Scotland the Brave

Scotland has quietly begun a food revolution.  In the last ten years, food in the United Kingdom has changed quite drastically: stinging from a reputation for greasy meats, over boiled vegetables, and from rising health issues in the population, there has been a sluggish but determined about-face that is starting to yield visible results.  Easing away from a reputation for stodge and grease, Scotland has turned to her embarrassingly plentiful larder to reintroduce, reclaim, and reinvent Scottish cuisine as a modern competitor alongside the global flavours of imported dining.  Aberdeen-Angus beef.  Highland venison, grouse, and hare. Seafood from Loch Fyne and the North Sea.  Ayrshire cured meats and cheeses. Berries from the Clyde valley.  There has never been a shortage of good local ingredients to work with, but somehow Scotland fell into a similar post-war fug of bland and indifferent cuisine that until recently plagued England. 

I was delighted to see how many restaurants in Glasgow and Edinburgh specifically built their menus around Scottish ingredients, and interested in how they have interpreted traditional fare using continental techniques, scaling back fat content, and adapting to include vegetarian and specifically marked healthy-choice items to appeal to the new, more educated Scottish palate.  In fact, the most upscale restaurants that we visited all boasted extensively about their locally produced ingredients and traditional Scottish fare on their menus.  Presentation has gone upscale, too: an elegant venison pâté is served with a garnish of caramelized red onion relish, a deft drizzle of parsley oil, and a pluche of fresh, flat-leaf parsley.

In fact, much of the new way of cooking in Scotland relies on taking a global look at flavours and presentations, but incorporating the traditional elements that we associate with Scotland - the oatmeal, the lamb, venison, and seafood, the whisky, the cheeses - and using them to interpret dishes from around the world.

Scotland is also discovering that it can revisit its own culinary past to better fit in with current needs.  Porridge, for example, formerly as ubiquitous for breakfast as deep-fried snacks from the chippie are for late-night, post-bar munchies, is once again being promoted for its heart-healthy, low glycemic-index, and budget-friendly properties. Returning to the time-honored has been an inspiration for Scotland.  Quick to categorize themselves as Scottish first and part of the United Kingdom second, the Scots have always felt a strong sense of national and regional identity and are taking the opportunity to highlight the food as a point beyond tartans to delineate the border with England.  To quote Samuel Johnson, English writer and lexicographer (1709-1784) "Oats: A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people."  Who wouldn’t want a little distance?

It should come as no surprise that oatmeal still leads the way in terms of hot cereal breakfast choices – even more so on chilly winter mornings.  It is inexpensive, is fairly simple to make, and can be gussied up to suit the taste of the individual.  While North Americans are more likely to dress it up with some dried fruit, nuts or maple syrup, in Scotland oatmeal is more often eaten plain, or with a tiny pinch of either salt or sugar.  However, oatmeal is not only a breakfast food, as is clearly seen in the traditional elements of Scottish cuisine.  Savory porridges – known to our pioneer ancestors better than to us – are a hearty, inexpensive stew-like dish, full of onions, any little scraps of meat or meat broth that one might have available, and other hearty vegetables such as celery, carrots, or mushrooms.  Think of it as an oatmeal risotto – slowly cooked over a moderate flame so that the starch in the oats releases to create a creamy matrix in which to suspend other savory ingredients.

Traditionally, oatmeal not only filled the breakfast bowls, it was also used in breads and scones, as a thickener for soup (Boyndie broth, along with many more), and as a base for drinks (atholl brose) and desserts (cranachan).  It is also one of the principal and defining elements of haggis, in which oatmeal and onion are mixed with the finely minced heart and lungs of a sheep to turn it into a richly flavoured sausage – notoriously cooked using the sheep’s stomach as a sausage casing.  Oatmeal has been used to coat fish for frying, to extend soups and stews to feed additional mouths, and famously to produce oatcakes, a sort of dry, thick cracker or biscuit with minimal seasoning that started out life as a journey-food that could be lugged dependably into the fields and remains a vector for jams and marmalades or as a lunchbox filler even today.

The positive benefits of an oatmeal rich diet are undeniable.  With a slow, steady release into the bloodstream (a low GI rating) a breakfast of oatmeal porridge is good for filling up for a long day’s work without the need for mid-morning snacking and is a good source of soluble fibre, which is vital for a healthy digestive system.  A few years back, oatmeal was touted as the latest and greatest fighter of high cholesterol, and suddenly every product under the sun was fortified with oat bran.  While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I suspect one gets better results from a simple bowl of porridge rather than fortified products.  Add to that the payload of calcium, zinc, iron, manganese, thiamine and vitamins B1 and E and it’s no wonder that oats were the darling wonder food of the late eighties.  It is an excellent livestock feed – Johnson was right - so you can feed your family or your farm animals with equally good results.

On my recent trip to Scotland, I saw an awful lot of very fat people in the first few days of my visit, but it was subsequently revealed that they were almost exclusively North Americans who had traveled to Glasgow for the same convention that I was attending.  Despite the recent concerns over health issues pertaining to diet in Great Britain, the general populace even in the cities of Scotland does not seem to be grossly overweight.  While obesity is not the only form of dietary ill-health that plagues the modern world, it does make one wonder just what it is that’s keeping the pounds off a population known for heavy consumption of fatty meats and devotion to deep-fried foods.  Maybe its related to portion size.  Maybe it’s the fact that fast food restaurants have not achieved the stunning market penetration that North America faces.  Maybe the regular eating of porridge is one of the things that makes a difference.  With a breakfast like this under their belts, it’s a wonder the Scots haven’t conquered the world.

Man cannot live by bread alone (even oatmeal bread), however, and the Scotsman is no different:  beer is the most common beverage of choice, but wine is becoming more and more commonplace in Scotland, too.  Menus reflect the proximity to the rest of Europe in offering a good range of very affordable French and Spanish wines, and the global popularity of inexpensive, dependable Australian wines.  While good beer can be easily found in any corner of the country at fairly standardized prices, the fine dining restaurants and even a number of the mid-range places are finding a great deal of rising interest in wine, and they are willing to meet it.

There cannot be a single drink more quickly identified as Scottish than whisky, the national drink.  Any place that would call its chief alcoholic beverage uisge beatha or "Water of Life" is serious about its product.  Of course, we non-Scots so associate whisky with Scotland that we often simply call it scotch, although many countries make whisk(e)y.  The Scottish single malt whisky is in a category of its own.  Water, yeast, barley and peat, these are the things needed to make whisky (plus maize and wheat for making grain whisky).  Much as I enjoy the blended whiskies of Ireland (although they do have some single malts, too), and good bourbon - America's contribution to the whisky family - there is something absolutely inimitable about Scotch whisky.  It isn’t going anywhere, either.  It may be one of the principal exports from the United Kingdom, but it is also the drink for celebrating births, funerals, and everything that comes between.  Plus, it makes a pretty tasty sauce for a haggis. 

August 2005