AW80D - Bubble and Squeak

(NOTE:  Apologies for the double post, but Blogger seems to have eaten my previous bubble and squeak post.  See, it's so tasty that even internet robots can't resist!)

Bubble and squeak was always going to end up here, it being one of my favorite dishes and also an excellent non-scone recipe for the UK/Ireland section.  However, I did not expect it to appear so soon.  The original plan was to have most, if not all, regions in possession of at least one recipe before I moved to double representation, but as I have been learning, very little of this blog adventure has been going according to plan.  The Husband was recently in need of simple, tasty food, and we had half a head of cabbage about to go bad.  So here we are.

Bubble and squeak is, at its core, a recipe for the using up of leftovers, specifically those from a traditional English roast dinner.  Similar dishes abound throughout Europe, but the two that matter for the purposes of this post are colcannon, from Ireland, and — I kid you not — rumbledethumps, from Scotland.  (RUMBLEDETHUMPS!  Is that not just the most delightful thing ever?  And now you know why I adore Scotland so.)  There are a few minor differences (colcannon substitutes kale for cabbage, and rumbledethumps(!) involves cheese), but all three dishes are basically just potatoes, a leafy green, and copious amounts of sweet, sweet butter.   For the etymology nerds out there, bubble and squeak takes its name from the sound that the food makes while cooking.   Colcannon is derived from cole, meaning cabbage; rumbledethumps comes from rumbled, for food that has been mashed or scrambled, and thumps may refer to the fact that, originally, this dish was made by bashing the daylights out of the potatoes and cabbage with a large pestle. 

I first discovered bubble and squeak in a cookbook I bought ages ago, which was purchased mostly for the introductory sections (discussions various grains, oils, beans, etc., with lots of pretty pictures).  I can't remember a single other recipe from said cookbook, and it was given away during the Great Purge of 2009, but because it introduced me to bubble and squeak, I will always think fondly upon it.  Godspeed, forgotten cookbook, wherever you are.

My recipe is slightly different from some of the more traditional ones I've uncovered, but its heart is in the right place.  It's a very simple recipe, with few ingredients; if you find yourself with leftover mashed potatoes and greens (or any vegetable, really), this should come together in a flash.  This means you can also prepare the potatoes and/or the vegetables ahead of time, or even cook the entire dish the day before; it reheats wonderfully.  Also, as a side note, one of my all-time favorite cooking shows, Two Fat Ladies, insists that you must use lard or drippings in this dish, as they are the only fats that can heat up enough.  This is a load of old rubbish.  While I'm sure that bacon fat is wonderful stuff, butter does just fine.

Get yourself a couple of medium-sized potatoes; I prefer russets, but any starchy potato will do nicely.  Since I think the skin is the best part of a potato, I give them a good scrub and then chop them into one-inch chunks.  (Peeling the potatoes is fine, as is leaving them whole — I just find that chopping them up speeds up the cooking process.)  Plop them in a large pot with some well-salted water and boil under tender.

While the potatoes are boiling, thinly slice two leeks and a half a cabbage.  Melt a good dollop of butter in an oven-safe pan (I use my trusty 10 1/4" cast iron skillet) over medium heat, and saute the leeks until translucent (a finely-diced clove or two of garlic wouldn't go amiss here, either).  Add the cabbage, cover, and cook until tender.

Once the potatoes are done, drain, add a slosh of milk (or cream, if you are devilish) and a good knob of butter, then mash.  Lumps are perfectly fine, but just make sure it's easily mixable.  Salt and pepper to taste.

When the cabbage is ready, add a few handfuls of spinach and cook until just wilting, which will take but a minute or two.  Add the greens into the potatoes, return the skillet to the heat, and add another dollop of butter to melt.  Mix the greens and potatoes together until everything is relatively well incorporated, then pour it all back into the skillet.  Even out the potato mixture, much like you would cake batter in a pan, and let cook until the sides and bottom have browned.  (This is when the bubbling and squeaking will occur; if you find that your dinner is not singing to you on the stove, it's a good sign that the heat may not be high enough.)  You can add a few additional dabs of butter along the top of the potatoes, as well as some more salt and pepper, if you'd like.

