. Some would say they looked like lily of the valley, I would say tulips. Propping my bike against a tree, I picked one of these leaves, broke it in two and took a whiff. Garlic! Really green and fresh smelling garlic. Loads of it! This stuff is so easy to find that even a whiny brat in the throes of an imaginary life crisis can stumble across it!

I continued down the path now completely at peace with my place on the earth. I climbed more hills, refrained from mowing down toddlers, gazed at the fat pussy willows that were dotting the riverbanks and spotted some tiny and angry and prickly shoots of rhubarb, remembering their location for another forage a little later on. Ahh! Look at all the things I accomplished. If I had had a to-do list for this bike ride, I would have managed to cross everything off it, I bet. What a lovely ending to my too-short afternoon.

Of course, then the hail started, so I had to rush back, grab some of those garlicky leaves, squash them into my bag and race home. And what did I do with the wild garlic? Well, once again I deferred to Hugh's article and made myself wild garlic scrambled eggs on toast. Eggs may be the most accommodating way to try out a new soft herb. So I whisked two nice fresh, free-range ones in a bowls with s&p, and a dozen tiny cubes of butter. The toast went in at the same time as a blob of butter landed in the saucepan. After it melted, the eggs slipped in too and were quickly worked into soft and pillowy folds. I never used to put butter into the raw egg mixture, but it makes the scramble really delicious and never rubbery. Toast pops, eggs are done and the two are joined together in my stomach.

Next up, a fresh mayo for the dinner that night and some loaves of white bread to dip into it. Now that my legs were all sore and tight from biking, it was time to exhaust my arms. There was a lot of kneading first, and then a lot of whisking while the dough got fat. Sure you could use a food processor to make mayonnaise, but I don't have one and along with foraging and darning, intensive whisking is another useful skill that you'll be really happy I have post-oil. I took four egg yolks and sprinkled them with salt and started to whisk. I wrapped a tea towel around the base of my bowl to stop it moving around so I could continue to whisk and start to add a teensy stream of oil into the mix with my other hand. A tiny thread of oil, really. You have to be so delicate in the beginning, but then you can get a bit rougher later on. I used half sunflower oil and half olive and added it until I liked the consistency of the mayonnaise. And I couldn't stand the burning feeling in my arms anymore. Then I added more salt and about eight chopped leaves of the wild garlic. Lovely. Perfect with the fresh bread. Again, a fresh mayonnaise is a reliable buddy for almost any kind of soft fresh herb. And the bonus about using wild garlic leaves is that the garlic flavour, unlike a normal aioli that can become really overpoweringly if left for a while, is a much more subtle and bright. Although it will intensify after a couple of hours, it won't take over.

So, a couple of hours after thrashing around my bed in a panic of uselessness I had discovered a new bike path, found and experimented with a new plant, exercised all my limbs to the point of collapse, baked bread, made a mayonnaise and a tasty lunch. And it was still light outside. And it was finally time for me to put on my new shoes. 

Things I Did to My Little Sister

Last week my little sister, The Squirt, came to stay with me for her March Break.

Here are some of the fun things we got up to:

We waited around all morning for the telephone guy to come and hook my phone back up. Unfortunately, in a fit of misplaced nostalgia and complete idiocy, the telephone company had sent the engineer to my OLD ADDRESS. Fuck nuts. My sister learned the important lesson that phone companies are stupid all around the world.

We organized my recipe collection. Coloured coded and everything. My sister said "that was fun!" (she was serious. she's way less sarcastic and better adjusted than I am.) Bless.

We figured out which attributes we inherited from our dad. We have different moms see, and we both bear more than a passing resemblance to them, so it was a fun game to see what Dad had thrown into the mix. Plus there's added intrigue because my dad doesn't know very much (actually anything) about his biological family (we're good at making our own non-biological families in my family). Like even though my sister is skinny and I'm pretty curvy, we both are way more hippy than our moms. Must be from Dad's side. Isn't that interesting? We would also both like to thank our father for his gift of masculine ankles. Really, thanks. What a lovely thing to pass along to your daughters.

