Category: Main Meal

Colcannon

18th century, 19th century, 20th century, 21st Century, Main Meal

There are many traditional foods associated with All Hallow’s Eve/Hallowe’en, November Night, but one which might be new (and deliciously simple to prepare), is the Irish potato dish of Colcannon.

Back in the beforetimes, when cakes of bairín breac were considered a luxury, people used to celebrate All Hallow’s Eve with a big pot of Colcannon. A ring was hidden in the depths of the creamy, mashed potatoes, and whoever ended up with it on their spoon, was said to be going to be the first to marry, within the next 12 months.

There aren’t many Irish cookery books of this time, so my favourite place to find accounts of the Irish food actually eaten by the population (as opposed to some publisher’s imagined scenario), is The School’s Collection at the National Folklore Collection, held at University College, Dublin. The Schools Project was an ambitious and wide-ranging collection of everything to do with Irish Folklore and Culture, gathered and recorded by school pupils between 1937 and 1939. More information about the project can be found here.

With information gathered from all across the country, it is fascinating to see both the common threads that bind the Irish people together, as well as discover the little differences that make each community unique. For instance, you might be aware of the popular Irish potato dish of Boxty, you might also be aware that it can be served in three different ways (loaf, dumplings, pan), but you might be surprised to learn that The Schools Collection contains over 150 different ways of making Boxty. I recently wrote a paper about this, the appendices of which, including the list of 150+ different ways of making Boxty, you can access here.

So it is, to a certain extent, with Colcannon. It also appears under the names Brúitín, Brúchin, Champ and Poundies, to name but a few. “No, no no!” I hear you exclaim, “Champ is its own thing! It’s made with spring onions!”

Well yes, but actually no.

It might actually be a Stampy/Boxty situation, where the same dish has different names, depending on the part of the country you come from. I shall be looking into this more soon.

Similarly, there can be interpretation as to what exactly the dish comprises. At it’s simplest, it is cooked potatoes, mashed with a little milk, pepper and salt, and served in a mound with a lump of butter in the middle. It is eaten by scooping some potato from around the edge and then dipping it in the growing pool of melted butter in the middle before consuming.

Many accounts of Colcannon have additional items of flavouring added. “A bit of greenery” is probably the easiest way to describe a large proportion of them, which include young (spring) onion, chives, nettles, leeks, shredded cooked cabbage or kale, parsley, regular onions.

The accompaniments can be anything you enjoy, but traditionally they include: sweet milk, buttermilk or sowans to drink, and crisp, crunchy oat bread (oatcakes) to use as a scoop.

I was delighted to find just how old the dish of Colcannon is: there’s mention of it back in the eighteenth century. William Ellis (1750) includes a recipe for an “Irish Country Dish” in his The Country Housewife’s Family Companion, p366.

And Welsh diarist William Bulkeley (1691-1751), whose diaries are kept at Bangor University, mentions dining on “Coel Callen” at Halloween in 1735, whilst on a trip to Ireland.

Even earlier, a poem published in Dublin in 1723, speaks of what certainly seems to be a dish of Colcannon being prepared for a wedding feast.

From “Mendico-hymen seu, tuphlo-pero-gamia. The beggar’s match. Translated from the Latin.”, W. Thompson, printed by Tho. Hume, for Jer. and Sil. Pepyat, Dublin, 1723.

Colcannon

This is more of a guideline than hard-and-fast recipe. Use quantities to your own personal needs and taste.

potatoes
greenery 
milk
salt & pepper
butter

ring (optional)

  • Cook your potatoes. The method doesn’t really matter: boil or bake. The important detail is to mash them smooth whilst hot. I use a ricer to make sure all lumps have been dealt with, but you can also press them through a coarse sieve or use some elbow grease and a masher utensil.
  • Smooth out the mixture by adding milk. NB Use hot milk, otherwise you run the risk of cooling down your potatoes too much. If you’re using any kind of onion, you might like to simmer them in milk for 10 minutes to both flavour the milk and reduce the harshness of the onions themselves. Strain out the onions, keeping the warm milk for mixing, and chop the onions finely – or to your taste. Cover and keep hot while the greens are prepared.
  • Add your greens – this may be in the form of herbs (chives/parsley) green onions/spring onions/cibol/leeks, Savoy cabbage, spring greens, kale, sweetheart cabbage, white cabbage, Brussels sprouts, spinach, nettles, etc. The cabbage and/or leeks should be shredded to your liking (fine/coarse) and blanched/steamed for five minutes. Add sufficient to your own personal taste.
  • When everything is piping hot, serve your Colcannon in a large communal dish, with a generous amount of butter in a hollow in the centre, and hand round spoons for all. Don’t forget to pop a ring  into the mix before serving, if matrimony is in your plans.

