Category: Food

Scottish meat pie — Quorn version


Click here for high-resolution version.

In Oban in the west of Scotland, I got a good look at a Scottish meat pie. Unfortunately, I neglected to get a photo of it.

But what I noticed about the meat pie was that it stands alone, that the sides are straight, and that the top crust was loosely fitted.

I’m not sure what was in my friend’s meat pie at Oban — haggis, maybe. After Googling and reading up on Scottish meat pies, it seems that lamb is preferred, that mutton is possible, and that you might even find pork. For my first homemade effort at a Scottish meat pie, I used the ground beef version of Quorn, which I previously wrote about here.

All pies with a top crust are somehow magical. I’m not sure why. Maybe because such pies were around in the Middle Ages, and somehow we respond to that ancientness. It’s what I call oldvelle cuisine.

For this pie, I seasoned the Quorn with chopped onions, olive oil, pepper, garlic salt, and a gravy made with vegetable bouillon. The crust is a hot-water crust, the first hot-water crust I’ve ever made. The hot-water crust is not very flaky, like a French crust. Rather, the hot-water crust is a touch more leathery. But it’s very good, tender, and works well with the filling.

If you Google for recipes for Scottish meat pies, you’ll find several ways for supporting the crust during baking. Some people use tin or ceramic pans. Some use parchment tied with string. I opted for 4-inch nonstick spring-form pans, which I ordered from Amazon. The little spring-form pans worked very well.

I’ll do more of these little pies this winter, including a faux chicken pot pie version using Quorn’s fake chicken. With chicken pot pies, the seasoning is all about celery and peas, with a white gravy. Quorn should work very well with that.

Quorn


Kung Pao Quorn. Click here for high-resolution version.

In Scotland, I made a very nice new food discovery: Quorn. Quorn is a meat substitute made from a fungus. It started in Europe, but Quorn is now sold in the United States. Somehow, I was never aware of Quorn, even though I discovered after returning from Scotland that Whole Foods carries Quorn, as do many local grocery stores. In the United Kingdom, Quorn seems to be easy to find, because I bought some in little Spar stores in the middle of nowhere in the Scottish islands. You’ll find it with the frozen foods (a section of the grocery store that I usually pay very little attention to).

There has been some controversy about Quorn, but I believe I won’t much get into that. Instead I’d encourage you to do your own research about Quorn, if you’re interested. You’ll want to read up on how it’s made. And you’ll want to be aware that there was a lawsuit in the United States having to do with allergies to Quorn, though I believe that only a small percentage of the population is susceptible to becoming allergic to Quorn.

Quorn is sold in several forms, including chicken substitutes in the form of nuggets and cutlets, and beef substitutes in ground-beef form. Very little is added, though, and Quorn makes no effort to trick you into thinking that it tastes like chicken, or like beef. Instead, it tastes like Quorn. The texture is dry and a bit mealy. Still, it has a pretty good bite. Like tofu, it’s all about how you sauce it or season it.

Part of the solution to making Quorn tasty — at least as a chicken substitute — is to marinate the Quorn in whatever you might use to marinate chicken. As for the beef, use it in a sauce — spaghetti sauce, for example.

Vox recently reported that up to 50 billion chickens are raised and slaughtered on factory farms each year. I don’t know about you, but I want nothing to do with that. Chickens are sweet, sociable, vulnerable, sensitive creatures. If you read up on Quorn, and if you read up on factory farms, I think you’ll at least want to give Quorn a try.

A photo a day, #8


Click here for high-resolution version.

Tourism is the cornerstone of the Scottish economy and accounts for something like 10 percent of Scotland’s jobs. Without tourism, rural areas of Scotland would surely be poor. The tourism industry in Scotland seems well aware of the importance of food in making tourists happy. Odds are that, as long as you aren’t too far off the beaten path and can find a restaurant, it will be a good one. The irony, though, is that traditional Scottish fare is hard to find. Instead, most restaurants serve what I call international Mediterranean tourist cuisine. The breads are superb and are usually baked by the restaurant that serves it. The seafood is extraordinary and locally sourced. Menus will often tell you the names of the local fishermen who supply the different types of seafood. The ales, not to mention the whisky, may be local, too.

