For those cold, winter days...

Today we are going to cook a beef and vegetable casserole for lunch


Ingredients for 4
olive oil
1 onion diced
1 leek diced
2 carrots cubed
2 celery sticks diced
2 garlic cloves crushed
75g. mushrooms sliced
500g braising steak cubed
2 tsb plain flour
3 sprigs of thyme
beef stock (fresh, cube or concentrate), 750ml
2 tsb tomato purée
a dash of Worcestershire sauce


Method
1.  Heat 1 tspb olive oil in a large pan.  Preferably a casserole dish (hence the name).  Add onion, carrot,

leek, celery and garlic and cook gently for 5 minutes without browning.  Add mushrooms and cook everything for 5 minutes and remove from pan.  Heat more oil and brown the beef, stir in the flour well.
2.  Return the veggies to the pan and add the thyme, stock, purée and Worcestershire sauce.  Season and mix well.  Bring to a gentle summer and cook covered for 1 and a half hours, until tender, stirring occasionally.  Serve with baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, rice or pasta.
And here's what it looks like...

You can also cook this in the oven.  One of my mum's friends used to do this and instead of all of the vegetables in the recipe above she just used carrots, turnips and onion.  It was absolutely delicious with mashed potatoes.

The Livingstons Restaurant, Linlithgow

Isn't it just lovely to go out for a meal on a Saturday.  Last summer my very generous auntie took us all out to the Livingstons Restaurant in Linlithgow where we had a faboulous three course meal for 19.95 each, along with Mrs. Livingston's special tablet with our coffees.  Here we have a menu http://www.livingstons-restaurant.co.uk/lunch-menu

And here's what the place looks like inside.  It had a lovely garden at the back where you could have a drink before lunch or your coffees afterwards where squirrels ran across the lawn.  And here is what it looks like outside too, service was fantastic, food was lovely, although the portions were a bit Bulli/Arzak style i.e. very minimalist........but given the price.  I thought this was really reasonable.

Of Scottish shortbread and other things

Well, I do know that this blog is supposed to be about Scottish food, but this piece of news is well worth posting.  Have a look here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF70-pMkb4M

In the meantime, today we shall look at how to make Scottish shortbread.

Ingredients:
1 pound unsalted butter
5 cups all purpose flour
1 cup white sugar

Directions
1.  Pre-heat oven to 180ºC
2.  Cream butter and sugar with a mixer.  Add flour and mix with a wooden spoon.  Use hands to mix thoroughly.
3.  Press into a jelly roll pan. Prick to bottom all over with a fork, making sure the fork hits the bottom and the pricks are close together.
4.  Bake for 10 minutes.  Reduce the heat to 150ºC and continue to bake for 40 minutes more.  Wait 2 minutes then cut into finger size bits.  Cool thoroughly in the pan.

Just in case, this is what a jelly roll pan looks like..

If you don't have time to make your own shortbread you can buy it in Lidl's over here.  They usually sell this brand...It's actually quite delicious.

By popular request

Hi again, it's a bit frosty outside so here we have a popular lunch or tea time dish to keep you warm.  Today you are going to learn how to make Baked macaroni and cheese (with Scottish cheddar cheese).  Like most dishes in Britain it is really easy to make, cheap and nourishing.
Ingredients for 1 serving:
3 tablespoons uncooked macaroni pasta
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon all purpose flour
1/4 tablespoon salt
1 pinch pepper
1/2 cup milkç1/3 cup grated Cheddar cheese
1/8 teaspoon ground mustard
1 teaspoon bread crumbs
1 tablespoon grated Cheddar cheese
Instructions:
1.  Pre-heat oven to 200ºC.  Grease an oven-proof dish.
2.  Bring a saucepan of salted water to the boil.  Add macaroni and boil until well cooked.  Drain and reserve.
3.  Make white sauce with butter, flour, milk and seasoning.  When it boils, reduce to low heat and whisk in 1/3 cup of Cheddar cheese and the mustard.  Stir in the cooked macaroni and then put the pasta and sauce into the oven-proof dish.  Sprinkle the breadcrumbs and tablespoon of grated Cheddar cheese over the top.
4.  Bake, uncovered, until the cheese has melted and the macaroni is heated through for about 10 minutes.  Serve hot.