We went to Edinburgh and climbed an extinct volcano . My sister complained that her hips were hurting. I told her to suck it up. It was good for her. Doesn't she look pretty and exhilirated? She's actually thinking about what the windy damp climate is doing to her hair.

I made her wear makeup to look older so we could get into bars easier.

I also made her change her purple-striped socks to little fishnet ones so we could get into bars easier. My flatmate looked at her, laughed and said 'you're going to be soaked!'. I told him where he could go. It didn't rain that night and my sister didn't die of pneumonia. She was just a bit chilly. I lent her a scarf because grownups wear them and we would still be able to get into bars. I would have been very, very remorseful had she died, Dad and Ri. I promise.

We got into bars, easy. Not that we got drunk or anything. My sister is still an underage 17 and I am not that irresponsible. Besides, we are Canadian and outside of university settings we don't like to ever admit to being drunk. That our father will occasionally drink two (pretty) large martinis on a (pretty) empty stomach before dinner and then fall to his knees playing the air guitar is not a sign of his alcohol consumption. He's just happy.

We attended art openings where we watched experimental video art. Ha! We had to climb loads of stairs to get there, too. But there was free beer so The Squirt was fine. She decided that if she needed to comment on anything she saw she would say that the videos made her feel 'invigorated'. I thought that was an elegant solution.

We danced! My sister had never really gone before. She was understandably nervous, but once we got out there, she was on fire! The Squirt was such a trooper. Since dancing is pretty much one of my favourite things ever and since I don't tend to take drink or pee breaks once I get out on the floor, it was an incredible feat of endurance to keep up with me. She boogied with aplomb. I almost cried.

I pointed out every bursting bud and lovely flower that Scotland had to offer. "See?" I said, "It's already spring here. It won't be like this in Toronto for another month or two. Hahahahahaha. You little sucker." My sister appreciated my observations and insights.

And then we ate. On top of being force-fed a load of Tunnock's products, I made her pancakes and cheesy pasta and garlicky toast with greek salad. We shared a deep fried Mars bar. It was ridiculously good. I am not allowed to eat another one for three years. We visited the candy shop on Byres Road and sat on a sunny bench in the Botanic Gardens to eat our sweeties. We went for chips after our manic dancing, too. She and J laughed when I asked for cheese on my chips. Then they got jealous when my chips were more delicious than theirs. We had very buttery scrambled eggs on toast the next morning, since nothing is better after a late night. She ate BLTs whenever she got the chance.

I bought her steak at a really lovely new restaurant in Edinburgh called The Dogs because I am an excellent and generous sister. I couldn't believe our luck in finding this spot, really. This place was centrally located, almost perfectly decorated and featured a really interesting and affordable menu of British dishes. J and I both ordered the special of the day: braised ox cheeks with horseradish mash and pearl onions. It was so delicious and the really tart and bitter slivers of pickled walnut on top brightened and balanced the flavours perfectly. My very carnivorous sister left a pink-stained plate from her exceptionally rare steak and chips. She was pretty content. The staff were lovely, too. I would have liked a dark and bitter beer to go with my meal and unfortunately the beers on offer were a little boring. They probably care more about wine, but I didn't look at the list and stuck to ginger beer instead. Anyway, this place is good, and if you are ever playing tourist in Edinburgh and wandering around without a plan, you could not ask for a better place to stumble into for dinner.

For her last night I cooked a big British meal. I made my favourite Scottish soup, Cullen Skink, a rich and creamy smoked fish chowder. The recipe I used is here. The only thing I would change is perhaps using 1l of milk instead of 750 ml. I let it reduce a little more than the recipe recommended (you should too) and it wound up just a bit thick. It tasted wonderful, though. And it's so easy. I made a bunch of steamed purple-sprouting broccoli to go with it and a loaf of oatmeal bread. And while the jam roly poly I baked for dessert was, um, horizontally challenged, my custard was perfect. I've never made perfect custard before and I forced J and the Squirt to marvel at my talents for much longer than either of them cared to.

