When we celebrate any culture, it tends to be through music, dance and food.
As anyone who has seen me "dance" can attest, I can certainly not give any advice in this area. Let’s just say dancing is not one of my strengths.
While music is something I am far more adept at, it does not really lend itself to an article about cooking and baking.
Which brings us neatly to the topic of Scottish foods.
For the record, and contrary to popular opinion, not everything from a Scot’s kitchen is deep-fried.
As part of my OE, for too short a period, I lived in Scotland, Inverness to be precise.
I was working in a restaurant there and have exceptionally fond memories of my time discovering the Highlands and of wandering the streets to and from work, listening to the sounds of bagpipes drifting around.
It was on one of these wanderings that I came across a secondhand book store in which I found several amazing cookbooks, including a 1929 edition of F. Marian McNeill’s The Scot’s Kitchen.
The intention of the book was "to preserve our old national dishes", and some of the recipes in this book have wonderfully old and undeniably Scottish names.
Among my favourites are partan bree, a stoved howtowdie with drappit eggs, crowdie-mowdie and crappit heids.
This is a recipe that is said to have originated in Montrose, a small town of about 12,000 people on the east coast of Scotland, about as far north of Dundee as it is south of Aberdeen.
Oddly enough, they are called Montrose cakes and this is my version of Mrs Dalgairns’ recipe that appeared in The Scot’s Kitchen.
Rose water is used in the traditional recipe but, given how hard it can be to find, I am leaving it out.
CONTACT
Kevin Gilbert is co-owner of Gilbert’s Fine Food in Dunedin, and a Dunedin city councillor.
You can email him at kevin@gilbertsfinefood.co.nz
Montrose Cakes
Ingredients:
225g butter
225g sugar
300g eggs (approx six)
225g flour
170g dried currants
1 Tbsp brandy
1 tsp nutmeg
Method:
- Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add in the eggs a little at a time, beat well between each addition.
- Gently mix through the currants, brandy and nutmeg.
- Finally, fold through the flour.
- Using either muffin cups or greased tins, half fill each one with the mixture.
- Bake at 190degC for about 15 minutes or until a skewer or knife comes out clean when poked into your Montrose cakes.
- Allow to cool in the tin.
Make a cup of tea or pour yourself a wee dram, and enjoy.
