[rollei_list] Yet More OT: The Scots Borders and Scottish Eggs
- From: Marc James Small <marcsmall@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx,rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 15:06:11 -0400
At 11:55 AM 10/15/2006, Peter J Nebergall wrote:
My mother's father was from Hawick. I am not
talking of Westmoreland, but old Cumberland...
up on the wall. BEEEEEG difference. This is
the old "Border Counties, " home of fightin,
fussin' and feudin like you would not
believe. I lived there 4 years, and did my
dissertation: INDUSTRY AND
INSTABILITY. Chapter 2: "1700 Yars of Border
Violence," is a long and monotonous list, ending
with "after reading this, one may be
legitimately surprised to find anyone alive
there at all..." These people are
unique... Their interest is in "poteen," alcohol, not good cooking.
Ah, Peter, your take on the Border Counties is
probably true. George MacDonald Fraser, he of
the FLASHMAN tales and the saga of MacAuslan,
that "World's Dirtiest Soldier", also wrote a
fine book on the Borders, THE STEEL BONNETS.
My own people come from the lower Highlands,
Inbhirnis and Perthshire and the like, so we were
more into sheep-stealing and dry-gulching
unsuspecting innocents than in the sort of
organized mayhem seen on the Borders.
I did make Scotch Eggs for breakfast this
morning, a first stab at an old dish, and my
Scottish cookbooks are yet in Roanoke and have
not yet been moved. Upon reflection, I would recommend the following:
Hard-boil four eggs for 12 minutes. Place in
cool water and shell when cool but not cold. At
the same time, put some oil (I use either Canola
Oil or Canola and Peanut Oil mixed fifty-fifty,
albeit neither is native to the Highlands, where
they probably used lard taken off the corpses of
those innocents they had so unsuspectingly
dry-gulched the day before. The oil should be
around 350 degrees F -- if your stove does not
permit such fineries, set it at a notch less than
you would use for fried fish or chicken.
Split a pound of pork sausage (generally called
"country" sausage in the US but more properly
known as "fresh" sausage to differentate it from
cased sausages) into four sections. To do this,
flour your hands and make four thin
patties. Flour both sides of these patties in
flour mixed with a half-teaspoon of salt and some
pepper, fresh-ground to taste.
Coat the four hard-boiled eggs in yet more flour,
and roll them into the sausage patties,
completely covering the eggs. Roll the resulting
plump assemblage in the rest of the flour, salt, and pepper mix.
Whisk a raw egg into a bowl. If you do not have
a whisk at hand (all of my whisks are in Roanoke
at the nonce), you can use a fork but only stir
the egg into a single mixture -- do not beat it!
Brush the plump egg-and-sausage assemblages with
the raw egg. Roll this in bread crumbs until
completely covered. Dump any remaining bread
crumbs onto the four plump assemblages.
Place the plump assemblages into the oil and cook
for five minutes or so. Make certain the oil is
fully heated before doing this. (I cheated and
used a deep-fat frier with an inbuilt
thermometer, and with a timer to boot.) These
properly should be cooked vertically but, then,
you have to be careful not to have too much oil
in the pot unless you are cooking this on an
industrial-grade metallurgic furnace, as deep oil
will often segregate into levels of different
temperatures. I cooked mine on their side.
Drain above the oil for 20 or 30 seconds when
they are done. Place on a paper towel to
degrease, and eat hot or cold. These puppies can
be microwaved if cold but be cautious if you
happen to have a Turbo-Supercharged High-Power
Nuking Machine as my wife insists we use.
The decaf, diet-soda, and salad crew in our midst
will be swooning in disbelief by this point, as
these guys are absolutely vile in every
conventional term: they are contributors to
Global Warming and Terminal Air Pollution, they
are REALLY high-calorie and high-cholesterol, and
they involve the sacrifice of unfertilized
archosaur ova and live Porky Pigs. But, DAMN, they taste good.
One thing I was looking forward to when we moved
to the Richmond, Virginia, area was a return to
Matt's British Pub, which made a killer Scotch
Egg. But, a couple of months before we arrived,
Matt's closed and was turned into a New-Age
Easy-Eating Bistro populated by young guys with
thin chin-hair and young women with green hair
and black fingernails. So, for the first time, I
made my own, and they were GOOD.
Future endeavours on my agenda include home-made
fresh sausage and Haggis, a dish I have not made
since 1974 -- but that market which keeps the
Kippers in the freezer just for me will probably
be able to cough up the necessary sheep
gut. Back in '74, I just went to a Greek butcher
in New Haven and he pulled it out of the back but
I suspect these are harder to get
today. (Different clans eat the Haggis in
different ways: some eat it with a whisky
chaser, others pour the whisky over the Haggis
before eating. My clans follow the first
practice but I've had it the second way as well,
and it is a wonderful dish either
way. Contemplate Scrapple: this is a corn-meal
mush based dish which includes "every part of the
pig save the oink". Well, Haggis is an
oatmeal-based dish which include "every part of
the sheep save the baa". No wonder emigrant Highlanders invented Scrapple.)
Drooling in anticipation,
I remain,
Yr Obdt Svnt (with a nod to Jerry and thanks to
the late and lamented Henry N Manney)
Marc
msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!
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