While the bubble and squeak is a-bubblin' and squeakin' away, turn on your broiler to heat up.  Once the potatoes are nicely brown and crisp, pop the skillet under the broiler for a few minutes, until the top is also brown and crisp.  Let sit for a few minutes to cool, then serve.

Half a pan of bubsqueak, because we are impatient when butter is involved.

The Husband and I have been known to enjoy the odd bubble and squeak as part of a brunch spread (where it once accompanied potato-leek soup, because we enjoy repetition), but it is also an excellent meal in and of itself, particularly suited to cold, grey days (of either the weather or temperament variety) where warmth and heartiness (and butter) are much appreciated.

AW80D - Scones, Two Ways

You didn't think I was kidding when I said I would just post scone recipes, did you?

Actually, I was.  (Hopefully.)  But that doesn't mean that a scone or two can't wend its way through this little experiment, right?

I have already written extensively and ramblingly about scones before, but they are a fairly important part of my baking repertoire, so I think it is acceptable to talk about them again.

Generally speaking, I am not much for baking.  I am fairly incompetent when it comes to fruit-based desserts (your pies, crumbles, crisps, etc.), and I dislike baking cookies (I don't like the batch concept — I only enjoy baking if everything can fit into the oven at once, a preference that becomes a necessity in the desert summer when the temperature inside the oven is roughly equivalent to that outside my building and opening the oven door becomes physically dangerous).  My baking style favors breads (both of the quick and not-so varieties).  Fortunately for my cookie-enjoying self, The Husband picks up my baking slack, being both a tough cookie and the baker of tasty ones.

So, scones are essentially my only contribution to the bake-o-sphere that is our apartment, especially given that it is getting a bit too warm to crank the oven up to bread-baking proportions (sigh).

The first batch of scones, a chocolate chip-blueberry blend, was made using my standard scone recipe:  the cream scone recipe mentioned in my earlier sconepost.  They were tasty, go read that other post and make some, etc. etc.

The second batch was a riff on an oatmeal scone recipe I found in The Best International Recipe, one of those best recipe books from Cook's Illustrated where they make a dozen of everything, with tiny tiny tweaks to each recipe, until they've wasted enough food/found the perfect version (depending on your worldview).  I am always on the lookout for new and exciting scones, but oatmeal scones have a special place in my heart (and cookbook), being the first type of scone I ever baked myself (thanks, Joy of Cooking).  I fancied these up a bit with chocolate butter and cocoa nibs, which offset each other nicely and also made me feel quite posh and fancy, which lasted until the cat threw up (probably) and I was jolted from my reverie and had to go scrub the carpet.

Cocoa Nib Chocolately Oatmeal Scones

Preheat your oven to 450º F.  In a large bowl, mix 1 1/2 cups oatmeal (your standard rolled oatmeal will do nicely), 1 1/2 cups flour (I used 1 cup spelt flour to 1/2 cup all-purpose), 1/3 cup sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and 1/2 teaspoon salt.  Add cocoa nibs to your liking, perhaps 1/3 cup?  Dice 10 tablespoons of butter, then mix it into the dry/nib ingredients with your hands, smushing and rubbing the butter until the mix resembles crumbs.  (It is really quite important that you use your hands, here, because it's the best way to ensure that all the butter gets fully integrated into everything.  However, don't muss about at this all day, because the butter shouldn't be so kneaded that it melts.)

