#63 Scotland
- Jen
- Sep 11, 2023
- 5 min read
Friends gather around the dining table on 25th January, the haggis is bagpiped in, and someone will recite “Address to a Haggis” to commence the annual celebration of the life and works of the famous poet Robert Burns. The haggis will be served with neeps & tatties*, the laddies and lassies will address each other in rhyming prose, and the evening will be full of whisky and merriment.
*turnips & potatoes
I can assure you that minced offal blended with oats and stuffed into a sheep’s stomach is actually far tastier than it sounds! North of the border, haggis is not just for Burns Night; it’s found in both the fridge and tinned food aisles of the supermarkets, in chippies, on breakfast plates and atop pizzas.
As whisky is the UK’s (not just Scotland’s) biggest food and drink export, I should probably give it a mention. But that’s it as far as this mention goes, because I haven’t yet learned to enjoy it, be it light and floral or smoky and peaty; I just think its gross. As we’re on the subject of drinks, I should also probably mention Irn-Bru: also gross.
Notable produce and dishes
Scotland is more than just haggis and whisky. Its sea lochs produce the best salmon in the world, and lobster, crab, langoustine, oysters and mussels thrive in the cold coastal waters. Scots seem to have perfected the art of curing and smoking fish, creating world-renowned smoked salmon, as well as the famous Arbroath smokies - salted, dried and hot-smoked haddock, in the village of Arbroath.
Smoked haddock is a key ingredient in what might be Scotland’s second favourite soup, the chowder-like Cullen skink. Cock-a-leekie is probably the most well-known soup, consisting of chicken and leek, thickened with barley, and traditionally garnished with prunes. Such is the status of Scotland’s ‘national soup’ that it was one of two soup options at luncheon for 1st class passengers on board the Titanic on 14th April 1912.
From the national soup to the national biscuit. Three ingredients: flour, butter, sugar. Crumbly, buttery, sweet. Shortbread is perfection. Today we buy it in tins at Christmas, or slather it with caramel and chocolate, but in the olden days in Scotland, it was customary to smash a shortbread over the bride’s head to bring good luck to the marriage.
Dundee is famous for marmalade, but also has its own cake. This glazed fruit cake with distinctive rings of blanched almonds is made with orange peel and dried fruit. It was produced commercially in the Victorian era by the famous Dundee marmalade producers, Keillers, as a way of using up excess orange peel from their marmalade production.
If you think, as I do, that the English bubble & squeak is the most charmingly named dish in existence, how about its Scottish cousin, rumbledethumps? Very similar to bubble & squeak, this is a leftover dish of tatties, cabbage and onion, and topped with cheese.
Scotland grows really good raspberries for some reason. Cranachan, which could be Scotland’s Eton Mess is a dessert of fresh raspberries folded into honey and whisky cream with some crunchy toasted oats…
…Oats, the elephant in the room…
The Food of Champions
Oats were first cultivated by the Romans as animal feed, according to National Geographic, but this hardy crop became the staple food for Scots in Medieval times as it fared better than other cereals in the cold, damp climate. The rest is history.
Porridge is the food of champions! A bowl of oats can boast about 17 thousand nutritional benefits and, in my humble opinion, is the only sustenance that will sufficiently fuel a day of hiking, a CrossFit competition or a stressful client meeting. I probably eat oat porridge* four to five times a week.
*My oats will always be made with full-fat cow’s milk, and always include one or more of the following toppings/additions: every single seed and nut you can ever think of, cacao nibs, apples/pear/peach, all the berries, nut butters, chocolate, all the good stuff. None of which have a place in bowl of traditional Scottish oats.
Traditional porridge is made with only pinhead oatmeal (see below), water, and a pinch of salt. Really you should use a spurtle to stir the porridge. A spurtle is a wooden stick, similar to the handle of a wooden spoon. IMPORTANT: Always stir clockwise, to ward off the Devil.
For those of you who love a Friends reference, this will be a bit of a Dr Roger moment. For those who don’t know who Dr Roger is, this will be a boring fact!
The oats we buy in the supermarket have all been steamed and rolled, making them quick to cook. This also includes ‘jumbo oats’. Pinhead oats are the least processed kind of oatmeal, simply being the kernel (the oat with the outer husk removed) chopped in half. They take longer to cook, retain an al dente texture when cooked, and have more flavour than the steamed and rolled varieties.
Note: for rolled oats, I always buy Scott's over Quaker. Why? When I was a toddler, I would cry in the cereal aisle because the Quaker Oats man frightened me, and I still find him creepy over three decades later…and to be fair, the Scott's man is pretty fit!
Another note: it’s really hard to find pinhead oatmeal in England and Wales, even Waitrose(!), but for my south Wales friends, you can find them (in eco packaging too) from Wally’s Delicatessen in Cardiff city centre.
Despite being such a consumer of oats, as well as technically being 1/64th Scottish by blood*, I must confess that I always go for the non-traditional jumbo rolled oat, and until now I had never dared to eat oats sans dairy, prepared with only water and salt. (I’ve also never had a battered Mars Bar, another missing piece of my Scottish heritage.)
*A dark family secret revealed by my paternal grandmother in 2004
Traditional Scottish porridge with pinhead oats, water and salt for seasoning, even with very patient (clockwise) stirring for 15-20 minutes, results in grainy porridge and really misses the milky taste. I did enjoy it, but I think that was more to do with the slab of salted butter and dark brown sugar I put on top.
Traditional porridge aside, I have been toasting my jumbo rolled oats prior to cooking since reading How to cook perfect porridge in Felicity Cloake’s column in The Guardian, and it's a game changer. Disappointed as I was with the traditional oats, I thought I’d give Felicity’s traditional(ish) oats a whirl.
Felicity’s recipe uses a combination of pinhead oats and medium oatmeal (pinhead oatmeal chopped into smaller pieces), and mostly water but some milk. The resultant texture is nicely creamy whilst still retaining some bite, a definite improvement on my jumbo rolled oat porridges! I still think no water, all milk is better though…but I do really like milk!
From porridge to…PANAMA!
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