Boxty (fail)

Continuing with an appropriately Irish theme, last week I decided to try my hand at making boxty pancakes. I'm not sure if the "pancakes" is a necessary identifier to that, but the recipe I used for it (from a book I have called Irish Food and Folklore) is different to the ones I've seen online, so maybe there's a difference between the usual boxty and the kind I made. Or maybe the recipe I have is duff, because...things did not work out well.

The recipe for it is simple:

1 lb potatoes
2 tbsp flour
1 tsp baking powder
salt and pepper
150ml milk
oil, for frying

But differs from other recipes for boxty (also known as stamp) in that they usually use mashed potato as well as grated potato. All you have to do for this one is grate the potatoes, mix it with the other ingredients, and dollop spoonfuls into a hot pan. In theory it should take around 5 minutes frying on each side. In theory. And then you have some lovely golden-brown boxty pancakes, good served with bacon or jam and butter. In theory.

What I actually ended doing was a) burning a lot of grated potato onto the bottom of the pan, and b) eventually taking the remainder of the pancakes out of the pan, still somewhat soggy in the middle, and leaving them to cool for a while before returning to the pan. This must've allowed them to dry out a little or something, because they cooked a lot better after that.

This is what I ended up with:

Before I gave up. Still somewhat soggy in the middle, but quite tasty nonetheless. Next time I think I'll stick with the internet recipes, there was far too much liquid in this version. As for the folklore part of the recipe book, there's a wee rhyme associated with it:

Boxty on the griddle,
Boxty in the pan,
If you can’t make boxty,
You’ll never get a man.


Boxty on the griddle,
Boxty in the pan,
The wee one in the middle,
That’s the one for Mary Anne.

I'm just glad I'm already married...

I hope you have a good "St Patrick's Day," however you celebrate (or not).

Flapjacks

Food is a very important thing, culturally-speaking. Different cultures have different kinds of treats, for one, and as far as celebrating things are concerned, sweet treats can form a very special part of it. At Christmas, in Scotland, it's traditional to have a black bun (something I've yet to try my hand at) or a Selkirk bannock. Gingerbread is always good at Hallowe'en, while cranachan is the must have tastiness at the harvest...

And then there are the kind of treats that aren't really associated with particular times of year, but more to do with the kind of ingredients that tend to lurk in cupboards. Indian treats tend to be very coconutty, for example, whereas in Scotland they generally consist of fat, sugar, various flavourings (often spices like caraway or ginger, and/or dried fruits), and oats or flour of some of form or another. Shortbread? Clootie dumpling? Parlies? Pitcaithly bannock? Yetholm bannock?

It was this reason that led me to one very shocking and important discovery (according to Wikipedia, so it must be true), since I had some porridge oats that needed using:

The US and Canada don't have flapjacks.

Not like we do on this side of the Pond, anyway. Apparently a flapjack is a kind of pancake in north America, while here they are made of oaty, buttery, sugary and syrupy deliciousness:

The reason I discovered this is because I was going to post the fruits of my labours and a recipe, and it occurred to me that golden syrup isn't really a thing in the US. So I wondered what kind of alternatives were used instead, and apparently the answer is: None, really. Corn syrup would be the obvious choice, but it seems that most folks hold out for golden syrup when they decide to make "English flapjacks" (as they seem to be called, but they're not just an English thing, honest) as some sort of exotic tastiness...It seems odd to think of something so fundamental to my own childhood and existence as not being a thing somewhere. That it's seen as something different.

So anyway, if you fancy clogging up your arteries and speeding up your Type 2 diabetes, why not try some? The following recipe is for the usual homemade flapjack, that goes quite hard and kind of crunchy-but-chewy once they. If you want a softer flapjack, either: Eat before they've cooled down, or add a little bit more golden syrup, a tablespoon of flour or so, and bake a little thicker. The recipe I used calls for an 11'' x 7'' pan, but I prefer using a slightly smaller one so they're thicker so I get a bit of chewiness in the middle.


