A Vegan Called Bacon

One of my half-baked cooking projects is to explore traditional Scottish dishes.  Ingredients-wise, this means root vegetables, oats, and animal products.  Lately, however, I’ve been thinking about the cooking methods.

It’s cold in the Highlands, and naturally people used to cook on an open fire which was constantly burning.  One-pot dishes like soups and stews, which could easily be re-heated, were convenient and tasty.  And baking was done on a completely flat, seasoned, iron plate, called a girdle (“griddle” in English).  There’s a picture of a traditional girdle in this description of traditional Highland “blackhouses”.

The simplicity of this way of cooking appeals to me.  According to the 14th century Chronicles of Sir John Froissart, a girdle and a bag of oats were standard issue army equipment:

Under the flaps of his saddle, each man carries a broad plate of metal; behind the saddle, a little bag of oatmeal: when they have eaten too much of the sodden flesh, and their stomach appears weak and empty, they place this plate over the fire, mix with water their oatmeal, and when the plate is heated, they put a little of the paste upon it, and make a thin cake, like a cracknel or biscuit, which they eat to warm their stomachs: In this manner the Scots entered England, destroying and burning every thing as they passed.

I don’t have anything nearly as interesting to say about these particular oatcakes, apart from they were very nice, and simple to make.  I couldn’t be bothered to do them all in my tiny frying pan (I’m on the lookout for a proper girdle), so I did them in the oven.  I suppose that if you cooked them on a girdle over an open fire, they would traditionally come out tasting of smoke.  Unlike mine, The Stripey Cat’s oatcakes include smoked paprika as an ingredient, an interesting idea that I’ll try next time.  Though if I’m really trying for authenticity, I should actually get a fire burning in the garden…

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The crazed glutenfest binge continues.  It’s making for some weird photographic material, which I always like.  (I think it might take a while to finish the project.  I’ve got through 3 kilos of gluten flour in two weeks.)

Yesterday’s chewy starch-frenzy took me to meatball territory and this pretty fine recipe from Felicity, which I made without the gram flour.

Today, inspired by The Stripey Cat, I thought I’d simultaneously finish the glutenous little nuggets off and give the credit crunch the bird, by using more or less a whole bottle of wine in a single dish.  Gravy, French style.

Formidable, it was.

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It was fish that turned me.  When I was about eight years old, my mum served up fish that had eyes and a tail.  For the first time, I realised that fish fingers were made out of the same things that eat and move and people own as pets.   It sparked a series of nightmares involving swallowing living, wriggling goldfish.  Luckily, I didn’t get nightmares about eating fingers.

(It took me a few more years to get my head round the linguistic tricks used to disguise other edible animals, and fully appreciate the link between pork and Pigs, beef and Cows, and so on.  I must have been a very literal child).

Ever since my fishy nightmares, I’ve had Fish Paranoia.  Especially in Thai restaurants, where my explanations of how I-don’t-eat-fish-sauce-and-it’s-really-important-and-please-write-it-down get met with a wholly unconvincing nod (“yeah, yeah, no fish, whatever”).  Then I’ll spend an hour forlornly pushing things around my plate, tasting fish in everything I put in my mouth (including water).  It’s strange that I don’t get meat-broth paranoia in the same way, considering I’ve probably ended up eating some every other time I eat in an omni restaurant.

But while we were in China and Japan last year, I learned to like the flavour of the sea.  In Japan, the liberal amounts of seaweed are only matched by liberal amounts of fish broth, fish flakes, and fish innards, which really foments fish paranoia.  But still, I persisted in eating seaweed.  In China, we ate mock fish a few times, which was usually gluten faux meat wrapped in seaweed:

In an effort to conquer the paranoia, I recently decided to veganise Cullen Skink.  I have a long-standing plan to veganise traditional Scottish foods.  So doing a traditional Scottish fish soup lets start my Scottish project off, and chase away that fish paranoia, all in one go.

It turns out to be really easy. Veganised, it’s basically onions and potatoes boiled in soy milk, with some flavourings. It tastes of smoke, with a hint of the sea. I’m not sure it’s for everyone, but it’s definitely a bit different.

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