Recipe: Rumbledethumps

Onions. Cabbage. Potatoes. They don't sound very exciting, do they? On their own, they might not amount to much. But taken together, they're a winning combination.

There's something about both onions and cabbage that makes them go wonderfully well with potatoes - especially when they're all mashed up and cooked together. You see it in dishes like bubble and squeak (from northern England), colcannon (Ireland) and Stamppot (Netherlands).

The Scottish version is called rumbledethumps - or sometimes rumblethumps. It's a delicious dish that can provide plenty of sustenance on a cold day. It's also an excellent way of using up left-over vegetables. It's often served as an accompaniment to a main course, but it's also good enough to make as a meal on its own.

5 August 2011: I have now moved this recipe to my main website, Veg World. My apologies for any inconvenience. You can see the recipe by following this link:

Rumbledethumps

You might also find this link useful:

Full list of vegetarian and vegan recipes.

What exactly are neeps? (And are they the same as turnips?)

You can't venture far in Scotland without coming across neeps - a staple of Scottish cuisine. This distinctive root vegetable crops up in several Scottish recipes, and is also eaten as an accompaniment to other dishes. But what exactly is it?

5 August 2011: I have now moved this article to my main website, Veg World. My apologies for any inconvenience. You can see the article by following this link:

What exactly are neeps? (Are they the same as turnips?)

Recipe: Cock-a-leekie soup, vegetarian style

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

In these chilly December days, you need a thick, sustaining soup to keep out the cold.

Cock-a-leekie is a traditional Scottish soup, usually made by slowly boiling a chicken along with leeks and rice. The chicken is then removed and served separately.

Fortunately, it's easy to make a vegetarian version of cock-a-leekie. It's just as warming as the original, and the absence of the fowl does no harm to the taste.

5 August 2011: I have now moved this recipe to my main website, Veg World. My apologies for any inconvenience. You can see the recipe by following this link:

Cock-a-leekie Soup (vegetarian style)

You might also find this link useful:

Full list of vegetarian and vegan recipes.

Book review: Scottish Traditional Recipes, by Christopher Trotter

For my first book review for this blog, I looked hard for a book of traditional Scottish recipes, written specifically for a vegetarian audience. Alas, there's no such thing - or, if there is, it's not known to Amazon or Google. There are, however, several excellent general Scottish cookbooks that include at least a sprinkling of veggie-friendly dishes.

Scottish Traditional Recipes, by Christopher Trotter, is one such volume. It's true that its main focus is on fish, meat, poultry and game (venison and salmon both make a strong appearance). But more than a few of its 130-odd recipes are either naturally vegetarian or can easily be adapted. The Vegetables and Grains chapter, for example, includes a barley risotto (but you need to use vegetable stock rather than chicken stock) and colcannon (which I always thought was from Ireland, but which has Aberdonian connections, according to the author).

Scottish cuisine: a personal view

Scotland is a beautiful country with a fine culinary tradition. Its cuisine is not based on formal recipes that have been written up in books, but rather on traditional dishes and cooking techniques that have passed down the generations. Dishes have changed over time, and, for most of them, there is no one correct way to make them. There are also many regional traditions - more than you might expect in such a small country.

Because of the country's rugged climate, and the prevalence of an outdoor way of life, Scottish cuisine tends towards the warming and sustaining: thick, nourishing soups and stews, for example, rather than delicate sauces or fancy pâtés. Many recipes are based on one-pot dishes that are cooked slowly for long periods, such as Scotch broth and cock-a-leekie soup. For the same reason, rich baked goods are also common - the Aberdeen buttery is one that comes to mind.