Ingredients

8oz porridge oats (or rolled/jumbo oats)
4oz butter
3oz sugar
2tbsp golden syrup

Method

1. Put the butter, sugar and syrup into a pan and heat until golden melted goodness is achieved.

2. Stir in the oats until well mixed and whack into a baking tray.

3. Bake in the oven at 350F/180C/Gas Mark 4 for about 20 minutes or until a nice golden-brown on top.

4. Remove from the oven and cut the flapjacks into fingers. Leave to cool before removing.

5. Eat. Try not to fall into a diabetic coma.

Stovies

Thinking ahead for Samhainn I've been out in the garden doing what I can to bring in the last of the fruit and veg. In spite of the warmer weather recently it's also been very wet and the larger of the onions have succumbed to the damp and slugs - I was going to pick them last week, but alas, my back didn't allow for that. The remaining carrots and the spring onions have fared a little better, though:

As well as a leek, there. The rest of the leeks could do with a bit longer and should be fine with the colder weather due soon anyway, so I've left those. Of the purple carrots I left in after the first batch of carrots I had for Lùnastal, only one turned out properly purple. Another appeared to be having a slight identity crisis, but the rest just gave up and decided on orange:

They were quite small still, but I figured they probably weren't going to do much else and I might as well pull them.

In honour of the latest haul I decided to put the larger onions to good use and make some stovies, a good stodgy winter dish that's a staple of the Scottish diet, that consists of only three basic ingredients - minced beef, onion, and potato:

Now, yes. Admittedly cat food may look more appetising than this but it's the taste that counts, right? I like lots of black pepper in mine, whereas my husband and the kids like to give theirs a kick with some HP Sauce. I've only ever used beef for them, but mutton is more traditional - harder to get hold of these days, too, though.

I made Brodick bannocks to go with them (I'm finally getting the hang of making them flatter, like they should be - though I think using wholemeal flour helps), to soak up the dregs, and boiled up the carrots. Et voila. Good wintry stodge. I've yet to decide on what I'll be doing for our Samhainn meal, but stovies are always good option, I think.

Now the kids are older and can get a bit more involved in the festivities I'm really looking forward to Samhainn this year. And so are they. The school has a fancy dress parade so they'll be spending the day in costume, and then once they get home it will be time for some fun and games before the guisers start knocking. I'd better start experimenting with the treacle bannocks...

Skeachan Cake

Every now and then I take it upon myself to try and master a new recipe or two, especially if it's a good old stodgy traditional Scottish kind of thing. For a while now, on and off, I've been experimenting with trying to make a Skeachan cake - a 'treacle ale' cake. It's basically a fruit cake, made with a little black treacle and ginger, and the fruit is soaked in ale for about 24 hours before baking to make them all soft and juicy.

Technically skeachan is the 'treacle ale' - ale flavoured with black treacle, ginger and some other flavourings. I have a recipe for the skeachan itself (though I've not tried making it yet), but not the cake, so I had to look one up online. There were several to choose from but they all seemed to be lacking something, I thought, though I wasn't quite sure what - aside from not including enough ginger. Then one day I went on a trip to Luss - a nice little village on the shores of Loch Lomond with a fantastic tea room (they do the best soup I've ever tasted) - and they had some skeachan cake on offer. Obviously, for research purposes, I decided it was necessary to indulge in a slice.

After trying that and comparing my previous efforts, I found the recipes weren't far off after all, but definitely more ginger was needed, and the kind of ale you soak the fruit in is key. On the first few goes I tried some locally brewed pale ale and then a heather ale (Fraoch), but I think the cake needs a good heavy beer, so I ended up trying Guinness instead. That did the trick for my tastebuds. The cake I tried was topped with slices of crystallised ginger, which I think was definitely the missing ingredient. Now, after a bit of experimenting, I think I've cracked it:

 

It's a good cake for festive occasions and quite moist compared to some fruit cakes, and it's similar to the traditional Christmas black bun (but a bit less fiddly to make). So here's the recipe, if you want to try it:

Skeachan Cake

I cook by weights, but I've tried to adapt it to volumes as well. Bear in mind that I've rounded everything up to the nearest quarter cup for the sake of ease; the exact volume to weight ratios are a little less, but that shouldn't make much difference overall. You can easily adjust the ratios of dried fruit if you prefer (I like to use more sultanas and raisins, and a little less currant and peel), as well as the amount of ginger you use. I use quite a lot to give a fiery kick to it, but you might want to add it gradually to see how you prefer it. I've outlined the traditional method of combining the ingredients below, but you can get good results by just putting the ingredients for the cake batter altogether in a mixer, and then just stir in the fruit.

