You are a character in a fantasy novel. Congratulations: you have been invited to a feast. The first course is already on the table when you arrive: strange, small fruits and pungent cheeses, goblets brimming with wine, tiny salted fish, smoked meats.
Outlander Kitchen: The Official Outlander Companion Cookbook
352Outlander Kitchen: The Official Outlander Companion Cookbook
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Overview
“If you thought Scottish cuisine was all porridge and haggis washed down with a good swally of whiskey, Outlander Kitchen’s here to prove you wrong.”—Entertainment Weekly
Claire Beauchamp Randall’s incredible journey from postwar Britain to eighteenth-century Scotland and France is a feast for all five senses, and taste is no exception. From Claire’s first lonely bowl of porridge at Castle Leoch to the decadent roast beef served after her hasty wedding to Highland warrior Jamie Fraser, from gypsy stew and jam tarts to fried chicken and buttermilk drop biscuits, there are enough mouth-watering meals along the way to whet the appetite of even the most demanding palate.
Now professional chef and founder of OutlanderKitchen.com Theresa Carle-Sanders offers up this extraordinary cuisine for your table. Featuring more than one hundred recipes, Outlander Kitchen retells Claire and Jamie’s incredible story through the flavors of the Scottish Highlands, the French Revolution, and beyond. Yet amateur chefs need not fear: These doable, delectable recipes have been updated for today’s modern kitchens. Here are just a few of the dishes that will keep the world of Outlander on your mind morning, noon, and nicht:
• Breakfast: Yeasted Buckwheat Pancakes; A Coddled Egg for Duncan; Bacon, Asparagus, and Wild Mushroom Omelette
• Appetizers: Cheese Savories; Rolls with Pigeons and Truffles; Beer-Battered Corn Fritters
• Soups & Stocks: Cock-a-Leekie Soup; Murphy’s Beef Broth; Drunken Mock-Turtle Soup
• Mains: Peppery Oyster Stew; Slow-Cooked Chicken Fricassee; Conspirators’ Cassoulet
• Sides: Auld Ian’s Buttered Leeks; Matchstick Cold-Oil Fries; Honey-Roasted Butternut Squash
• Bread & Baking: Pumpkin Seed and Herb Oatcakes; Fiona’s Cinnamon Scones; Jocasta’s Auld Country Bannocks
• Sweets & Desserts: Black Jack Randall’s Dark Chocolate Lavender Fudge; Warm Almond Pastry with Father Anselm; Banoffee Trifle at River Run
With gorgeous photographs and plenty of extras—including cocktails, condiments, and preserves—Outlander Kitchen is an entertainment experience to savor, a wide-ranging culinary crash course, and a time machine all rolled into one. Forget bon appétit. As the Scots say, ith do leòr!
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781101967584 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Random House Publishing Group |
Publication date: | 06/14/2016 |
Sold by: | Random House |
Format: | eBook |
Pages: | 352 |
Sales rank: | 377,346 |
File size: | 112 MB |
Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
My Outlander Kitchen
Pantry
A time-traveling kitchen requires a versatile pantry. Many ingredients we have come to depend on in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries were not common, or even in existence, in the eighteenth. Other ingredients that were staples two hundred years ago have been lost to our industrialized food system that, in many ways, values convenience over taste and nutrition.
That said, aside from the game meats and a few spices, you won’t find a lot of exotic ingredients in Outlander Kitchen. I did most of my shopping while writing it in my small island’s (population 2,200) grocery store. For the rest, I ventured into the big city and its specialty shops and superstores. When that failed, I always found what I was looking for online, a few short days away by mail.
Remember that a recipe is a guideline, not a blueprint. Use what you have and find inspiration for substitutions in your pantry, rather than buying ingredients that you may use only once. For my part, I’ve tried to avoid pantry one-hit wonders—ingredients you buy for a single recipe and never use again. In most cases, if I call for an exotic spice or condiment, you’ll find it in at least one other recipe; for example, rosewater is used to flavor the Almond Squirts (page 272) as well as the Buttermilk Lamb Chops with Rosewater Mint Sauce (page 136).
