GUESS WHAT’S COMING BACK TOMORROW? OUTLANDER.
OUTLANDER RETURNS. THE DROUGHTLANDER IS OVER.
I might be a bit excited.
So, I thought we’d make some Scottish bannocks! It’s a flat bread with no leavening, made with oats, or barley, or beremeal. Beremeal is a variety of barley that grows in Orkney and Shetland. It has a lower yield than regular barley, but apparently more flavor. I chose to go with oats because I already had Scottish oatmeal on hand, but if you’re in the UK, you can get beremeal from the Real Foods website. Or in gift shops on Orkney or Shetland, I bet.
Pretty much every culture has a flat bread like thing where you take a grain, some liquid, and some fat (ideally!) and cook it on a flattop of some kind. It’s basic, doesn’t require anything complex, and can be cooked with minimal equipment. I mean, you can also make it far more complicated if you want (lefse, when done properly, has special sticks and rolling pins!). More modern recipes for bannocks have leavening and things (added in the 19th century, according to the Oxford Companion to Food), but today we’re going super basic.
According to the University of Toronto Food Services website, the quintessential Native American “Fry bread” is based on the Scottish bannock. That…might….be part of the truth, but according to Sean Sherman in The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen, fry bread appeared in Native cookery because of the US government removing what was left of the Native population to reservations. As a result, the people living on reservations primarily had to rely on government-issued supplies, including white flour, lard, canned meat. Native populations were not adapted to European based food, and you can trace the high instances of diabetes, obesity, and other health problems to this control of the food supply. Sherman describes fry bread as “perseverance and pain, ingenuity and resilience.”
I’m starting with the recipe from Theresa Carle-Sanders’ Outlander Kitchen. I have some issues with her approach to historic food, but it’s still a fun cookbook and blog. I also admit that this particular recipe and blog post is centered around a very fascinating character in Drums of Autumn, which is the book that the next season of Outlander is adapting. I cannot wait to discuss things with y’all.
This is the recipe I used: Jocasta’s Auld Country Scottish Bannocks
Okay, so. I had some….issues with this. Partly, I used Bob’s Red Mill Scottish oatmeal, because I had it, and seemed to fall into the category of “coarsely ground.” Well, reader, it wasn’t coarsely ground enough. There wasn’t much structural integrity.
It was….toasted oatmeal.
So I thought, okay, we can try this again. Only this time I’ll grind up the oats in my medieval mortar and pestle.
And sieve the flour.
I sieved grain for you guys.
Anyway, there were still some structural integrity issues. However, the texture was much better.
I cooked it for about five minutes on each side, and it was pleasantly chewy and nutty!
Then I put some golden syrup on it because I’m out of honey and that was damn delicious. What we’ve learned here is that golden syrup on oatmeal is the shizz.
That maybe wasn’t the intended lesson, but let’s take what we can get.
Anyway, someday I’ll try bannocks with beremeal. Join us every week during this season of Outlander! There’s gonna be a lot to talk about.
Coincidentally, I’ve been perusing my (autographed, em, em)copy of Outlander Kitchen deciding what to bring to the annual premier pot luck tomorrow night. I don’t think it will be bannocks. Maybe for breakfast tomorrow as I seem to have everything needed.
Thanks for the post, and looking forward to the recap posts. I’ll be taking notes.
Also, I wonder how many other groups get together for dinner and Outlander? I know of two. I absolutely recommend it.
In Canada we actually do call the First Nations version bannock (rather than fry bread which I’ve never heard before). It definitely predates the existence of reserves on this side of the border. We had to make and eat some as part of my grade 7 social studies class and it was… uninspiring… but I have no idea how much research my teacher did and also it was made by a bunch of 12 year olds… But this recipe sounds much more appealing! Definitely putting it on my list to try!
Pure oatmeal doughs are hard to handle, the complete lack of gluten means they don’t hold together at all well so I think you’ve done very well! Golden syrup was my favourite thing to put on porridge when I was little, and what would flapjacks be without it?
Golden syrup? Oats? Just make flapjacks (as per Jazzlet’s comment) and have done with it. The very best way to combine the two things, in my experience, although usually the recipe does involve adding butter and sugar, so not the healthy option.
They are also good made with condensed milk, if you care to make them even worse for you.
Now craving flapjacks, but only cold pizza available.
Bannocks sound a lot like corn pone. You’ve made me very nostalgic for my dad’s corn pone cakes that he made in his skillet, complete with his hand print on each one. They were great with butter and honey.
I’m behind on Outlander. I had to take a break because it was making me so tense–which is ridiculous because it’s not as if I don’t already know what’s going to happen. Still. I guess that’s a mark of a good production.
“I sieved grain for you guys.” 😀
Thank you for your sacrifice. Seriously though, I regularly skip the sieve/sift step and regret it after. And I never learn.
I may have bought a new tv yesterday instead of waiting until Black Friday because OUTLANDER IS BACK OUTLANDER IS BACK!
I grew up eating cooked oatmeal for breakfast and lived for the weekends when we got Golden Syrup on it instead of raisins and whole milk.
I like my oatmeal with brown sugar. That’s how we ate it when I was a kid. King golden syrup was for peanut butter sandwiches.
I adore bannocks! Have made them before out of curiosity during my Anne of Green Gables/Laura Ingalls Wilder period!