I have a really boring recipe to post as a supplement to the last post, and the photos are naz, and so I thought it should be attached to a novel.
Well that is my paper thin excuse for this looooooong post. Sorry in advance, but if you finish this and I catch you with your tines up, the things that the Spanish inquisition recoiled at will become a reality… Read carefully my friends. I have thumbscrews in readiness.
Personally I don’t usually like cooked raisins. They plump up and do not so much resemble their non-desiccated state as they do rabbit droppings. And sadly I have much experience with rabbit droppings.
Ok, the back-story (I always have one of these don’t I?) my parents made me join the cub scouts in order to have Wednesday nights free to…well you know what parents do…go to the pub and get rat faced usually.
The scouts were sooooo boring, and no, no one really appreciates the plaster of Paris leaf castings or the air dried clay ashtrays, no one. No matter how much you hear “Oh, that’s lovely dear!” they really mean: “Good L@rd, another piece of garbage I have to display on the mantel for a few months until the little sod forgets about it and I can pawn it off on the Salvation Army. “
I liked the Wednesdays though because I got to eat supper early and I got to eat pretty much whatever I wanted, which was always Heinz Brand “Haunted House” pasta shapes in spaghetti sauce out of a can, with buttered white bread, ahhhh gourmet at its finest.
You have to realize in context that every night was scheduled, twice a month we got food from the Chinese Chippy (A Fish and Chip Shop that also sold Chinese food modified for Scottish tastes, Chow Mein, Fried Rice, Sweet and Sour Things, Sausages in Curried Gravy, Deep Fried Black Pudding (Blood Sausage if you must know), Macaroni and Cheese Pies, Steak and Kidney Pies, and Smoked Haddock battered and deep fried with malt vinegar, yummers…), Saturdays we usually went to the local pub/hotel (See Get Stuffed! May 26th), Sundays were the Chinese Chippy or every fortnight my father would cook. He is a good cook, in the English sense; roast beef, boiled beef, or lamb, shepherd’s pie, boiled potatoes, boiled carrots, boiled turnips, boiled parsnips, boiled nettles, boiled lettuce (I kid you not), boiled Swede, boiled pudding, boiled cougettes (Zucchini), boiled onions, boiled water, boiled leg of mutton and mint sauce (Ah ha! A nice break; we had wild mint, and tried to kill it, but it just grew and grew and grew, like the raspberry bushes that eventually enveloped the garage. Then one day some bugger came sodding down one of the mutant mint plants holding a goose and yelling something about a giant, but luckily the housekeeper hit him with a shovel and we had roast goose that day, with enough to feed the local bobbies (Policemen) during the investigation. Pity about the singing harp though, it didn’t survive the blow.).
Sunday though was still a formal dinner, as were the other four nights a week, three to four courses that a wee bairn (T’was I!) was supposed to sit through and use the right fork. Without And I Must Be Very Clear; WITHOUT doing the (Insert shudder here) American thing! Bom-Bom-Bom! (Ominous Drums here). Americans flip their cutlery, holding the fork in their left hand and spearing the food to be cut and using the right hand to cut with the dinner knife. Then they do the most unspeakable thing and move the now laden fork to the right hand, (Usually though not always transferring the knife to the left hand, some place the knife on the plate which is almost correct.) then violating all the laws of decency they turn the tines of the fork up! Then they consume in this foul and sordid manner. Sometimes Americans will grip one or another piece of cutlery with their full fist resting the end of the handle of the utensil on the table, while masticating a morsel of the meal! Horrors!
Well I was screwed. My Mother, try as she might, was an American. Thus she was subjected to the type of scrutiny that one normally gives to a horse’s teeth at auction. (I like horses, but that has nothing to do with this story.)
The correct way to eat is to pretend that you are a hundred and fifty years old and hold the fork in your left hand tines down, cut the tiniest morsel off your food using your knife with the right hand in a delicate (think wasted chain smoking ballerina) slow sawing motion. Lay down you knife balanced on the rim of the plate so that the blade is toward you, but the point is away. To give you coordinates: If you are sitting across from three people and you are the center your knife should (When resting on the plate) point between the person in front of you and the peron (Eva? Eva are you there? Sorry that should read person) to your left. The knife should not be touching any food if it is not being used. Using your left hand (From which the fork has not left at this point) transfer the morsel to your mouth hole. DO NOT at any time turn the tines of the fork up. Tines up are a sign of disrespect and war. (This is one of the reasons that desserts such as cake are served with tiny spoons, you can turn those bowl side up, though I am sure that the British fought against that, I think that is what the Boer War was fought over.)
