Adam Balic

Scotch can refer to the people, but it is anachronistic and is rarely used by the inhabitants of Scotland. However, it is a brilliant way of teasing them .

Of all the characteristics of the Scotch that I have noted, "Jolly" has yet to occur.* What grade of proper oatmeal, there seems to be a large number of different types of the nasty stuff. * Least ye think that I am being unduely hard on the Scots, remember that I am of Croatian descent and by comparison, the Scots are indeed 'Jolly'.

You are think of the Irish maybe, the Scots drink "whisky", not "whiskey" and are more surly then jolly.

No it wasn't Morcilla*. I'm not sure if there was blood in this sausage that is a guess. It was ~50% fat, the edge of the fat being red, but the lean quickly blended to a dark mahogany colour. It was a dried sausage and was labeled as "Chorizo de X" Unfortunately, I have forgotton what the "X" was. * also delicious, had several types that contained either rice of chunks of fat.

Nah. Not being British, I don't really like cold toast, so hot freshly made toast follows.

I like my porridge to be made from rolled oats and cooked for at least 10 minutes to break up the starch and produce that excellent 'jellied effect'. I don't really like the scottish style oats, although I take it with salt, not sweet. My immediate 'forebears'* had the good luck to live on the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic. From memory they ate bread with proscuitto and red wine for breakfast. *Is it not "three-bears" when porridge is being discussed?

In addition to haggis, the 'Full Scottish Breakfast' also can contain fried potato scone, white pudding and fruit pudding (like a slice of Christmas pudding, fried in bacon fat). By comparison the Full English is a meal for whimps on a diet. If I could eat without consequence I would have a jugged kipper or smoked haddock with brown bread and butter (alternating with fried liver and eggs), Marmalade and toast to follow. Builders tea obviously. But mostly I have a bannana and a coffee.

I'm slightly confused by this. Is this refering to Spanish chorizo imported from Spain or Spanish style chorizo produced in the US? I am no expert on Chorizo (but boy, wouldn't I like to be ), but I have just come back from Andalusia this week. In the small subset (~15 types) I tried there was an hugh amount of variation. Some finely ground, some coarse, some with >50 fat content, some leaner, some bright clear red, some a dark (addition of blood), some soft in texture, some hard. And then there was the dried types.. For breakfast in Seville there was often a bowl of chirizo fat avalible to spread on tostada (was very nice). Crumbled and mixed with 50% ground pork and cooked with garlic/shallots, reduced with a little fresh apple juice and mixed with chickpeas, parsley, makes a good filling for empanada. The same filling, without the apple juice or chickpeas can be used to stuff mushroom caps and then grilled makes a nice tapa. Roasted with asparagus is good (squeeze of lemon juice over to serve). Grilled chorizo served with fresh oysters is also very good. But you need lots of both.

1876 edition of Francatelli's "The Modern Cook: A Practical Guide to the Culinary Art in All Its Branches".

Just back from a week in Andalusia, in the 'sherry triangle'. We were lucky enough to be in Sanlucar while there was a local Manzanilla and Tapas festival organised by the local restaurants (I think). As my Spanish is poor (actually non-existant) I tend to order things haphazardly, one tapa was a dish of 20-30 snails in a Manzanilla broth. I think that these were Helix lactea and very delicious they were too. Tasting of the herbs that they must have been fed on.

I think that sometimes the reasons for a particuar breed to become 'rare' are logical, but sometimes it is just random drift. Sometimes a particular breed of animals becomes very popular because of percieved benefits and other breeds get maginalised. This is not to say that all old breeds are better and new breeds are inherently inferior. However, I would think that the major impact in breed/strain selection over the last 50 years or so has been almost largely ecomomically based . I doubt that something as un-important as flavour and has played much a factor. Hence, the invention and market dominance of the 6-week maturing supermarket chicken and the marketing of 'flavourful' chickens as a niche market I guess.

