Gold & Great Food from Brigadoon

Nov. 1, 2011 - PRLog -- There’s gold in those Scottish hills – Scotland has decided to open its first gold mine this week, coinciding (by chance) with preparations throughout the UK for the celebration of the bicentennial of Charles Dickens’ birth. With the turn in weather, Red Rock Press would like to take this opportunity to provide a few Scotch recipes sure to beat the fall goose bumps and winter shivers for everyone from a new crop of Scottish gold miners to Christmas revelers caroling in the street.

Catherine Dickens (originally Catherine Hogarth, who recorded her recipes under the name Lady Maria Clutterbuck) moved from Scotland to England with her family in 1834. She brought with her a collection of Scottish recipes that would become mainstays of the Dickens’ family kitchen. Cock-a-Leekie Soup, for example, is believed to have originated in medieval Edinburgh, and is provided below in traditional and modern forms. It comes from “A Christmas Dinner,” a reprinting of the original Charles Dickens Christmas story that features authentic Christmas Eve and Day menus from their Victorian kitchen (as well as updated reproductions by culinary historian Alice Ross. You can learn more at www.ADickensChristmas.com.

If you’re looking for something a little more contemporary, Scottish-American author Judith Choate (who is also a three-time James Beard winner) provides a bevy of warming Scotch recipes in two of her latest books. “The Best Little Book of Preserves & Pickles” is the all-in-one guide to making and gifting homemade jams, jellies, chutneys, and more. “A Reader’s Cookbook” includes a whole chapter on the Pages and Platters of the Anglo-Irish Isles (featuring such fantastic recipes as Scotch Shortbread, Cranachan, & Sheppard’s Pie, reprinted below). Find out more at www.PreservesandPickles.com and www.RedRockPress.com.

--

Cock-a-Leekie Soup – from “A Christmas Dinner” by Charles Dickens, with Peter Ackroyd & Alice Ross
Serves 8-12

These days, the soup is sometimes enriched with barley or potato. At the time of Dickens, a soup like this was served in two parts: first the broth, followed by the chicken from the stockpot. On occasion, Cock-a-Leekie is still presented that way. Below is Catherine Dickens’ own recipe for this fine soup.

ORIGINAL, VICTORIAN VERSION:
Make a stock of six or eight pounds of beef, seasoned as for brown soup, and when cold skim off the fat. Wash well a bunch and a half of leeks, and cut them in pieces of an inch length. Put on the stock with two-thirds of the leeks, and a good sized fowl, and boil for an hour. Then take out the fowl, skin it, and cut it into small pieces, return it to the soup along with the other third of the leeks, and boil all up for another hour. If prunes be liked, throw in a quarter of a pound half an hour before serving. Some cooks thicken this soup with fine oatmeal, but if the leeks be tender, they boil away sufficiently to make this soup of a proper thickness and consistency without this addition.
-Lady Maria Clutterbuck’s [Catherine Dickens], What Shall We Have For Dinner?, London, 1852, recorded in Susan M. Rossi-Wilcox’s Dinner For Dickens (Totnes, 2005)

UPDATED FOR THE MODERN COOK:
5-6 lbs. beef or veal (soup cuts)
Water to cover
5-6 lb. chicken (stewing hen)
1 ½ bunches of leeks
¼ lb. prunes
Salt and pepper to taste

-Place beef or veal into a large soup pot and add water enough to cover.
-Bring to a boil and simmer for 4 hours.
-Place in a container, cover and refrigerate overnight.
-The next day, skim off the hardened fat that has risen to the top. Return the jelled broth to the pot.
-Add the fowl and 1 bunch of leeks (reserving the other ½ bunch). Bring to a boil and simmer for 1 hour.
-Remove fowl, skin it, and pull the meat off the bone. Return the meat to the pot.
-Add the remaining half bunch of leeks and simmer for ½ hour.
-Add prunes and continue simmering for another ½ hour.
-Add salt and pepper to taste, and serve hot.

--

Shepherd’s Pie – from “A Reader’s Cookbook” by Judith Choate
Serves 8 to 12

½ cup butter
2 tablespoons canola oil
3 pounds ground veal (or beef, lamb, pork, or poultry)
1 large onion, peeled and minced
1 teaspoon dried thyme
½ teaspoon dried dill
2 cups chopped, cooked spinach, thoroughly drained
Salt and pepper to taste
6 cups mashed potatoes
Two 9-inch unbaked pie shells
2 tablespoons melted butter
¼ cup dried breadcrumbs

Preheat the oven to 500°F.
Combine the butter and canola oil in a large deep frying pan over medium heat. Add the ground meat, onion, thyme, and dill and cook, stirring constantly, for about 8 minutes or until the meat begins to lose its color. Add the spinach and 2 cups of the mashed potatoes. Season with salt and pepper to taste and continue to cook, stirring constantly, for an additional 5 minutes.
Place an equal portion of the meat mixture into each of the pastry shells, mounding slightly in the center.
Using a spatula, generously cover the top of each filled pie shell with mashed potatoes, taking care that the potatoes come to the edge all around.
Using a pastry brush, lightly coat the potatoes with melted butter and then sprinkle with breadcrumbs.
Place in the preheated oven and bake for 15 minutes.
Lower the heat to 350°F and continue to bake for 30 minutes or until hot in the center and golden brown on top.
Remove from the oven and let rest for about 5 minutes before cutting into wedges and serving.

--

For more info or requests for images or recipes, please contact Dan Kleinman through the info below.

--

Daniel Kleinman
Red Rock Press
Daniel@RedRockPress.com
212-362-8304
www.PreservesandPickles.com
www.ADickensChristmas.com
www.RedRockPress.com