Turkey Salmi

19th century, 21st Century, Main Meal, Savoury Pastry

This week I’d like to talk turkey and making champagne tastes on a beer budget.

Just look at that crisp, golden pastry and glossy, rich sauce covering the tender pieces of turkey!

Turkey is a staple on the festive dinner table, but the preference for the pale breast meat has seen the rise of the turkey crown. Since science has yet, one fervently hopes, to develop a limbless turkey, those extra bits don’t just disappear, but are still around to purchase and enjoy.

Actually, I have no idea what happens to the trimmed turkey wings – one of life’s great mysteries – but turkey legs are available in both drum and thigh formats, and should be snapped up whenever you see them because they are fantastic value for money, robustly flavoured and, treated properly, can make for delicious and relatively fuss-free meals.

A quick gallop around the aisles this week tells me that turkey thigh and turkey drumsticks are available in Sainsbury’s, Asda (drumstick only) and Tesco (thigh only). The Tesco thigh is the best value, at only £2.80/kg, but the Sainsbury’s drumstick (£3.30/kg) and thigh (£4.67/kg) and Asda’s drumstick (£3.71/kg) are also very budget friendly, especially when compared to other proteins.

I also took a look at what people out there on the t’Internet are doing with turkey drumsticks and thighs and long story short, not a lot. Both are almost exclusively roasted, and whilst knawing on a joint the size of your arm is certainly a look, here we’re going to be more concerned about taste, tenderness and the use of cutlery.

Rather than the harsh heat of the oven or the barbecue, the method I’m proposing is to use our old friend the slow cooker. A long, low, braise will render even the sturdiest of turkey legs tender and melt-in-the-mouth. And it is so EASY! Literally plonk in the turkey, slosh over some braising liquid, switch it on and you’re set for several hours. You can choose whatever stock you like for the braising, but the simplest and best, in my opinion, is beef stock. Using the jelly-like  beef stock pots made up to double strength (so using only half the water), gives the turkey both flavouring and seasoning in one. Being strongly flavoured, the leg meat also flavours the stock in return, to give a fantastic base for gravy or, as we have here, a sauce.

This recipe is an adaptation of the numerous game bird salmis so favoured by the Victorians. You can serve the meat in the sauce over rice, noodles or potato snow¹, but my recommendation is for a puff pastry vol-au-vent case, to add a fantastic contrast in colour and texture.

In another tip gleaned from the history books, for the vol au vents you can use just a single roll to make six, large vol-au-vent cases. I used to buy two rolls of puff pastry, and cut the bases from one and the borders from another, but this way you can get both from a single roll. Simply cut out the centre of each base and re-roll it until it is as big as the border, then slide it under the pastry border and trim neatly.

Turkey Salmi

You can start this the day before and cook the turkey overnight, else cook on High for about 5 hours to eat the same day. You can also cook the pastry cases the day before and just warm them in the oven before serving.

For the Turkey
Bone-in turkey thigh and/or drumstick – however many will fit in your slow cooker
Rich beef stock pots x 6

1 sheet ready-rolled puff pastry
1 egg for glazing

For the Sauce
30g butter
1 small onion finely chopped
1 bay leaf
3 cloves
1 blade of mace
100g streaky bacon – chopped
200ml red wine (or red grape juice/pomegranate juice/more stock)
300ml beef turkey stock
1 heaped tbs cornflour mixed with a little cold water