This beats the supermarket pre-cooked stuff anytime.

And this is what the recipe means by dry mustard.  You can buy it in powder form.

If you can't find this, mustard in jars will do fine.

Perfect mashed neeps

What are neeps?  Well they are actually turnip.  And seeing as tomorrow is Robert Burn's Day in Scotland and we'll all be loooking forward to eating haggis, I thought I would tell you how to make perfect mashed neeps which goes with haggis and mashed tatties.  First have a read about the Bard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns.

How do you make mashed turnip?  Well first you peel your yellow turnip, cut it into cubes and boil in salted water for about 15-20 minutes, drain the water and then you mash them with butter in the pot, with a potato masher.

Grind some black pepper over your mashed turnip and they are ready to eat.  Delicious.

I am now going to leave you a link for another of Scotland's unofficial anthems which was written by Robert Burns, Scot's wha hae which you can listen to while you are preparing your Burn's Night Dinner...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXh4b_jikqU

And even better A man's a man for a' that with Paolo Nuttini
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOBcFt5tevY

Rhubarb sponge

Yesterday we were talking about apple and rhubarb crumble.  So today we are going to delve into other things you can do with rhubarb which we always had a lot of in our back garden. And this is what it looks like after it has been collected!!  And, of course, we take the leaves off and we chop it up.So today I am going to post a link on how to make rhubarb sponge, another Scottish pudding http://www.scottishrecipes.co.uk/rhubarbsponge.htm.  Again this can be served with ice cream, which we used to eat even in winter in Scotland!!!

If only my dad had seen this recipe and we might have been saved from stewed rhubarb when he didn't know what to do with all of the rhubarb that grew in our back garden.

which would usually be served with custard (not with vanilla ice cream)

Apple crumble

Well this is one of my son's favourites and here are the ingredients and how to make it.  In fact, a lot of dishes in Scotland are really easy to make:-
Ingredients
6 fine cooking apples
250g white sugar
200 g plain white flour
150 g butter
(1 clove or cinnamon stick)
How to make apple crumble
Peel and core the apples.  Dice them into small chunks.  Cook the apples with 3/4 of the sugar (and the cinammon stick).  I add some water.  Stew the apples for about half an hour (or until tender) and then mash.  Leave aside to cool.  Make the crumble by mixing the flour, remaining sugar and butter gently with your fingers until it takes on a breadcrumb consistency.  Pre-heat the oven to 150º.  Put the apples in an oven dish and cover with the crumble mix.  Cook in the oven for 30 minutes until the crumble is golden brown and crunchy and bubbling.  Serve with cream or ice cream.  And here we have the perfect pudding for a cold winter's day after a bowl of nourishing red lentil soup.

We usually had this with tinned cream which you had to shake quite hard to mix it and then you opened the tin at either end and poured it on.  Those were in the days before you could buy single and double cream in Marks and Spencer's.

You can also make crumbles with other types of fruit.  And since my dad grew rhubarb we ate a lot of rhubarb crumbles in the summer

Sunday Roast

Although, I am supposed to be talking about Scottish food, the Sunday roast is a tradition throughout Britain.  My dad used to roast a side of beef in the oven for goodness knows how long.  When the beef was ready he took the tray out of the oven and used the cooking juices to make gravy.  All of this was accompanied by roast potatoes (boiled potatoes drained and dusted in flour and deep fried) with some veggies (we usually had carrots and turnip) and, of course, Yorkshire pudding which my mum usually made.  Here you have a link to a video where you will be shown how to make it. http://video.about.com/britishfood/Yorkshire-Puddings.htm
Anyway, you can see the end result below.  Personally, I think the beef is a bit underdone but it still looks pretty good.  You can also roast lamb or pork too but that's the subject of another post.

Chip butty

Talking of rolls reminded me of one of my mum's favourite snacks.  The chip butty.  This was, basically, a buttered roll filled with chips as you see below and which you can actually buy!!

My dad used to love his egg piece (I'm not too sure how to spell this) which was actually a fried egg roll as you see..