Above is Lobster Thermidor at the Boat House restaurant on the isle of Ulva. The isle of Ulva is off the beaten path (the ferry that gets you to the island is a small motorboat). And yet the Boat House served some of the best — and the most reasonably priced — food that we had. Most visitors to Ulva come over on the ferry, go for a short walk, have lunch, and return to Mull.

The downside of food in Scotland is that the grocery stores — even in Edinburgh — are not very good. You’ll find plenty of good bacon, but the produce leaves much to be desired, both in quality and variety. So that’s an economic niche just begging to be filled in Scotland — small farms growing good produce. In a restaurant garden on the isle of Iona, I saw some of the most beautiful celery I’ve seen. Such celery would make a fine export.

Dieting without being hungry


Rump roast plus some less-guilt-inducing things. Click here for high-resolution version.

In eleven years of blogging here, I don’t think I’ve ever written about cooking beef before. I’m 98.6 percent vegetarian, but diets change things (for a while).

During my adult life, my weight has bounced back and forth from about 147 to 157 pounds. Why it bounces is easy to explain: If I weigh 147, I gain weight. If I weigh 157, I feel fat, and I start dieting. My motivation for my current diet, however, though I did feel fat, is getting ready for doing some traveling and hiking in the Scottish Highlands near the end of this summer.

As an experienced dieter, my rules are simple: Keep carbs down. But keep protein, potassium, and fiber up. Concentrate on low-inflammation foods (beef is not one of those). My maximum daily calorie consumption while dieting is 1,200. The calorie rule could be honored, of course, on my usual lacto-ovo vegetarian diet. It would just mean eating less of the usual things. But I’m afraid that a 1,200-calorie diet of the usual things would leave me deficient in protein, potassium, or fiber.

Fortunately, I don’t have to diet often. Once I’m at the lower-level marker of 147 pounds, it takes me more than five years of eating whatever I want to get me back up to the red line of 157 pounds. Nor do I have to obsess about weighing myself. My belt tells me all I need to know. I resort to the scales only to confirm that I’m back at 147 again. Then I eat whatever I want and repeat the cycle.

The easiest healthy way I know to get 60 grams of protein a day while meeting a reasonable potassium and fiber target is to concentrate on fish (or meat) and low-carb vegetables. After eating enough beef to meet the protein target, and enough broccoli and fresh tomatoes to meet the potassium and fiber target, I’m foundered long before the calorie maximum is reached. Grilled salmon is my main source of protein on this diet. I grill two pieces at a time — one for today, and one to put in the fridge for a salmon-vegetable curry tomorrow. Beef is just a novelty. After one meal, I’m sick of beef, even though I have leftovers to deal with.

Since I’m also hiking to train for the Highlands, it won’t take long to get back to 147. Then, once I’m in Scotland, it’ll be all about oyster bars, ale, and potatoes, calories be damned. And I’ll be on my way to 157 again.

Walnut pâté


Raw walnut pâté in pocket bread, cucumber slaw, homemade refrigerator pickle, garden tomato. Click here for high resolution version.

A good maxim for good health would be, eat more walnuts. Believe it or not, here in the Blue Ridge foothills, I can sometimes find local black walnuts for sale in late summer. You have to know whom to ask. Walnut trees are common. There are a few people in these parts who (like me) hate to see walnuts go to waste (though the squirrels rely on them) and who (unlike me) are willing to do the work of shelling them. They fetch a good price, too.

Otherwise, if you buy walnuts from California, you need to buy from a source that sells a lot of them, to be sure that they’re fresh. Whole Foods sells excellent walnuts in bulk. Trader Joe’s has them pre-packaged, and at affordable prices. Store them in the fridge, and keep them sealed against oxygen.

To make walnut pâté, first soak the walnuts for at last an hour to soften them. Purée them in a food processor. I add a dab of tahini to hold the purée together. After the walnuts are mushed up, pulse in some onion and celery and seasonings, but leave the onion and celery a tad coarse.