  • Put your turkey meat into your slow cooker.
  • Make up the beef stock with just 1.5 litres hot water. Make sure they have melted fully before adding to your slow cooker. If you need more liquid, just add water.
  • Turn the heat to LOW and cook for 8 hours-10 hours. Overnight is perfect. You can also cook on HIGH for about 5 hours if that suits your timings better.
  • When the meat is tender, lift the joints from the slow cooker (a large strainer spoon is helpful here, if you have it), and remove and discard the bones, skin, tendons and cartilage. Try and keep the meat in large pieces. Strain the stock through a sieve and set aside 300ml. Save/freeze the rest for other uses.
  • For the sauce:
    • Melt the butter in a pan and add the onion, bacon and flavourings.
    • Fry for 10 minutes over medium heat until the onions have begun to caramelise.
    • Add the red wine, if using, and simmer for five minutes.
    • Add the stock and let all simmer together for a further 10 minutes, allowing all the flavours to mingle.
    • Optional: Strain through a fine-meshed sieve and return the liquid to the pan. The sauce in the photograph has been strained, and as such gives a really shiny and glossy finish. (I had the bacon and onion in some of the sauce later, on a baked potato. It was delicious.) But there’s nothing wrong with leaving the bacon and onion in the sauce (waste not, want not and all that) – the choice is yours.
    • Taste the sauce and add salt and pepper as required.
    • Add any flavouring sauces to your own taste. These include, but are not limited to, oyster sauce, Worcester sauce, Henderson’s Relish, Soy Sauce, Mirin, Shaoxing wine, anchovy essence, Hoisin sauce, Teryaki sauce, etc.
    • When seasoned to your satisfaction, whisk in the cornflour mixture and slowly bring to the boil, stirring, until the sauce clears, thickens and becomes glossy.
    • Reduce the heat to low and add the cooked turkey pieces.
    • Serve over rice/noodles/riced potatoes, or keep warm while you bake the pastry cases.
  • For the pastry:
    • Heat the oven to 220°C, 200°C Fan.
    • Unroll the pastry and cut into 6 squares (lengthwise in half, then vertically in thirds to give 2 rows of 3)
    • Cut out the centre of each square, leaving a 2cm-ish border.
    • Roll out the middle pieces until they match the size of the borders.
    • Dampen the edges of the now very thin, centre pieces and slide the borders on top. Trim the edges neatly. Prick over the bases with a fork to help keep them from rising during baking.
    • Whisk the egg and paint it over the borders using a pastry brush. Try and keep the egg from dripping down the sides, as this will glue the layers together as it bakes and keep the pastry from rising to its fullest extent.
    • Bake for 25-30 minutes until crisped, risen and golden, turning the baking sheet around halfway through.
    • Cool on a wire rack. Once cold, store in an airtight container (if making ahead).
  • Spoon the warmed turkey and sauce into the baked pastry shell and serve.

¹ Baked or boiled potatoes put through a ricer into a bowl. The riced potato should be allowed to fall into the serving dish in a mound and then served immediately untouched by anything else, spoon or seasoning, to maintain the lightness. Great for dishes with a rich sauce or gravy such as this.

Toad In The Hole

18th century, 19th century, 20th century, 21st Century, Main Meal

Toad In The Hole was a favourite dish of my childhood, and also one of the first dishes I made when I began cookery lessons at school, aged 11. Toad in the Hole is a traditional lunch or supper dish combining sausages and a standard Yorkshire Pudding batter.

The earliest mention attributed by the Oxford English Dictionary is 1787¹, but as the digitisation of old books increases, earlier mentions will no-doubt come to light. I’ve managed to find a few.

From 1762 we have a mention in the publication The Beauties of all the magazines selected, a kind of Readers Digest of its day, in an article describing an engraving by William Hogarth. The Hogarth print, published in 1761,  is entitled The Five Orders of Perriwigs, and the magazine’s description of the first image (below) is as follows:

The first Capital discovers only a forehead, nose, lips, and one eye, the rest of the face is eclipsed by the Wig’s protuberance, and appears like a small piece of beef baked in a large pudding, vulgarly called, a Toad in a hole.

The other mention is from several years earlier, 1749 to be exact, and is in the form of a footnote to some verse in a play².

In the eighteenth century, ‘Cant’ was secret language or jargon used by certain groups of people, such as gypseys, thieves and professional beggars, for the purposes of secrecy. In this context, it more likely to have been (slightly derogatory) slang. Together with the wig reference, the overall image is of a rather mean piece of meat being padded out to the point of almost being swallowed by a large, voluminous  and above all, filling pudding.³

Nearly three hundred years later it is still a very budget friendly dish, as it can make a meal for 4 out of a pack of sausages and a few cupboard staples.

There are a couple of tips when making a Toad which can add both flavour and interest. I was taught to put the sausages in your baking/serving dish and put the dish into the heated oven for 10-15 minutes before adding in the batter. This allows the sausages to start cooking and (hopefully) develop a little bit of colour. Most importantly, however, it will allow the fat in the sausages to start to render, thereby greasing your dish, and thus you don’t need to add any additional fat.