What about the sides? All those wonderful vegetables that the British Isles are so famous for, always boiled to a thick paste? Again tines down, with your left hand hold your fork in readiness. With the right use your knife to delicately spackle the under side of the fork with the paste (Turnips, potatoes, mushy peas, carrots etc…are well with this). Then again lay down the knife in the procedure described above. Remember above all that food should enter the mouth, however one should endevour to not use the lips or teeth to remove food from the fork (Tines down). The food should be just speared or spackled on so that once ot reaches the area of the face that is appropriate it will jump off the fork (TINES DOWN I TOLD YOU TINES DOWN! No one listens to me.) and into the mouth. If you require extra chewing time, your fork must be laid upon the plate in a mirror image of knife position number one described above.
You may pick up your knife and fork again once you have completed mastication of the food in question. Follow instructions above, and repeat.
How does one eat a Hamburger you may ask? With a knife and fork, following the points laid out as above. A Hamburger may be too large for a single bite, so you may have to dissect it into portions on your plate before following the above instructions for civilized dining.
Fried Chicken? Well it usually doesn’t arise, the Scots and the English may live on deep fried food, but chicken? Chicken was more expensive than fish. Though in the late 70’s we had a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Downtown Aberdeen. It was SWWEEEEEEET. I loved the plastic seats, and how it looked like every Kentucky Fried Chicken in America, except that the building was pushing two hundred years old. However you use your knife to divide the chicken from the bones, utilizing your fork (Tines down!), then you cut the chicken into morsels and they jump into your face holes!
Pizza? Again, it really didn’t come up too much. My Mother being and Italian-Transylvanian-Norwegian-Irish-American made pizza at home to the delight of the village populace and the huge American Oil Rig Workers so far from home. She would make enough dough for a couple dozen Pizzas and recruit neighbours to “Borrow” their ovens to cook masses of Pizza for American Pizza parties. A great feat considering that pepperoni was available only at the American Food Store in Torrey, or from a couple of Italian Delis in “Auld Aberdeen”. The cheese had to be made at home though. Old tea towels filled with coagulated milk hanging from hooks in the Garage (Pronounced Gaah-Raj) dripping on the floor and bringing in the rabbits, and the hedgehogs, and the shrews, and voles and other ‘orrid creatures.
Long story short (you just know here is where I am going to ramble a bit more, C’est le merd) , Pizza is always eaten with a knife and fork. Yet again in Aberdeen we had a Pizza Hut, in a fake Tudor granite building downtown. On one auspicious occasion when my Grandmother (Born two months after the Titanic went down in 1912) was visiting. I thought it would be nice to show Grandmama some “American Style” food at the Pizza Hut on the second story of the vast fake Tudor monstrosity after a trip to the Anthropological Museum at Marischal (Pronounced Marshal) College, and a runner at the Art Museum where they have the first “Tomato Soup Can” by Andy Warhol and all of the two storey columns in the rotunda are made out of semi-precious stone. She was not impressed, got to give her credit though; her town is just so picturesque (With the Tudor rows, Roman City Walls, Black and White pre-plague buildings and even a real Roman Theatre. F#@k! How could we compete with that?)
Well maybe I was proud of my adopted home town, we had nothing to build with but granite, (Even in the 80’s our wood came from Norway) and we carved and teased as twisted the stone as much as the chisel and hammer would allow; Corinthian and Gothic, Ionic, Tudor and most of all Baronial, into a city of columns and pinnacles, towers and turrets. In 1988 there were three hundred and sixty five towers or spires that dominated the landscape. Three were damaged in a terrible hurricane (That tossed five hundred year granite spires into the slate roofs, and ripped slate from buildings country wide) and one was lost because it was unsafe (Sadness, Aberdeen is built on artificial streets, the hills are so difficult that between one street and another there may be a five story difference, in the ninetieth century they built bridges that spanned the hills (These are called the Viaducts) in the depressions they built the railroads, and covered the sloping lands with terraced parks. Union Terrace is the most spectacular of these being redone in 1903 to accomadate a giant pigeon crapper (Called the Apotheosis of Edward the VII, with oversized undulating angels et al.) and a real people crapper, a public toilet. Giant, with (I describe only the Gentelmans room, I have never seen the Ladies Room) vast porcelain urinals stretching out as far as the eye can see, and stall! Oh, each toilet stall, each stall! Solid walnut, polished to the finest sheen, and unadulterated. (Though Graphiti was the call of the day the “Edward Toilets” were always free, no one, no matter how anti establishment sullied those walls, and it’s not as if J@sus himself ever had a quick “Ohhh that’s better” people just didn’t, now across the street at C&A, ewww we are so not going there.) Each stall backed up to the terrace and had a stained glass window, detailed and jeweled, and strangly enough a central oval that was like a bizarre magnifying glass. I suppose that this was just for the men but I do not know. Technically men spend a lot of time standing up, so if you were in a stall instead of the hand painted urinals, you could see a close up of the lower terraces though the central oval, but it was farther away, than it was in reality. Like a birds eye camera lens? Odd, maybe the designer was a pervert because I swear you could actually see women’s ankles as they strolled along the terrace. Ankles? Hookers! Showing their ankles like common strumpets! Oh, perhaps it was the fact that there was a caretaker. Ummm ok, so that is the life I want. I can see it now: “Daddy, so the other kids at school say that you are a sewer worker?”