I love bread, but if I always had it, I would gain too much weight. When the craving for bread becomes irresistible, I sometimes make myself one flatbread. It’s easy. The people of India are the best at it. Just watch a YouTube video to see how it’s done. I use nothing but flour and water, and I bake the flatbread in a dry skillet. It doesn’t always “pop,” but I’m much better at that than I used to be.

Though the pâté in the photo was incredibly tasty, it was the tomato (one of the first ripe ones of the summer) that blew me away.

If you’ve got too much of it, baba ganoush it

Are we tired of squash and okra yet? It could happen.

Baba ganoush is not just for eggplant. Any vegetable that likes to be roasted can be turned into baba ganoush. This one is made from roasted yellow squash and roasted okra.

Are we tired of pesto yet? I hope not, because the basil is the most vigorous thing in the garden now that the usual July heat stress and water stress are setting in.

This was a very rich meal. I couldn’t eat it all.

The elusive okra bloom


An okra flower. Click here for high-resolution version.

I have been trying to get a photo of a fully open okra flower, but I still have not succeeded. Okra is a relative of hibiscus, and its flowers are much like hibiscus flowers. The photo above, of a not-yet-fully-open flower, was taken at 9 a.m. two days ago. At 8 p.m. the same day, I returned with the camera expecting to see a fully open flower. Instead, the flower already had wilted. I’ll keep trying. Okra flowers, I think, are the most beautiful flower in the vegetable garden.

I’m also doing my best to understand the morphology of how the okra flower relates to the okra seed pod (which is the edible part). That, too, is going to require more observation.

A note on flower photography: A tripod is almost always necessary, otherwise blurring occurs when maximum sharpness is needed. Wind is often a problem and also can cause blurring, because narrow apertures (and therefore longer exposures) are often necessary to manage depth of field. I usually shoot flower photos at different aperture settings, then determine in Photoshop which aperture setting worked best. The idea is to get the objects of interest sharply in focus, while blurring secondary objects that are closer to, or farther away from, the camera.


Blooming elsewhere at the abbey. Click here for high-resolution version.

Two theories of gardening


A thriving squash plant, with lots of room and some pampering. Notice how dry the soil is.

I’ve already learned a lot from my experiments with this year’s garden. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, my plan this year was to plant sparsely, leaving plenty of space between things for cultivating and for weed control. This type of gardening also is water-frugal.

One of my favorite gardening books is Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times, by Steve Solomon. This sparse, water-frugal type of gardening is what he recommends when life depends on your garden. I believe I am sold.

That’s not to say that a hard-working gardener with irrigation cannot pack a garden densely and get great yields. But I’m not a hard-working gardener, and this year I resolved to not do any irrigation.

May was a wet month with 8.69 inches of rainfall. June has been dry, with only 1.29 inches of rain in the last 17 days. Gardens really ought to have an inch of rain or more per week. So we are on the dry side. But, so far, nothing in the garden is showing signs of water stress. Weed control has been easier now that the weather is dryer. The plants, with little competition from weeds and from other plants, seem to be pulling enough water from deeper in the soil without any problem. My yields have been terrific. And insect pests, so far, have not been a problem.

I think I’m also realizing that a productive garden is not just about soil and water. It’s also about sun. No plant can make a lot of vegetables without a lot of leaves and a lot of sun to do the metabolism. So sparse gardening also gives plants plenty of room to spread their leaves and get their sun. Soil, sun, and water: the sparse-garden theory is all about not forcing plants to compete with other plants for what they need. That makes sense to me.

Roasted okra

Okra roasts beautifully. The seeds are tender, but with a slight crunch. They’re a bit like fresh corn kernels, or fresh peas. If seared and not overcooked, I think okra would be great in curries. I also want to experiment with using okra as a thickener in sauces for stir-fries, avoiding the dreaded cornstarch.

Refrigerator pickles

It takes 10 minutes or less to make a quart of refrigerator pickles — just long enough to heat some vinegar and sugar, throw in some spices, and pack the jar. Three days’ worth of cucumbers from four flourishing cucumber vines yielded enough surplus cucumbers for two quarts of refrigerator pickles.

If you Google, you’ll find plenty of recipes for refrigerator pickles. It’s an easy way of preserving cucumbers that are meant to be eaten within the next couple of weeks.

I cut the first okra this morning. The squash are just getting started.