And my husband's favourite, the ubiquitous bacon butty (or roll), otherwise know as a bacon bap or sarnie.  You can eat all of these delicacies with tomatoe or brown sauce....

Lentil soup

A typical lunch at home used to be lentil soup with rolls spread with butter followed by the puddings I mentionned in a previous post (jelly, custard, Bird's Eye delight or even apple crumble).  We just called it sim lentil soup but on the web it's known as Scottish red lentil soup - for obvious reasons since the lentils we used were orangey red and which came in plastic bags

Lentil soup is quite easy to make, you dice up some onion, carrots, turnip and leeks (on the web there are a lot of recipes with celery but we never had that at home) and let them sweat in butter in a big pot, then pour in water, add a couple of cups of lentils, boil and then leave to simmer for an hour or so.  When you are ready to serve grind some salt and pepper over the soup and add some fresh parsely.  My dad always had a plentiful supply of parsely since he had his own herb garden.  And this is what it looks like.

As I said this was accompanied by rolls spread with butter

Getting a bit more up-market, Shepherd's pie

Well, quite often to break the monotony, my mum transformed our plain mince and tatties into a more up-market dish called Shepherd's pie.  It's basically mince and mashed potatoes with a topping which can be heated up in the oven or browned under the grill.  You get an oven dish and pour in your mince and on top of this you put a layer of mashed potatoes which is covered with grated cheese, usually cheddar.  Then you serve it with your favourite sauce.  And you all know which one mine is!!

Mince and tatties

Well this was a favourite lunch of mine, mince and tatties.  Of course, tatties are actually potatoes.  My mum used to buy best quality steak mince and brown it off in a pot with onion (she never told anyone that our food had onions in it because we didn't like them), added some diced carrots and water.  I don't know how long this was on the stove for (obviously long enough for the carrots to soften up).  Before serving she mixed up some bisto with water and added it to the mince.

This was actually a brown powder (probably corn flour) which thickened up stews.  I went off it when they turned it into Gravy Granules. She boiled up some tatties which we often had to peel, and served them mashed with our mince.  I used to squirt some brown sauce over mine, but my brother and sister preferred tomato sauce.  My dad liked his with Wostershire sauce!!! Personally, I don't understand why people say that British food is unhealthy because here you have a dish with some fat, vegetables, protein and carbohydrates.  This was usually followed by jelly or custard and fruit or an Angel Delight (a custard pudding you made with milk which had fruit flavouring).

Fish patties

Fish patties aka fish cakes were another teatime treat which my dad made.  You could also buy them in the fish shop but they were much better home made.  You need boiled, mashed potatoes (mashed with butter and milk, of course), boiled flaked fish, salt and pepper and fresh parsley (if you want).  You mix all of this together and bind it with a beaten egg in a bowl and form the mixture into patties with your hands.  Next you dip your patties in flour, egg and breadcrumbs and fry gently on the stove.  My favourite ones were salmon patties.

Instead of fresh cod or haddock you can add tinned salmon (after draining it) or even tuna fish which became very popular in Scotland in the 70's.    You can serve your patties with a salad and it's all very nutritious.  I used to have mine with brown sauce..

which fortunately you can now buy in Spain.  Tomorrow, I'll tell you other tasty dishes I used to spice up with this.

Scotch eggs

Well my tummy is really starting to rumble now.  Talking about stovies got me thinking about Scotch eggs.  This used to be a special treat when I was small.  My mum would make us them for our tea and my brother and sister had them with a generous helping of  baked beans (something I really hated).

You need to boil eggs, peel them and then you cover them in lorne sausage which my mum bought in slices from the butcher and rolled so she could get them round the eggs. Then you dip your eggs in flour and a beaten egg and breadcrumbs and deep fry them.  Absolutely delicious.....

Scotland's Enchanted Kingdom

Just found a fantastic web called Scotland's Enchanted Kingdom (which of course Scotland very much is http://www.scotlands-enchanting-kingdom.com/how-to-make-stovies.html where readers can find out how to make stovies, another of my favourite dishes from long ago.  What exactly are they? They are actually a dish made with the leftovers from Sunday lunch, meat and potatoes.  I don't know if this has anything to do with the word "stove" which is actually "a large piece of equipment for cooking food, containing an oven and gas or electric rings on top" or anything to do with the expression "slaving over a hot stove" i.e. cooking.  But have a look at the recipes and give them a try.  They are great for a cold day, and, of course, for using up leftovers.

