A week in Scotland

Well I got to pick the country out of the container this week - and much to my surprise it was Scotland (Eliza really did do a good job of coming up with country names to put in the container!). I know Haggis and Black Pudding immediately spring to mind - but let me assure you, I do not intend on eating either of these this week (and I don't think Dave or the girls would appreciate them either).

I found a great web-site:

http://www.rampantscotland.com/recipes/blrecipe_index.htm

and I used this site for all of the recipes I made this week.

It was interesting to read the blurbs on all the recipes, I learnt quite a bit. For example, Mary Queen of Scots brought back from France a staff of French cooks, so ever since then, there has been a french influence on some of the Scottish food. The other thing I discovered is that they love alcohol in food - scotch whisky and Drambuie are common additions to both savoury and sweet dishes, in addition to white wine and red wine (and claret in some cases).  The other thing I noticed was that cream is heavily used - and I think most meals this week used cream.

One of the things I loved about this week was that they serve Scottish meals with plain old veggies!

So here is the run down for this week.

Sunday

Scotch Collops with Rumbledthumps and greens
(love the names!)

The word collop comes from the French "escalope", and this dish has apparently been cooked in Scotland for a long time - the recipe I used was first published in the 18th Century. The dish featured both cream and alcohol LOL :-).

Rumbledethumps is also known as Colcannon or Kailkenny in other parts of Scotland. It is essentially potato and cabbage, which you can also add other root vegetables to (I decided to add some carrots).

Monday

Baked Salmon with Tarragon

No alcohol in this one, but it was served with a dollop of cream!

There were quite a few Salmon recipes to select from - I think I picked the only one without Alcohol in it. There were a heap of fish recipes available, but they used cod or smoked haddock - and I wasn't sure of the availability of the smoked haddock in the supermarket (Dave dislikes cod so I wasn't going to pick a cod dish).

Both Jassy and Dave like Salmon these days to I thought this dish would be a good choice.

Dave and I followed this dish up with Gaelic Coffee and Cafe au Drambuie.

Tuesday

Chicken Bonnie Prince Charlie

This recipe of course had alcohol in it (Drambuie) as well as cream (once again). Apparently it is said that this dish was given to members of the Mackinnon clan in gratitude for their help after Culloden (something I have read about in the wonderful series of Outlander books, and now a TV series).


Wednesday

Potato and Leek Soup with Scottish White Rolls

Swimming night - so a great chance to have soup, which is quick and easy to prepare. There certainly was no lack of soups to pick from - you may have heard of cock-a-leekie, cullen skink, Parten Bree and Scotch Broth to name a few.

I decided on Potato and Leek, which is apparently very popular in Scotland. and served it with homemade Scottish White Rolls (which had some brown sugar in them!).

We served this dish with Gaelic Fruits- a fancy way of saying fruit dipped in chocolate :-) The chocolate was meant to have Scotch Whisky added, but when I added this to a portion of the chocolate it made it breakdown and go hard!

Sunday

Scotch Pies and Scotch Mist

We rounded off a week in Scotland with Scotch Pies - originally made as a fast food sold at the half time interval of football (soccer) matches in Scotland. The pastry was made from scratch, and the meat used was lamb mince. My lovely friend Mel, made the pastry for me - I'm rubbish at rolling it out, and getting it to the dish without it falling to pieces! Jassy even helped a bit :-)

We followed this up with a dish called Scotch Mist - and once again some alcohol was added! It was essentially an Eton Mess kind of dish with some crushed up meringues, whipped cream with Scotch whisky added, and chopped up strawberries.

Eliza drew Yemen from the container for next week, and Jasmin drew Egypt, which we put it back in as two middle eastern countries it a row is a bit much, so she did a second draw and drew Indian!

Til the next post
Di :-)