In a separate bowl, beat together until well mixed 1/4 cup milk, 1/4 cup heavy cream, and one large egg.  Add this to the flour-oatmeal-butter-nib concoction, then mix it all together, starting with a fork and eventually using your hands.  It should be fairly moist, but still a bit shaggy 'round the edges.  Scoop everything out onto a well-floured board, then pat into a circle roughly one inch tall.  Cut into wedges, pop into the over for about 12 to 14 minutes, then remove to a cooling rack.  Attempt to resist the temptation to tuck in until they have completely cooled, otherwise they will still be rather soft and will probably fall apart (though you could certainly sneak a small taste, if no one is looking — you have to make sure they are acceptable, of course).

fancypants oatmeal (for me) on the left, commoner cream (for the husband) on the right

(By the way, the first scone I ever ate was a scone called Sconehenge, which I purchased at the snack bar at Stonehenge when I visited it in 2002.  It was huge and expensive and rather disappointing.  Stonehenge was cool, though.  Unrelated, I have also visited Foamhenge, which is somewhere in Virginia.  They didn't have any scones there, but hornets had made nests in pretty much every one of the foam blocks.)

EVERYBODY GETS BEES!!!!!!

AW80D - United Kingdom + Ireland

For the purposes of this little internet experiment in international cookery, singling out the British Isles for some sort of special focus seems an odd choice.  After all, those little islands aren't particularly well-known for being culinary hotspots; in fact, they are actually known for being culinary wastelands — foodie laughingstocks, the butt of many a tasty joke.  If I really want to highlight a country, why not pick a one with a long, storied food tradition, like France, that mecca for food lovers?

Well, there a few reasons.  For one, I find French food — or, more accurately, people who like to talk about French food — almost unbearably pretentious.  Not all of them, of course, but as a whole, people who bring up French cuisine in food-related discussions always seem desperately insufferable.  I also don't much care for French food; in my experience, it's not terribly vegetarian-friendly, but even when it is, I find it all very dull.  I love watching Julia Child, but I don't know if I've ever seen the finished product of one of her shows and thought, "Yes, eating that seems like a very good idea."

Of course, the same thing could be said about the Two Fat Ladies, originators of both one of my all-time favorite cooking shows and some of the most terrifying foods every committed to film.  Seriously — peas with lettuce?  Lobster and mayonnaise?  Jugged kippers?  You should not be allowed near a kitchen if your recipe for a delightful breakfast dish is, "get smoked herring, put herring in a jug, pour boiling water over said herring, let sit, drain, serve."

NO.  THAT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR.

Not all British food is terrible.  It's true that, during my semester abroad in London, I subsisted primarily on corn flakes, clementines, digestives, and Cadbury caramels, but that's just as much a product of preferring to spend my limited money on sightseeing as it was quality of food.  Yes, things like black pudding are horrifying, but pasties (which I've discussed before) and shepherd's pie and fish and chips are perfectly tasty things.  I had a delicious cock-a-leekie soup on the Orkney Islands, and the haggis I had in Edinburgh was...all right; it wasn't bad, but I was surprisingly unimpressed and don't really feel the need to visit that stop on the Sheep Innards Express again any time soon.

One of the things that the British Isles excels at, in my opinion, is anything to do with fruit, specifically jams and desserts.  The climate is perfect for an abundance of brambleberries (blackberries, raspberries, loganberries, etc.); the best blackberries I have ever eaten were those gathered along the side of the road during a hike in the Scottish highlands, wherein I stumbled into two different thunderstorms and got lost (all was well in the end, though — I found my bus stop and got to ride back to town with a belly full of berries).  I just may get over my fear of baking fruit-based desserts for the purposes of this challenge.

Maybe it was my love of all things British that inspired me to set these countries apart.  Perhaps this is my way of correcting my past food mistakes from back when I was in the UK.  Or maybe I'm just a masochist who enjoys a challenge.  But that's kind of the entire point of this little exercise in food geography:  to explore new dishes, to abandon my culinary comfort zone and preconceived notions and try something new.  Maybe I'll discover a wealth of treasures hidden amongst the organ meats and gravied vegetables that populate British food.

Or maybe I'll just get weirded out by all the herring recipes and bake five different types of scones.

