Berries and Booze
When we visit Scotland in the fall, it is the season when everyone traditionally tucks into large meals of roast grouse, pheasant or partridge, served with all the trimmings on long oak tables in a draughty dining room, a roaring log fire at one end. Typically, it is nice and warm by the fire and freezing cold everywhere else. But what I enjoy most is walking along the lanes in the early evening before dinner, the hedgerows heavy with juicy blackberries. They taste so much better than the huge, identical cultivated ones that gleam temptingly in the shops. So we fill our baskets with blackberries, staining our fingers a deep purple. Part of the fun is that each berry tastes completely different. Some are scented and refreshing, some have a rich, intense flavour and some are just plain sour. And when the creamy-coloured mists descend and the purple hills are silhouetted in the distance, we plan this simple blackberry dessert that epitomizes the soft colours of the Scottish landscape. It is the perfect end to a gamey meal.
Its name is Atholl Brose, originally recorded in 1475 as a recipe for a warming, and no doubt bracing, drink. It was made from oatmeal, honey and whisky. My grandmother’s version, which we loved as children, turns it into a creamy, slightly boozy pudding. A wee dram of Scotch warmed the soul in cold, damp Scottish houses, and I don’t recall any fears that this might lead us on the alcoholic path to ruin. In fact, small amounts of alcohol were often given to children when I was young for “medicinal purposes,” usually in the form of a hot toddy, consisting of lemon juice, Scotch and hot water to ward off the beginnings of a cold. And even at my convent boarding school, those children considered underweight—quite a few because the food was inedible—were given a glass of Guinness or stout with their dinner. I made sure I was “seriously underweight” and managed to get a spoonful of amber-coloured malt after breakfast as well.
Granny told us that this delicious dessert came from her mother, who was a Johnston. The Johnstons were one of several fierce and proud Border families who from the 12th century onwards raided the smaller towns in the North of England on a yearly basis. The Johnston clan motto is Nunquam noparatus (Never unprepared) and I am sure great-grandmother Janet Johnston always had a wee flask of Scotch secreted about her person for emergencies. However, by about 1865, this branch of the well-to-do Johnston family were feeling the pinch, and Janet Johnston was hastily married off to a wealthy French silk merchant from Lyon called William Sang. I still have her pink-and-cream silk embroidered dressing-gown from her bridal trousseau, which as a teenager I wore to Hunt Balls—it was so very grand!
I doubt whether the newly well-to-do Mrs. Janet Sang ever set foot in her spacious Kitchen, with its black range and copper saucepans, but nevertheless, she must have been keen on food because she wrote out this and many other recipes in her spidery hand for her youngest daughter—my Granny—Hilda Sang, when Hildagot married in 1898 to a vicar called Wilfred Hodges.
Blackberries and Cream with Toasted Oatmeal
And then next day we head off to search for sloes, the fruit of the blackthorn. One of the most common hedgerow bushes it grows all over Britain and this year’s harvest of sloes was a bumper one.The bushes are heavily dotted with inky-blue, almost black, fruit which is inedible raw, but mix it with gin and sugar and something miraculous happens.We filled our baskets, and with daylight fading, went home and made our Sloe Gin - something I was definitely not allowed to try as a child! The result will be ready to drink by Christmas.
Sloe Gin
To make 1 3/4 pints (1 l)
1lb (450 g) sloes
6 oz (175 g) sugar
1 3/4 pints (1 l) gin
Prick the sloes several times with a fork and drop into an empty sterilised bottle.
Add the sugar. Pour in the gin. Screw the top on tightly and shake gently. Leave
in a dark place for three months while the gin transforms into sloe gin, tilting the
bottle every day or whenever you remember...Decant, leaving the sloes behind,
into a clear glass bottle and label. Enjoy sloe gin poured over home made vanilla
ice cream or serve it in small glasses as a warming after-dinner tipple.The colour
is a deep, clear purple; the flavour wonderfully unique...It is worth it to double or
treble the quantities and fill several bottles!
Theo Hodges
Theo Hodges was born in Kent. After a degree in Graphic Design she joined J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency as an Art Director working on accounts such as Rowntrees, Kraft and The Butter Council. While she was at University in Perugia, Italy she started collecting recipes from friends and family. In 1980 she set up her own design agency: Theo Hodges Design Consultants. For many years when they were young Theo, her sister and six cousins used to spend vacations at her Grandmother’s Victorian vicarage in Kent. ‘The thing about remembering childhood’ she says, is ‘there’s a whole lot of oblivion, and then out of it something floats up, quite sharp and clear. Many of the meals I can still see vividly and various recipes of mine were originally from Granny’s kitchen. ‘The kitchen garden was stuffed with raspberries, huge red dessert gooseberries, strawberries, runner beans, peas and much more with the hens in a shed at the back. But Granny only ate chicken breast and runner beans, followed by raspberries and Jersey cream - and therefore so did we. When raspberries were out of season, and in those days the season was much shorter, Granny made Victoria sponge cakes sandwiched with cream and home-made raspberry jam. On this limited but delicious diet we all thrived’. Theo’s mother was an excellent cook as well, and had been taught by the house- keeper at their house in Mougins, South of France. And once rationing was withdrawn in England in 1952 and good, fresh ingredients became available again, she amassed an enormous number of recipes which has formed the basis for Theo’s collection of family desserts.