Read the recipe through at least once before you go shopping, then again before you start cooking. Prep all of your ingredients before you begin, and I promise you will find that everything goes much more quickly and smoothly, and that cooking along with your favorite books can actually be an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours, or even a whole afternoon.
Below are a few notes about common Outlander Kitchen pantry staples.
Butter In restaurant and industrial kitchens, where the recipes are made to serve dozens or even hundreds, the differences between salted and unsalted butter make a big difference. At home, I use salted and unsalted butter interchangeably for most things—the difference is negligible when you’re cooking for smaller numbers. Unless I specify one or the other in a recipe, use what you have on hand.
Buttermilk A frequent ingredient in the recipes that follow, and a staple in my fridge. From time to time, however, I find myself without any and have a craving for Mrs. Bug’s Buttermilk Drop Biscuits (page 246). Although not quite the real thing, either of these substitutions works in a pinch:
● Stir together 1 cup milk and 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar. Let stand 15 minutes at room temperature until thickened and curdled.
● Stir together ¾ cup plain yogurt or sour cream and ¼ cup milk. Let stand 10 minutes at room temperature.
Cornstarch Primarily used as a thickener, cornstarch is known as corn flour in most places outside North America.
Cream Use whipping cream (30 to 35% fat) and heavy cream (36% and up) interchangeably in Outlander Kitchen recipes. Substitute double cream (up to 48% fat) for extra richness. The more fat cream has, the more stable its whipped peaks, and the more heat and acid it can withstand before curdling. Other recipes call for light cream, also known as “single” and “table” cream, which are all different names, depending on your geographic location, for cream that has about 18 to 20% fat.
Eggs I always use large eggs. Once separated, yolks should be used immediately, but the whites will keep in the fridge up to five days or in the freezer up to a month. Use them to bulk out a Bacon, Asparagus, and Wild Mushroom Omelette (page 45), for a sweet batch of Almond Squirts (page 272), or beat one with a drop of water and a pinch of salt to make an egg wash for pastry.
Flour All-purpose flour in North America is sold as plain flour just about everywhere else. When baking with whole wheat flour, I use stone-ground flour exclusively.
Herbs I use fresh herbs liberally, just like cooks of the past, to add flavor and aroma. Even those with black thumbs find most herbs relatively easy to grow in a variety of climates. Most of my herb garden regularly survives the relatively mild winters of the Pacific Northwest, but others in more extreme climates keep small pots of herbs on a windowsill during cold months, or buy what they need from the produce section. When fresh herbs are unavailable, substitute about half the amount of dry.
Nutmeg This much-prized seed of a tree native to the Spice Islands of Indonesia was popular for centuries as a spice, medicine, and preservative. Preground nutmeg is tasteless. Buy it whole and grate it, as needed, on a rasp.
Oatmeal Unlike in most of North America, where oatmeal refers to cooked oat porridge, in Britain, oatmeal refers to a meal, from coarse to fine, ground from hulled oats. Traditionally ground on a millstone, it is used extensively in Scottish cooking to make everything from a dense parritch to scones and haggis. I make my own oatmeal by grinding rolled oats in my food processor or coffee grinder. See Grinding Grains, Nuts, and Seeds (page 10).
Oats Advances in oat processing in the late nineteenth century resulted in the development of steel-cut oats, as well as rolled oats. I keep both types in my pantry, and while I tend to prefer steel-cut’s texture and nuttiness for my morning parritch, rolled is what I reach for when I am baking.
Oil While I use the generic term “vegetable oil” in all of my recipes, I specifically use sunflower or safflower oil for salad dressings and to pan-fry; to deep fry, I use peanut, avocado, or coconut oil. When a recipe calls for olive oil, I use extra-virgin.