It's Janet - Miss Jackson if you're pasty. (UPDATE)

Ok, first things first:  this post is about pasties, the food (where "pasty" rhymes with "nasty").  Not the other pasty, which rhymes with "hasty" and is only occasionally edible.*  Make sure you remember this, or else this post will get confusing and probably rather weird by the end.^

So, pasties.¥

The pasty is, essentially, a self-contained pot pie.  Originating in Cornwall (or Devonshire, depending on who you believe), it was a common food for Cornish tin miners who were unable to come back aboveground for lunch.  The thick, dense crust, which was folded over the filling and crimped closed, made the pasty easy to eat with one hand, which is quite useful when you're hundreds of feet underground and covered with dirt and soot and arsenic.§  The dirty bit at the end, where the miner had been holding the pasty, was then discarded; this not only prevented the miner from consuming arsenic and dying of poisoning,ˇ but the leftover bit of crust was believed to appease the mine demons.‡

I am not a Cornish miner.◊  But, I do certainly like mouse books, which is of course where I first learned about pasties.±  They also come up in another series of books I enjoy, this time about a cat who solves mysteries, sort of.∞  Anyway, these cat books take place in northern Minnesota (or Michigan or something), where pasties˚ are common.  So it comes up a lot, and this is where I learned the pronunciation and the traditional filling (steak, potatoes, onions, rutabaga).

I decided to finally attempt to make pasties€ after a visit to the Cornish Pasty Co. in Tempe.  I think I got the Vegetarian Cottage Pie, but don't actually remember.  Whatever it was, it was pretty tasty, but I definitely came away thinking I could make it myself.  Also, after the day of chili and cornbread (and pie), I had decided that, PHX weather be damned, I was going to start using my oven and eating like it was autumn, even if it killed me.

Finding a good pasty recipe is a complicated undertaking, mostly because of the small handful of variations and the vehemence with which those variations are defended by their respective camps.  This is a good place to start (and possibly be overwhelmed) with your own pasty making.†  (The sweet pasties at the bottom of the page also sound tasty - like a portable fruit pie, but vastly superior to this.)  I actually got my crust recipe from here, because it seemed a bit lighter; I was pleased with the result, but am thinking that a proper shortcrust would be good too.  As for filling, I was distinctly untraditional: I blanched and mashed some potatoes, carrots, and cauliflower, then added that to a pan of onions, garlic, bay leaves, rosemary, cremini mushrooms, and peas (a slice of smoked Gouda cheese went on top of one of the pasty fillings, too).  We ate them with a bit of homemade ketchup and were full of autumn (sort of) cheer.

Also, sorry - no pasty (of either variety) photos today (I forgot to take one).  Instead, I offer a picture of Pannekuchen tangled up in a ball of yarn.

Not a magic cat.

UPDATE: If, like The Husband, you know nothing about music from albums that have sold more than 2,000 copies and are thus sellouts, this title is a reference to the 1986 Janet Jackson song, "Nasty."
*But significantly more related to the person in this post's title.
^Though the other pasty (the...article of clothing?) would be relevant to the crafty nature of this blog.  I could turn it into a side business:  Hasty Pasty, for the stripper on the go!
¥The food.  Stay with me here, people - we've got a lot to get through.
§No old lace, though.  Too frilly and murdery.
ˇSooner than he would just by being covered in arsenic all day, I suppose.
‡No, really.
◊Or minor.  Or myna.
±Again, I am talking about the food.  The quests that the mice go on are not for sparkly tassels so that they can go about topless; besides, they are mice and they don't have the same social mores as humans so don't worry about it anyway.
∞And before The Husband gets on here and starts making fun, let me just say that the cats themselves to do not actually solve any mysteries; their owner, a wealthy former newspaper reporter, does.  The cats cannot talk; they are normal cats.  Though one of the cats is sort of magic, but not really - even if he has extra whiskers and that might make him more perceptive and/or magical, he just does the things that cats do and his owner connects the dots and then the bad guys somehow get caught.  If you've ever owned a cat, you would know what I'm talking about if I had any idea how to actually describe what I mean.
˚I am mostly referring to the food, but since I have never been to northern Minnesota or the UP, I cannot comment on the popularity of the hasty pasty.
€I give up.  Pretend this is whichever one you want.
†Also, be sure to check out the Star-Gazing Pasty recipe at the bottom of the page.  Trust me.  Ignore the bit about herrings if you need to.