Quest for our favourite North-East dish
March 2009
by Norman Harper
I have a challenge for you this month and a request for culinary advice. Shortly after New Year, a national charity asked if I would consider contributing to a fund-raising cookbook. Particular journalists or writers from all corners of the UK would submit a recipe for the signature dish from their region and complement it with 500 words explaining the history of the dish and why it had become so important to that part of the country.
It was not until I sat down to ponder that my predicament became clear. What is the signature dish of the North-East?
Skirlie? Onions fried in lard, butter or oil, mixed with oatmeal and cooked for five minutes is a favourite throughout our region. It might be a heart attack on a plate and turn dieticians’ hair white, but there’s no denying its comfort on a wintry day. With peas, tatties and a cup of milk, it also qualifies as a North-East staple; a hearty repast in farming times when meat, fish or healthier fare were too expensive on cottar budgets and food was about fuelling the backs of fairm chiels.
Brose, then (or knotty-tams if you know your North-East)? This close relative of skirlie was a breakfast essential for generations raised on the land.
The recipe, as explained to me many years ago by one of the worthies in the howe, is also impressively easy to follow: “One, a haunfae o oatmeal. Two, a pickie saut. Three, haud on the bilin watter. Fower, steer like buggery.”
Sticks to the ribs
This lacks the finesse of Delia, but it has the merit of working every time. The result also sticks to the ribs and lies in the stomach like nothing else, which was the whole point for a farm worker heading out for a morning’s tyauve.
My grandfather, and I don’t doubt many of your forebears, too, insisted that brose was the one dish that could not be made for anyone else.
“A man steers his ain brose best,” was the rule, and woe betide anyone who interfered at any time with the bowl, the spurtle or the speen.
What about porridge? The third in the oatmeal triumvirate qualifies as another of the founding dishes of North-East agriculture and is unusual in that it is undeniably healthy by current standards.
I know many families which still find that a plate of porridge and a cup of milk hit the spot like little else on a wintry night, which is probably why stoneground meal such as that produced at the original Montgarrie Mill, near Alford, remains in high demand.
There is a strong case, then, for any of these three to be the North-East’s signature dish. The trouble is that all of them feature in the heritage of other parts of Scotland, too, and so are not exclusive to us.
Which brings us to beef. A juicy Aberdeen-Angus steak is regarded worldwide as the pinnacle for all carnivores. I well recall meeting one of France’s top chefs at the time of BSE, when his country had slapped a ban on beef imports from the UK. He was genuinely distressed that his government had denied him access to what he described as “the sweetest, most succulent beef in the world”.
He had resorted to what he saw as second-best – Kobe beef from Japan – but longed for the day when the Elysée would abandon “this nonsense of the Scotch beef ban”. He also whispered that France was rife with more BSE than the UK ever would have, but that French farmers and civil servants were much wilier about concealing the fact.
Aberdeen-Angus beef
As for being our signature dish, there is no denying that Aberdeen-Angus beef belongs to us exclusively. I understand there is a movement near Forfar which maintains that the breed’s home is Tayside, but we will just smile benignly and let them harbour their wee illusion. It was bred a couple of miles from Alford, and Aberdeenshire, Kincardine and Banffshire are still home to the finest herds.
The problem is that beef is not a dish, as such; it’s an ingredient. I concede that it is a highly important ingredient and the finest of its type, but it cannot qualify as a dish because it can be prepared in so many different ways.
Yes, the best method is as simply as possible, with as little adulteration as the chef can manage, but as a signature recipe? Not sure.
Salmon from the Dee or the Spey, or trout from the Don fall at much the same hurdle.
Soon, other people had heard of my culinary quandary and began pitching in with suggestions that I suspect were not entirely serious. A jar of Baxter’s beetroot. A tin of Dean’s shortbread. A bottle of Hay’s Scotch Cola. Cuminestown oatcakes. Butteries from Sinclair of Rhynie.
Hang on a moment: the buttery. Which true son or daughter of the North-East has not set off on holiday with two dozen rowies in a plastic bag and rolled into a jumper in case of damage in the suitcase? Surely something which exiles pine for so pitifully can lay claim to being the North-East culinary signature.
It belongs to us as exclusively as the tart belongs to Bakewell and the pudding to Yorkshire. It is a finished dish, made better by a liberal slap of home-made strawberry jam or local heather honey. It looks like nothing else.
Alas, it is also ridiculed by non-natives. Terry Wogan once famously described it as “like eating a mouthful of the North Sea”, and very few visitors sample a second buttery willingly. Besides, the charity wants this book to raise money, not get it sued.
So I am still stuck.
I have a notion for Cullen Skink, the finest soup yet invented. Unless, of course, you have other ideas.
Norman Harper once did a year’s Cordon Bleu evening class, but was made to stand facing a corner most nights.
This is an article from the March 2009 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, see our subscription details.