One imagines that they way the animals are reared and fed and how the meat is processed will have as much impact on quality as the breed itself. The most rare bred of pig in Britain will still produce crap bacon if it is fed crap and cured poorly. After all the only real definition of a rare breed (although I am sure that there are various societies and specific definitions) is that there isn't many of them about. Before the Durham Ox short horn cattle were rare in the UK, now long horn cattle are, who knows what tastes better and to whom. Tastes change over time ater all. Which I guess means that there is a need for some type of guide to what are the qualities of a particular breed. Tamworth pigs are tough and hardy, but do they produce better bacon then a Middle-White or a G.O.S.? Difficult to produce such a guide I guess, after all has it really been achieved for things like UK fruit types or veg. strains?

Peasant? Not the first time I have made that mistake pre-first coffee of the morning. As it will be some time before the choucroute (partridge salmi next dinner party, holiday in Spain, 17th century dinner party etc), I use the basic method from Robert Freson's "The Taste of France" (from a series in the Sunday Times in the early '80s) and chapters on the French provinces by eg Richard Olney, Alan Davidson, Arabella Boxer. This is a terrific book BTW and if you can get a second hand copy, you will be very lucky. Excellent photographs. A fairly standard recipe (often I bake the choucroute, rather then ontop of the stove), except that it contains kitsch and juniper barries and it tastes wonderful, unlike many similar recipes.

Moby - bit late now but that sounds like some very interesting ingredients. RE: thickness of the rind, well I guess it will depend on the age and the breed of the pig (possibly depends on if they are front or back legs, but I suspect that they only use the back), most likely the former. You remind me that I have some tiny G.O.S. trotters, sweet breads and pork cheeks in the freezer. As soon as the younger peasants come into season I think that it calls for a Choucroute Garni.

RS - Puff Pastry is very common in 17th century English cookbooks, so I imagine that its invention pre-dates this period. Some Pastry History Tuscan apparently. Not sure if this can be correct, as I am not sure about the use of butter in historical Tuscan cooking.

We Australians forgive our Kiwi cousins for their un-intentional slights, their cricket team and Merlots are punishment enough.

Zap. Is done.

Rusk is bread or related products that are re-backed until dry (Melba toast is posh rusk). For sausages these are powdered and added to the meat. I think that in the UK a sausage has to have 65% meat legally, so you can get sausages that are a third rusk. In Scotland, they sometimes use oatmeal rather then rusk as the filler.

All lovely wines. I regret the avalibility of the diversity of Australian wines in the UK. Recently I paid 40 Euro for a bottle of 1990 Tahbilk Marsanne (was one of mine wedding wines, so had to be bought) in Dublin. As for the origin of Muscat in Rutherglen. It looks cmplicated but this may help. Muscat

I believe (could be wrong here) that 'Mussaman' means Muslim and refers to the use of spices dried spices in the dish.

rjs1 - here is a link to Mamster and Pim's Thai cooking eGCI. Guess what recipe is first. eGCI Thai food

There is something very odd about your sausages. Pre-cooked the diameter of the plain sausage is much smaller then the 'finest' range, yet after cooking they are much closer. Either the inest are shrinking more or, more frighteningly, the plain pork are growing... I like sausages, but I do think that 20% rusk is optimistic (at least in my neck of the wood). Some bangers I have seen should be sold at the bakers, not the butchers considering the lack of meat. Oh, you menu looks pretty perfect to me, don't change a thing.

How interesting. It seems when in doubt over a snails ID, it is likely to be Theba pisana. I enjoyed them very much and curse myself for not ever being able to locate the restuarant again. These same snails are a major pest species in California, they should eat them rather then poisoning them.

Well the it looks lovely, and it must be very happy making to be living with an orchard. Good luck with the weather for the day. Can you cook rabbit with apples BTW?

I would guess that the 'tiny snails' were the same species (Theba pisana)as we have discussed on the Italian forum. Tiny snail I have eaten these in Barcelona (in a rice dish) and they are quite common. edit: Quite common around the world, not sure about Spain specifically.