 

Before I kicked her back home we went and got the first ice cream cone of the season from Queen's Cafe on Victoria Road (we look stupid in the photo because we haven't adjusted to sunlight yet). We both got mint chip and sat on a sunny bench in the park once more. Awww. It'll be ages before she can do that back home. Ha.

I miss her already, too. Anytime she wants to come back and organize my recipes and drain my bank account, she is more than welcome.

Inside the Tunnock's Factory!

Last Wednesday I took the day off work and accompanied the  lovely Mair on a tour of the TUNNOCK'S FACTORY!

I wore my shiny red headband to mark the occasion.

Mair and I had been looking forward to this trip for a long time. Being rabid fans of tea cakes, machines and field trips, this was pretty much a dream come true and I couldn't sleep the night before.

But still, despite our steel-clad optimism we were concerned that this trip would be disappointing, that somehow the magic of those shiny yellow and red treats would fade for us. That illusions would be shattered.

I am pleased to report that this was not the case. Instead we came back raving like sugar-high maniacs about how wonderful the factory was. Those of you who are skeptical about pretty big companies selling sugary products to the masses may wonder how we could be so devoted and uncritical, but this place really is something. It's just so cohesive. There's nothing to break the spell of a pleasant building, filled with laughing pleasant people, rolling out millions of chocolate and marshmallow and caramel treats everyday. Tunnock's both seem to have a deep understanding of the kitsch value of their brand (just look at their website) and an uncomplicated and retro way of producing their wares.

Let me show you.

Mair and I started this day with a trip to Uddingston on the outskirts of Glasgow. It's cute there. We went to a cake store that had more wedding cakes than I had ever seen.

   

Next we went to the Tunnock's bakery across the street from the factory. Here you can buy the normal range of tea cakes and caramel logs and wafers, as well as more obscure varieties like the dark chocolate tea cakes. Wrapped in gold and deep blue these suckers are hard to find. You can also get a whole range of cakes, breads and pies that one would never associate with Tunnock's. But knowing that there would be a lot of sugar in store for me, I decided to get some protein in the form of a bacon roll. Mmmm. Pork and salt and butter and a whisper of bread. Delicious.

Here's Mair outside the factory. It was sunny! We were going to see them make tea cakes and it was sunny! All my memories of that day are washed with euphoric delirium. Sugar and sun will do that to the dwellers of Scotland. (the clock has a tea cake on it, by the way. awww. so cute.)

Mair is tiny compared to the many storeys of wafer and caramel production.

The thing you can't tell from the picture is how we are both swooning from the roasted coconut scented breeze that wafted around the factory. There was also a note of melting chocolate. How could we possibly help ourselves?

We waited in reception for our guide, Brendan. See, isn't this a great reception?

It would have been horrible to walk into something really corporate and soulless, but there was just layers and layers of paraphernalia and old signs and friendly relaxed people. In the bottom right corner you can just make out a little skiing figure made out of a tea cake box.

We were nervous about Brendan, though. You see, he's the Health and Safety manager. Getting a tour from someone in that position sounded like a dull prospect. At lot of officious behaviour and not getting too close to things and boring facts about the safety record of the place. We didn't need to worry; Brendan was alright. This wasn't going to be a tour of the fire extinguishers or top tips on dealing with caramel burns. Once we got kitted out in our fancy hairnets, white coats and ear plugs, we went straight up to the caramel and wafer machines.

Here's some buckets of sugar (Mair was pleased to see it was brown - she's such a health nut) that are getting ready to go into the caramel boilers. You can also see part of a cute uniform in the top left corner. Awww.

