Oatcakes

"are they one step up from the dreaded rice cake in your pantheon of worthy but dull foods?" Felicity Cloake

After yesterday's rhapsodising about bread and butter - plus the cheese I added to them, I had a mini guilt episode about so much cholesterol laden food, and yet again decided I should eat more oats. Well grains in general really, but specifically oats are supposed to be good for decreasing cholesterol. Currently I take pills, like a large proportion of the population but, yes it would be better to get it down naturally.

I quite like the taste of oats, although porridge literally sickens me so my thoughts turned to Scottish oatcakes - maybe because they presented another opportunity to eat cheese, which would actually rather defeat the purpose. Although almost all the photographs that I saw of Scottish oatcakes with cheese featured blue cheese, and I really, really don't like blue cheese. Which I know excludes me from being a true gourmet but I have grown to accept that over the years.

The example in my opening photograph is from a website called Ancestral Kitchen whose recipe for Traditional Scottish oatcakes may indeed be the most authentic and also, I have to admit, the least tempting looking of all. They do indeed look ancient and basic - even marginally grey and even mouldy - but that's good isn't it?

Oats, one writer said, are the only grain crop that will grow in Scotland which is why when we say oatcakes we generally immediately think of Scotland. But there are regional variations from all over Northern England and Wales, where oats were also a main crop, and from as far away as Nova Scotia, whose version of Nova Scotia oatcakes is presented by Molly Watson on The Spruce Eats website, where she comments that the main difference is in the shape although they also added a bit of sugar, which is not the usual Scottish way - and in Novia Scotia they seem to regard them as a potential dessert too:

"The taste of oatcakes is unique. They have a magical flavor that is sweet, but not too sweet, and a bit salty. Part dessert, but mainly a snack, oatcakes are cookie-like but sort of cracker-like too—very much like hobnob biscuits." Molly Watson/The Spruce Eats

Then there's the Staffordshire oatcake, which is a different thing altogether really - a kind of pancake in which you wrap things like bacon. The only common denominators it seems to me are the oats and the cooking on a griddle. And it therefore deserves a post all of its own someday.

While we are on what oatcakes are not however, I might just mention the drop scone - Paul Hollywood's version - Oatmeal drop scones is shown here. I mention it because Elizabeth David in her academic tome English Bread and Yeast Cookery, in her introduction to the chapter on griddle cakes, which included several oatcake recipes says:

"I would have liked to include a few scone recipes in this chapter, but once you start on scones, where do you stop?" Elizabeth David

Which is true of any number of dishes dear to people's hearts including oatcakes. And she sort of agrees by saying:

"I have not attempted here to give descriptions of the many versions of Scots oaten cakes and barley bannock or of the ancient traditions and rites connected with them. These would make an absorbing study."

But speaking of ancient rites, and skipping from here and there, what about this?

Neil Buttery, when writing on his website Neil Cooks Grigson, mentioned his delight at finding this picture of a crop circle as old as 1678. So I investigated, and found a larger picture on a website called Time Travel - Britain and these words from its author Joanna Emery:

"One late summer's day in 1678, an English farmer and a poor mower were arguing over the cost of harvesting the farmer's oat field. Incensed at the mower's proposed price, the farmer swore that the Devil himself should harvest the crop and stomped off. That night, a strange, bright glow lit up the field and, the next morning, the farmer returned to find round circles where the crop had been 'neatly mowed by the Devil, or some infernal spirit'. Each crop stalk had apparently been placed with such 'exactness that it would have taken above an age for any man to perform what he did in that one night'. The event frightened the farmer enough that he subsequently decided to abandon any attempt at harvesting the strange circle."

I confess I'm a bit of a cynic when it comes to crop circles, but it seems that they are still the subject of much speculation including this:

"the few eyewitness accounts of crop circle formations that do exist describe a large 'ball of fire' lasting for only a few minutes. By morning, a crop circle has occurred in the exact same location" Joanna Emery/Time Tavel - Britain

They occur all over the world but the majority are in England - in Wiltshire too - Stonehenge and all that. Some have been ascribed to humans, but most - still a mystery.