For a non-alcoholic version I think soaking the dried fruit in a flat ginger beer or cordial could work, adapting the amount of dried ginger for the batter.

Ingredients

225g (1 1/4 cups) Raisins

225g (1 1/4 cups) Sultanas (golden raisins)

350g (2 1/4 cups) Currants

75g (1/4 cup) Citrus peel

250ml (1/2 cup) Ale

225g (1 cup/2 sticks) Butter 

225g (1 1/4 cups) Dark brown muscavado sugar

1tbsp Black treacle (or molasses)

4 large eggs

225g (1 1/2 cups) Plain flour

3 tbsp (approx.) Ground ginger

1 tsp Mixed spice

200g (approx) Crystallised ginger

Optional: Glacé cherries

Method

1. Soak the raisins, sultanas, currants and citrus peel in the ale for at least 24 hours, stirring occasionally.

2. Preheat the oven to 160C (adjust for a fan oven - about 10C less) and grease a large cake tin.

3. Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy.

4. Beat in the treacle, followed by the eggs.

5. Mix in the flour and spices (to taste).

6. Stir in the soaked fruits and the cherries.

7. Pile the mixture into the cake tin and cover the top with the crystallised ginger, using scissors to cut it to the desired thickness. 

8. Bake for about 2 1/2 hours, or until cooked.

9. Allow to cool, then enjoy. Goes nicely with a little bit of cranachan.

Midsummer

Midsummer's come and gone and with it, so has the sun, it seems. But we're still getting some pretty impressive sunsets. See?

Very dramatic. June was a very dry month for us, so the return of the rain is good for the garden, at least. Everything's coming along in leaps and bounds now.

For midsummer, I took the kids to the beach for a picnic with the intention of making some offerings - plans had to slightly change though, because we ran into our neighbours and they joined us for the afternoon, so offerings were somewhat surreptitiously done as we left, after a lovely afternoon in good company instead.  It was quite a momentous afternoon, too - Mungo was brave and attempted a swim in the sea. Although I don't think he's in any hurry to try it again.

After starting Margaret Fay Shaw's Folk Songs and Folk-lore of South Uist a while ago, I found a recipe for a proper festival strùthan - a traditional version using barley, and a more modern version using flour. It was perfect timing, so I decided to try out the flour version, in the evening, and had some success with it. Sort of? I made it as thin as I possibly could by hand, but it rose more than I was expecting as it baked in the oven. It was also difficult to gauge how doughy the caudle should be, so that bit I had to wing and possible ended up with something a bit too paste-y rather than doughy. It kind of ended up rock solid and brick-like once the strùthan cooled. I tried some fresh from the oven and it was tasty, but chewy, but it definitely needed to be thinner - at least half as thin as it turned out. I would guess it would be quite solid but brittle then, once it cooled.

This is how it looked:

And this is the recipe, based on Shaw's description:

Ingredients
1 lb flour
1 tsp baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
Salt
Sour milk - enough to make a dough
Caraway seeds, currants or raisins

Mix the ingredients together, using enough milk to make a pliable dough. Shape the dough into a flat round and bake on a girdle, or 'not too hot' oven. Turn about half way through cooking to make sure it bakes evenly.

For the caudle:

Ingredients
3 tbsp treacle (golden syrup)
2 tbsp milk
1 tbsp sugar
Flour

Mix the ingredients together, using enough flour to make a 'dough' that will stick to the strùthan. Cover the strùthan and return to the oven until ready.


If I'd got it the right thickness, then I imagine it would have been quite tasty, even after it had cooled. I saved some for the kids to have the next day, but when I tried to cut it, I couldn't even make a dent in it. I decided to bin it - seeing as it was basically inedible, I didn't want to leave it as an offering, but the rest of it that I'd left out fresh from the oven seemed to have been well received, along with some Orkney beer.

I didn't do much else for the day, just kept it quiet and simple (and nursed a mild case of sunburn from the beach). And somehow it's mid-July already, how did that happen?