Once the sugar and fat and condensed milk and stuff are all caramelized, the delicious goo pours out of a tap and into a trough and all the way to a cooling area.

It gets thinly spread.

And then it's collected at the end. Look at that. It was so difficult not to just chow down. The bucket of vegetable grease on top helped to kill the urge.

But ignore that and look at this:

Amazing.

Anyway, next we went to see how wafers are made.

Here's a worker named Pauline. I think she's mixing or measuring something for the wafer batter.

It was really difficult for Mair and me not to be very patronizing to the people that worked at the factory. I sort of thought of them as magical treat elves. Clearly working here is just a caramel and chocolate infused job and not actually a passport to a magical kingdom of delicious miracles. I really tried to remember that and not smile insanely at everyone I saw and not make my "awwwww" sounds too loud. Such a jerk.

Anyway, the wafers are basically made like waffles, and then they go here to cool.

 

And then there were the tea cakes.

Here are the cookie bases on their way to the oven. I got to eat one of the baked ones off of the production line. Thanks Health and Safety Man! It was good, but I have to admit I like it better when it gets slightly soggy in the actual tea cake.

The biscuits get packed away in tightly and are conditioned for a day. This stops the tea cake from cracking when all of the amazing stuff goes on top of the the cookie base. Mair stole a biscuit. (Brendan said it was ok.)

This guy was doing quality control for the tea cakes. He had a huge glob of marshmallow in one hand that he used to grab the defective cakes. He then separated the cookie from the marshmallow and threw them into containers. All the broken and ugly tea cakes get mashed up and reused in the cookie dough. They just adjust the sugar content accordingly. Weird, huh?

And actually of course, as Brendan pointed out, it's not marshmallow so much as a cooked Italian meringue (basically egg whites whipped into a hot sugar syrup). That's what makes it nicer than other marshmallow biscuits that use gelatin and end up gummy and gross.

My pictures of them getting their chocolate coating are boring/bad, so here they are ready to be packaged into boxes:

 

The packaging was really awesome. Honestly. It was like one of those educational bits they had in Sesame Street or the Polka Dot Door (Cancon requirements met for the week). But this was real life and I was a grown up and I wasn't eating Fruit Wrinkles in front of the tv after school.

Look at this machine:

 

And this one:

 

The intrepid viewer will also note that this is a self-portrait, too. You can just make out my fancy red hairnet in the reflection. Mair's in the middle. Brendan is on the left.

 

 

I liked the wrappers, too.

And there was more. Snowballs being dusted with coconut. Getting a Warm Caramel log from the production line for a cheeky snack (they're Brendan's favourite so we were allowed.) All of the celebration cakes being decorated. And these guys:

 

They're filled with wafer flour, regular flour and sugar. Crazy.

When we left Brendan gave me three dozen tea cakes and Mair got four dozen Caramel Logs. What a score! What a Health and Safety Man! We can definitely be bribed into brand loyalty. Then we went back to the bakery to buy some stuff, specifically the dark chocolate tea cakes. Then we fell asleep on the train. What a day!

And what do you do with four dozen tea cakes? Well you give a dozen of the dark chocolate ones away to your favorite people and then you force feed your sister about twenty more. Yes, my little skinny sister's trip was very well timed and I can still fit into my clothes. But more on that next post...

McDonalds Sausage Rolls or the Reason Why Paris Can Keep Their Croissants

The pastry of McDonalds sausage rolls is so flaky that it actually flutters around your tongue are you bite into it. Your teeth have time to notice the fragrant void in between the crispy layers as they hurtle towards the meat. The meat is sausage and sausage is good, too.

Normally I want to eat a sausage roll no more than twice a year and when I do have one, I never seem to finish it. Nigel Slater mentions this phenomenon in Eating for England; the sausage roll that at first seems like the most perfect and desirable food by the end is verging on revolting. But not this one. They got everything right and it's a pleasure until the end.