The Craw's Nest

 This is the hotel's location

 This is the outside of the hotel

And here we have the bar and bar lunches...
This is the place to go when you can't be bothered cooking at home and are tired of the chippy.  We used to cross the Tay Road Bridge and head for Anstruther which is a beautiful East Coast village..And here is the hotel's official webpage http://www.crawsnesthotel.co.uk/

How to make the perfect batter mix

Hi again well in the last couple of posts I was talking about the infamous chippy and today I am going to tell you how to make a batter mix for your deep fried chipper treats....The BBC food web has a great step-by-step set of instructions, all fully illustrated...http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/deepfriedfishinbeerb_67776
This is what your batter mix looks while you are whipping it together...

 And once you have dipped your fish in and deep fried them, this is what they look like.  Apparently, you can even add beer to your batter mix...

 You can also buy ready-made batter mixes....

Deep Fried Mars Bars

Yes, according to an article I read years ago on the BBC web we eat fried mars bars in Scotland.  Here's a picture of one

I am not sure if this is eaten as a pudding and yes we invented it in Scotland.  Everytime I go into a Scottish chippy I look to see if it's on the menu.  When you go to Scotland, tell me if you find them and what they are like to eat!  Can you imagine covering a Mars Bar with batter and deep frying it?  I don't think it's too healthy.  And ask if people eat it as a main course or as a pudding after their fish and chips?

The chippy

The chippy is another way of saying "fish and chip shop".  Otherwise know as the "chipper".  What exactly is it?  The chipper is the place people go to to get what used to be the favourite "takeway" meal in Britain - fish and chips -  and, of course, Scotland.  Fish and chips have been taken over recently by curries and Chinese takeaways...Here we have a nice little article telling us all about the chipper's history and what it sells....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_and_chips.  And down below we have a picture of a typical chipper which doesn't only sell fish and chips but, apparently, in Scotland other delicacies like deep fried Mars Bars!

We used to have fish and chips every Friday at home and it is very popular with late night revellers i.e. people coming out of the pub and feeling a bit peckish.  When we were living in Glasgow, my grandad used to bring us our fish and chip supper in with a carton of Italian icecream as a special treat.

Of course, you can go a bit more up-market and eat this in restaurants all over Britain.  And you can even cover your fish and chips with tomato ketchup, brown sauce, or if you are a bit more upmarket tartare sauce...  Fish and chips used to be served in a poke i.e. a paper bag which was covered in newspaper - perhaps to stop you getting covered in grease - and before you left the chippy you used to douse your fish and chips with salt and vinegar.  Another favourite of mine was a "white pudding supper" which you can see above. The secret of all of this is really the batter i.e. what you dip the fish in before deep frying it but I will tell you about that another time.

Getting the hang of the lingo

Well apparently we speak differently in Scotland so this small glossary should help you when you are touring from place to place....http://www.linguanaut.com/english_scots.htm ...looking for the best fish and chips in Anstruther....

and here you have a link to them....http://www.anstrutherfishbar.co.uk/.  We were there a couple of years ago and there was far too much to eat. They are best with a can of Irn Bru - the Scottish national non-alcoholic drink....And this is what fish and chips look like, along with mushy peas...you can eat inside (it's a bit more expensive) or out on the harbour.  But more about fish and chips and chippies tomorrow...

Scottish pub grub

 I have chosen a pub/restaurant in Pitlochry which is well worth the visit.  The town is full of woolen mills and the dam can't be missed with its fish ladder where salmon go up and down.  The last time I was in Pitlochry we stopped off here and had fish and chips and steak pie (something I will have to explain), liberally doused with pints of lager....

 Here we have a plate of fish and chips - tomorrow I will be taking you to the best chippie in Anstruther.

 As I said you eat and drink...

 And if you are in Mackays at the right time then you'll be treated to typical Scottish hospitality...remember to get your Guinness extra chilled...