An obituary of Michael Glickman a former architect who studied them in great detail for over twenty years, said that:

"he liked to suggest that, whoever the circlemakers may be, they offer the formations as toys on the nursery floor – just to see what we’ll make of them." Mike Leigh

A huge digression. From ancient religions, UFOs and sheer beauty - to the plain, basic and everyday beauty of even more ancient oatcakes.

So oatcakes. In her piece How to cook perfect oatcakes Felicity Cloake tries several different recipes to arrive at her own, discussing the various variations - what kind of oatmeal, what kind of fat, how much of each, eggs?, raising agents? and so on. When I looked at other people's recipes, I too found all manner of variation, particularly I have to say when it came to the oats - porridge oats, quick oats, rolled oats, pinmeal oats meadium oatmeal ... so when I looked at my last found recipe - not online - from Bert Greene in his Grains Cookbook where he calls them Griddle scones, I was delighted to see that he chose quick rolled oats - easily available anywhere and, as his first step said: "Place the oats in the container of a food processor, and process until fine."

It was a pretty simple recipe too and only produced 6 scones as opposed to the three dozen of these, admittedly delicious looking, Pure and simple, natural savoury oatcakes from a website called Please Pass the Recipe - and just look at the amount of blue cheese on one of them! So much for cholesterol busting.

The other main bone of contention was whether to cook them on a griddle, in a frying pan - preferably cast iron - for the purists, on the stove or in the oven. However, the writer of the Ancestral Kitchen recipe, consolingly said:

"I have cooked these both on the stove using a cast iron pan and also in the oven. The results are quite different and I’d suggest trying both."

Neil Buttery always tries to remain true to Jane Grigson and also to ancient traditions which she sometimes talks about. In his introduction to her recipe for Oatcakes he amusingly lists all the special equipment you are supposed to have:

"a spurtle, which is a wooden stick used for stirring and mixing and it looks a bit like Harry Potter’s wand; a special rolling pin called a bannock-stick that leaves a criss-cross pattern on the rolled out dough; a spathe, a special piece of equipment that is used to move the oatcakes from board to girdle that is heart-shaped with a long handle; then there is the banna-rack, a toaster used to dry the oatcakes." Neil Buttery/Neil Cooks Grigson

He also tells us that traditionally, so Jane Grigson tells us we have to: ‘toast lightly before the fire before serving them.' ’Which he did, on a visit to a friend who had a suitable fiery hearth.

To my mind this is a perilous thing to do because of the inherent crunchiness of the oatcakes. Wouldn't they all fall apart? Their crunchiness is undeniable and desirable - Felicity Cloake recommends saving the crumbs to scatter over things, and Ancestral Kitchen describes them thus:

"Biting into a freshly-made, golden oatcake is a complete joy! First, there’s the satisfying snap as it breaks. Then the crumbly, crunchy oats impart their toasty flavour, and, as you chew, you understand why oats are called the ‘golden’ cereal. Oatcakes are the taste equivalent of a bountiful harvest on a sunny, summer’s day."

Nevertheless Neil's didn't collapse and he "loved how they all curved and curled as they cooked". He gave them a score of 8 out of 10 and then, saying:

"These were very good indeed, they were good and salty and the slightly sweet glaze counteracted it perefectly. Most importantly the almost too-heavy seasoning brought out the lovely toasted oatiness."

Which sounds as if they met Felicity Cloake's criteria of:

"An oatcake shouldn't melt in the mouth, but neither should it require a chaser of dental floss."

To close - just because I found a couple more recipes - one from America, one from somebody called Bee on Jamie Oliver's website: Scottish Oatcakes - Genevieve Yam/Serious Eats and Bee's homemade oatcakes - Jamie Oliver - more lashings of blue cheese.

So choose the ones you like the look of most and have a go. With or without blue cheese.

YEARS GONE BY

March 28

2024 - Odd couple - Smoked trout and carrots

2023 - Nothing

2022 - Nothing

2021 - Fish pie and Fridays

2020 - Deleted

2019 - Nothing

2018 - An absolutely delicious 50c lunch - still the same price

2017 - Competing with food