They're so good I will even forgive the missing apostrophe in the shop's name. I'm sure it's a legal/copyright infringement thing anyway.

(McDonalds is also rumoured to be the makers of the best bacon roll in the city and I can honestly say that it could be a deserved reputation. It's a solid roll.)

A Trip to Glickman's and Deep Histories of Midget Gems and Soor Plooms

Starting in the 1600s, loaded ships returned from plantations in the West Indies, windind their way down the Clyde, and flooding Scotland with inordinate amounts of sugar. Scotland has an uneasy relationship with these historical cargoes, filled with not only with sugar, but also tobacco and cotton from plantations often run by Scottish owners.  As one of the main European ports for the last leg of the slavery triangle, it saw only the cheap and plentiful goods and ample wealth that the ships brought in, none of the horrific human sacrifices that underpinned these vessels. And while English cities have increasingly made an effort to acknowledge these difficult histories, in Scotland there has been an unwillingness to see the history of slavery as something that stained north of the border as well. Perhaps it is difficult for a place that so often remembers itself as victim to acknowledge its role as perpetrator; it makes it more complex. The legacy of the Atlantic slave trade in Glasgow has been a crop of beautiful buildings, a voracious sweet tooth and a continuing silence.

While all of this sugar had been making its way into baked goods and some candies for a couple of hundred years, there was an explosion of boiled sweets made around Glasgow during the Victorian era. At that time the sugar was no longer produced by slavery which had been abolished by 1830s (although I would be willing to bet that harvesting that crop isn't a job I would have wanted), but there was still a huge glut of cheap sugar coming into a very enthusiastic market. I know this because many of these old sweets are described beautifully in the book From Petticoat Tails to Arbroath Smokies: Traditional Foods of Scotland, by Laura Mason and Catherine Brown (Harper Press, 2007). This lovely volume is part of a wider study undertaken by the authors at the behest of the EU to detail the regional foods of European countries. In the end they found 400 food items from all over the British Isles. This report was never released by the UK government, but was eventually published in its entirety (most recently by Harper Press), and then subsequently into separate regional volumes. To make it into this collection, the foods must have been produced in that location for at least 75 years, and they must still be made to this day, even if in tiny quantities by only one or two producers. I find this exciting because I am a dork, but also because it provides me with a new map of Scotland, a guide to small local specialties to be sought out and tasted while one is traveling about. Boiled sweets, so called because the sugar is simply boiled to a high temperature before being mixed with flavourings and colourings and then shaped, are some of the delicacies most local to me.   

As I mentioned in the post below, gummy candies have been my one true friend and solace over the past week. J is a willing accomplice in the demolition of these bags, but with every bite he would complain that they weren't the sweets of his youth. Any Midget Gem (they're like diminutive wine gums) I bought was just too soft and the black ones were flavoured with blackcurrant and not licorice. They weren't the Lion Brand Midget Gems he remembered. But despite looking around every shop I visited, I couldn't find them. This was now a bit of a mission; I was curious to try these gems, and also track down some of the old and traditional boiled sweets of central Scotland, so I made my way to Glickman's in the east end of Glasgow.

This shop first opened in 1903 and is still operated by the same family, four generations later. The facade is exactly what you want in a candy store. Old signs and elaborate displays of sweets who were invented long before your parents. But although it looks expansive from outside, inside it's really just a tiny little counter paved with countless cellophane bags of goodies and high walls completely full of shelves completely full of jars of sweets. The rest of the space is taken up by the work area where they make a number of the treats for sale. In the middle of all of this sits the exceedingly pleasant owner, Irene Birkett, who runs the shop with her daughter.