Pepper Pepper was ridiculously expensive historically, and it was used sparingly, yet there were more varieties available to a cook in a wealthy eighteenth-century kitchen than most of us keep now. Expand your horizons with Jamaican or Balinese long pepper, and pick up some ground white pepper to keep cream sauces and pale dishes unmarred by black flakes.
Salt My mother calls me a snob for my shelf of salt, and she’s probably right. There is a time and place for every salt, but I use kosher salt the vast majority of the time. I prefer it for its flaky texture and lack of processing. Because its large flakes take up more space in a measuring spoon, it takes more kosher salt than regular table salt to season a dish, so if you are using table salt, use about half the amount of the kosher salt called for.
Stock Homemade stock is a relatively inexpensive source of protein, nutrition, and flavor that is undervalued and underused in many kitchens today. Most people cite time as the number one reason they avoid making it, and I can’t argue that stock does take some time. But if you are going to be around the house anyway, why not start a pot? Once it’s simmering, turn on the exhaust fan and walk away, remembering to check back every thirty minutes or so. All of that said, at the end of a long, hard day, any of the following recipes can be made with packaged stock. Look for no-salt or reduced-salt varieties, or use a very light hand with the salt during cooking.
Sugar Unless otherwise noted, any mention of sugar refers to granulated. Confectioners’, or powdered, sugar is also known as icing sugar outside the United States.
Whisky Scottish regulations require all bottles bearing the label “scotch” to contain whisky distilled in Scotland from malted barley (or, less commonly, rye or wheat), and aged in oak casks for a minimum of three years. Single malt whisky is produced entirely from barley malt in one distillery, while blended whisky generally contains whisky from many distilleries.
Whiskey American whiskey is defined under the law as that which is distilled from a fermented mash of cereal grain (barley, corn, wheat, rye, etc.) and aged, at least briefly, in new charred-oak casks. Arguably the most popular style of American whiskey is bourbon, made from a mash containing at least 51% corn.
White vermouth (dry) My shelf-stable substitute for white wine in cooking. It is handy to have on hand when you need a little wine to deglaze a pan, but don’t want to open a bottle.
Yeast I use instant yeast (also known as fast-rising, rapid-rise, quick-rise, or bread machine yeast) exclusively. It is easier to use, as it does not require proofing in water like active-dry yeast, and I find its results more consistent.
Table of Contents
Foreword Diana Gabaldon xi
Introduction xiii
My Outlander Kitchen 3
Pantry 3
Equipment 6
Glossary and Techniques 9
Conversion Tables 13
Chapter 1 Basic Recipes 17
Hot Broth at Castle Leoch (Brown Chicken Stock) 20
Murphy's Beef Broth (White Beef Stock) 22
Vegetable Stock 24
Short Crust Pastry 27
Blitz Puff Pastry 29
Crowdie Cheese 31
Basic Salad Dressing 33
Chapter 2 Breakfast 35
Mrs. FitzGibbons's Overnight Parritch 36
Potato Fritters 38
A Coddled Egg for Duncan 41
Bacon, Asparagus, and Wild Mushroom Omelette 45
Mrs. Bug's Cinnamon Toast 47
Yeasted Buckwheat Pancakes 49
Young Ian's Sage and Garlic Sausage 52