The second is flavouring. Many people like to serve Toad In The Hole with gravy – onion gravy is popular. But not all people are gravy enthusiasts, and so another approach is to flavour the batter. Obviously salt and pepper are a given, but the addition of some fresh herbs can add some big punch flavours, especially if the sausages are also herbed. I think you can’t go wrong with the old “Scarborough Fair” mix of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. As far as quantity, go by your own personal taste: a nice rounded teaspoon of fresh chopped, or half that if using dried is a reasonable amount to start with. Onion in some form is also another option. Pick your preferred strength from what I like to think of as an allium continuum: chives, spring onions, white/French, pink, shallots, red, brown, – and whether to add them raw, softened, browned or caramelised.

This version is time as well as budget friendly, as it cooks in the slow cooker. With only about five minutes work, you can then forget about it and be tucking into a crispy Toad in just two hours.

There are couple of important tips to using a slow cooker for your Toad In The Hole

  1. To avoid a soggy Toad, you need to prevent the condensation that will form on your slow cooker lid from dripping back onto your Toad, so you need to trap – for want of a better word – some kitchen paper or a clean teatowel under the lid to absorb the moisture.
  2. No peeking! Lifting the lid to check on progress will cause the heat to escape, which will adversely affect the cooking of your batter. I peeked several times when first trying this method, and the resulting Toad was decidedly ‘firm’. By not peeking throughout the whole two hours, the Toad had a much lighter crust. Admittedly not quite as puffed as an oven-baked Toad, but perfectly acceptable for such a hands-off approach. As a bonus, the bottom and sides get deliciously crisp and brown.
  3. (Optional) Pre-cooking the sausages. You don’t have to do this, you can just plonk everything in at once, but I find a little colour on the sausages does wonders for the visual appeal of the finished dish. The cooking doesn’t have to be that long either. In a pan on a fairly high heat, they will take a little colour in about a minute (you only need to have colour on one side). Then you can arrange them coloured-side up in your slow cooker before pouring over the batter.

Toad In The Hole – Slow-cooker method

Caveat: I have a large slow cooker, for easy batch cooking, and I appreciate not everyone will have a slow cooker of a similar size. Smaller cookers will require some adjustment in either the quantity made and/or the length of cooking time. Do let me know how you go if you are making this in a small slow cooker.

Batter (based on a 17thC recipe)
2 large eggs
120g plain flour
220ml milk
salt and pepper
herbs (optional)
onions (optional)

12 chipolata sausages.

kitchen paper or clean teatowel

  • Turn on your slow cooker to High to heat up.
  • Colour one side of your sausages in a pan. Set aside.
  • Put the eggs, flour and milk into an appropriate container and whisk into a batter (I use a stick blender).
  • Season with salt and pepper.
  • Stir in your herbs and/or onion if using.
  • Brush the inside of your slow cooker with some of the sausage fat. Remember to include the sides for when the batter puffs up.
  • Arrange your sausages coloured side upwards. I like to use chipolata sausages because they cover the bottom of the slow cooker more densely than regular-sized sausages.
  • Gently pour the batter between the sausages, trying to keep them from rolling over, although it’s easy to turn them back if this does happen.
  • Lay a double-thickness of kitchen roll over the top of your slow cooker and clamp it in place with the lid.
  • Set a timer for 2 hours and NO PEEKING!
  • When the time is up, remove the Toad from the slow cooker to a dish or board, and cut into serving pieces.
  • Serve with salad and/or vegetables and/or gravy.
  • DejaFood: If you have any leftover Toad, it reheats well. Wrap in foil and put into a 200°C, 180°C Fan oven for 10 minutes.

¹ “Pudding-Pye-Doll, the dish called toad-in-a-hole, meat boiled in a crust. Norf.” Francis Grose · A provincial glossary, with a collection of local proverbs, and popular superstitions · 1st edition, 1787.

² A general history of the stage; (more particularly the Irish theatre) from its origin in Greece down to the present time. (1749), by William Rufus Chetwood, printed by E. Rider, for the author, and sold by Messrs. Ewing, Wilson, Esdall, and James, in Dublin, and Mr. Sullivan in Cork, Dublin, p183.

³  Sidebar: Hannah Glasse’s 1747 book The Art of Cookery contains a recipe for Pigeons In A Hole³, which is definitely a related dish:

The art of cookery, made plain and easy; which far exceeds any thing of the kind ever yet published. (1747), Hannah Glasse, printed for the author; and sold at Mrs. Ashburn’s, a China-Shop, London, p46.