I waited in line behind two older ladies who each ordered approximately eight different kinds of sweeties. I like to think that these were routine purchases of old favourites to dole out to grandkids and to slowly suck for a bit of brightness in quiet moments. There is something so dear about a pack of glittering boiled sweets, distributed now and then like small jewels. While there is no doubt that excessive sugar consumption plays a major role in many of the health issues plaguing Scotland (a particularly damning article here), I think shops like Glickman's should be a safe-haven for sweeties. Sure you can get rid of the sugar in your yogurt or coffee or cereal, you can stop eating industrial candy from regular shops, but saving a little space for a carefully crafted sweet is ensuring a bit of profound joy and not very much harm. These are not the dangerous culprits of the modern diet.

I was glad that these ladies took their time because the towering rows of jars presented an overwhelming choice for a girl raised on the plastic candy bounty of Seven Eleven. I spied my number one target first: Lion Brand Midget Gems. In fact I had seen the boxes in the window, but I was still nervous that they were a relic and not an auspicious sign for goodies inside. I decided next on some acid green orbs called Soor Plooms (if you had a Scottish accent, this would roughly rhyme with Sewer Blooms), or sour plums. There were a couple of elements that made this sweet the one for me. First of all, I love most things flavoured with plum. But I also wanted to try them because I had a sneaking suspicion their name was taken from the motto of Galashiels, a small town in the Borders where my grandmother was born. Once the ladies had left, I chatted with the lovely owner who sympathized with my troubles finding the original Midget Gems and assured me that they almost always had them in stock. I asked her about the provenance of Soor Plooms, and although she wasn't sure of the Borders connection, she did tell me that they got them from a company in nearby Greenock (once called Sugaropolis for the large numbers of refineries there) that had been making them forever. I picked up a bag of brown sweets, perfunctorily called Candy Balls, because they were a specialty of the shop, made on site. And then, with my jaunty paper bag, I left to rot my teeth.

The Candy Balls were very nice. The amber colour must be evidence of a caramelization of the sugar, and indeed that's all they really taste like. They're just sweet. But they have a silky and smooth texture that I think must come from the addition of cream of tartar (it prevents sugar crystals from forming). The Candy Balls, not actually balls, but snipped bits of a long candy strand, just slip across your tongue without the painful mouth cutting of many of their boiled sweets counterparts. This is as sensual and pure as a hard candy gets.

And J was pleased with his Midget Gems, too. They were hard and unyielding and the black ones were a shocking licorice. He likes the contrast they provide when eaten with the other fruity flavours. Apparently the company has been bought by Maynards, the brand most pervasive and whose wine gums are just too soft and taste too much of icing sugar for my liking. They are supposedly changing the black ones to the now ubiquitous blackcurrant flavour. I think that some sort of legislation should be brought in to prevent companies messing with candy recipes. There is no surer way to depress someone than to wreck one of their childhood joys. I hope this untainted stock lasts a while.

A little dip back into the book confirmed that Soor Plooms were indeed invented in Galashiels. They were first made to celebrate an event back in 1337 when a small group of English marauders/soldiers (depending on which side of the border you fall) stopped in the valley to feast on some unripe plums taken from a nearby tree. This resting band were quickly captured and killed by the Scots and this, um, victory has been commemorated locally ever since. On plaques and carvings all over the the town the English are represented by a fox greedily reaching at fruit laden branches above. I remember being surprised by the long memory of the town when I went to visit, this dominating mythology based around a small event so, so long ago. I could only laugh as I tried the sweets, sour and green and delicious.

These are some candies with history! Of course, the sugar used in these sweets might have quite a different background now; it could just as easily been from beets. But that's a sugar with a tale as well. The French developed the technology for extracting it from that vegetable during the Napoleonic Wars because of blockades placed by the English stopping their sugar supply. Beets provided a reliable domestic crop for sugar that quickly became popular in continental Europe and then later in the UK during the First World War in the UK.

It takes a long time to suck away at a Soor Ploom. Enough time to mull over all of the layered stories, the difficulties and the bitterness and the blood that formed it. And enough time to cast a calculating glance at your Northern English boyfriend as he innocently and obliviously pops one more handful of Midget Gems into his mouth. Perhaps I'll let him live this time...