Chapter 3 Soups 55
Geillis's Cullen Skink 56
Cock-a-Leekie 58
Drunken Mock-Turtle Soup 61
Kale Brose with Bacon 65
Marsali's Beef (Buffalo) Tea 67
Cream of Nontoxic Mushroom Soup 69
Chapter 4 Appetizers 73
Goat Cheese and Bacon Tarts 74
Murtagh's Gift to Ellen (Puff Pastry Boar Tusks) 76
Cheese Savories (Gougères) 79
Rolls with Pigeon and Truffles 82
Mr. Willoughby's Coral Knob 85
Beer-Battered Corn Fritters 88
Mushroom Pasties 90
Chapter 5 Beef 93
Roast Beef for a Wedding Feast 94
Gypsy Stew 96
Veal Patties in Wine Sauce 99
Brianna's Bridies 101
Chapter 6 Poultry 105
Claire's Roast Chicken 106
Pheasant and Greens at Ardsmuir 109
Sweet Tea-Brined Fried Chicken 112
Slow-Cooked Chicken Fricassee 115
Chapter 7 Pork 119
Rosamund's Pulled Pork with Devil's Apple BBQ Sauce 120
Conspirators' Cassaulet 122
Ragoo'd Pork 126
Scotch Eggs 129
Bangers and Mash with Slow-Cooked Onion Gravy 132
Chapter 8 Lamb 135
Buttermilk Lamb Chops with Rosewater Mint Sauce 136
Shepherd's Pie 139
Sarah Woolam's Scotch Pies 142
Chapter 9 Game 147
Venison Stew with Tomatoe-Fruits 148
Jenny's Hare Pie 151
Chapter 10 Fish and Seafood 155
Fish Pie at the Lillingtons' 156
Steamed Mussels with Butter 159
Fish Fillets Poached in Wine 162
Peppery Oyster Stew 164
Baja Fish Tacos at the Celtic Festival 167
Trout Fried in Cornmeal 170
Chapter 11 Vegetarian 173
Vegetable Stew 174
Jenny's Onion Tart 176
Manioc and Red Beans with Fried Plantain 179
Stovie Potatoes 182
Diana Gabaldon's Cheese Enchiladas 184
Chapter 12 Pizza and Pasta 187
Roger and Bree's Pizza 188
Tortellini Portofino 190
Spaghetti and Meatballs with the Randalls 195
Chapter 13 Side Dishes 199
Dumplings in Cross Creek 200
Auld Ian's Buttered Leeks 202
Oxford Baked Beans 204
Fergus's Roasted Tatties 206
Matchstick Cold-Oil Fries 208
Broccoli Salad 210
Honey-Roasted Butternut Squash 212
Chapter 14 Breads and Baking 215
Mrs. Graham's Oatmeal Scones with Clotted Cream 216
Pumpkin Seed and Herb Oatcakes 219
Nettle Rolls 221
Brown Buns at Beauly 224
Fiona's Cinnamon Scones 227
Bannocks at Carfax Close 230
Honey-Buttermilk Oat Bread 232
Spoon Bread 236
Jocasta's Auld Country Bannocks 238
Raisin Muffins 241
Corn Muffins 244
Mrs. Bug's Buttermilk Drop Biscuits 246
Chapter 15 Sweets and Desserts 249
Governor Tryon's Humble Crumble
Apple Pie 250
The MacKenzies' Millionaire's Shortbread 252
Warm Almond Pastry with Father Anselm 255
Black Jack Randall's Dark Chocolate Lavender Fudge 258
Jam Tarts 261
Sweet Potato Pie 263
Chocolate Biscuits 267
Lord John's Upside-Down Plum Cake 269
Almond Squirts 272
Ginger-Nut Biscuits 274
Banoffee Trifle at River Run 277
Apple Fritters 279
Ulysses's Syllabub 281
Gingerbread and Fresh Crud 283
Jem's Bread Pudding with Maple Butterscotch Sauce 286
Stephen Bonnet's Salted Chocolate Pretzel Balls 289
Maple Pudding 292
Chapter 16 Drinks and Cocktails 295
The Comte St. Germain's Poison 296
Frank's Sherry Tipple 298
Atholl Brose for the Bonnie Prince 299
Hot Chocolate with La Dame Blanche 302
Laoghaire's Whiskey Sour 304
Mamacita's Sangria 306
Cherry Bounce 308
Jamie's Rusty Nail 310
Chapter 17 Preserves and Condiments 313
Quick Pickles for a Hasty Escape 314
Pickled Mushrooms 316
Fraser Strawberry Jam 318
Tomato Pickle in the Manger 321
Strawberry-White Balsamic Shrub 323
Acknowledgments 325
Recipe Index 327
About the Author 335
About the Photographer 336