“A Sewer worker? Ha, you can hold you head up high son because I am the P!$$ taker at the Edward VII Toilets. Hold your head High son, I am the guardian of the Urinal Cakes.”
This I believe is a position that (like that of the Keeper of the Keys) is a hereditary position. It must go something like this:
“Who tries to utilize His Majesties Toilets? Who Goes There? Friend or Foe”
“Friend”
“Then friend, give the password.”
“The password?”
“Yes..the password..come on Derek, we have been through this… the password”
“Oh, Right! Ummm”
“DEREK”
“Je$@s, Give me a mo’ I know I had it written down here somewhere.”
“It’s “Cogito ergo sum” you dumb sheep boinker!”
“Bugger, now you’ve just told me!”
“Right, that’s done I need to get off shift. My tea is getting cold.”
“Well, uuh so have I given you the password?”
“S#!t, right bugger my tea, like I don't have a life. Ok, lets start over…Who goes there? Friend or foe?”
“I hope friend, but your Mildred is all in a state after las’ Friday, I didn’t mean to be sick in the ficus, it was just there...”
“Will you shut up!”
“Sorry.”
“FRIEND OR FOE? YOU FESTERING PILE OF DOGS YOU KNOW WHAT!”
“Well if that’s the way you are going to be about it then foe you sod. And here is me with some biscuits that my Stacey made an’ all”
“Biscuits? Stacey? Your Stacey? With the jam centers?”
“Aye, of course the jam centers.”
“Oh well, pass friend.”
"You 'ave the keys?"
"Bugger the keys, I think old Fred flushed them down the Jerry."
"Oh RumF@#e$ Flashbacks of the war again?"
"Nah, just bad acid."
The point of that, was that once upon a time there was an area of Aberdeen off Union Terrace that was called the “Triple Kirk” because you could see three churches from the backside. From the front they were Churches that face the street with buildings built up against each side. From the back they were supported by vast vaults and flying buttresses. The Triple Kirk. Well if you look it up on Google you might find photo’s by George Washington Wilson, Scotland’s Ansel Adams. However they tore down the one one the north end because the spire was made out of imported brick, and was red, and was dangerously in the state that bricks were unfortunately tossing off and incapacitating the passersby. Sadly it had to go.
Oh Rabbit poop, that’s what I was writing about. Well when you have wild rabbits you have rabbit poop, and it looks like plumped up raisins, and its gross and gets all over your lawn.This was one of the few reasons that you could own a gun in 70's-80's Scotland...Rabbit infestation. Or Wallaby's some Brass'Stud brought over some Wallaby's from Terra Ingognita, the council had an order kill on sight all Wallaby's...all...
For some reason that just took 2500 words to say the short phrase “Rabbits Suck”.
Oh and they don’t taste good either.
Annnnd, I got so caught up in the above that I almost forgot to post the recipe, OY!
Ingredients for Turkish Rice:
3 Tablespoons of butter or olive oil
½ Onion chopped
1 ½ Cups of long grain rice
2 ½ Cups of vegetable stock
4 Tablespoons of chopped parsley
¼ cup of raisins soaked din warm water for 10 minutes
1 Teaspoon of salt
½ Teaspoon of pepper
½ Teaspoon of allspice
½ Teaspoon of cinnamon
Heat the butter or oil in a skillet and cook the onion until transparent, add the rice and cook 1-2 minutes till coated in oil. Add the seasonings and the raisins and stir a couple of times till fragrant, add the stock and bring to the boil. Reduce temperature to low, cover and steam for 15 minutes till rice is tender.
Sprinkle with paprika for serving.
Serves six happy peeps, or messed up peeps, like those peeps that get left in the glove compartment over the summer and you don’t discover them again until next Easter? Those are some messed up peeps.
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