There are loads of things I miss about the USA, and near the top of the list are the wonderful restaurants I had practically at my doorstep – and the fast food chains I furtively visited in the dark hours of night, bearing away my prizes, giggling madly while running up my apartment steps for a good old snarf-up. I am not proud of this, but I kind of miss those heady days of dashing out for a turkey-and-pepperjack hoagie with chipotle mayo and a big bottle of Arizona green tea at 10pm on a Saturday night.
Where I live now there are no fast food joints at all, in the chain-restaurant sense. In the cities we have Pizza Huts and all the McBurgerKings etc., but “traditional” Scottish food-on-the-go is a bit different, and it took some getting used to. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I had some anxiety, early on, about being 70 miles away from familiar fast foods. No Starbucks! No Big Macs! No pizza parlor pizza or tacos or hot wings! Perhaps worst of all…. *sob*… no Philly cheesesteaks! A fast-food tragedy.
Still, had I not moved here I would not know the delights of fish & chips, say, or something as simple as a “sausage roll.” There’s “fast food” to be had, it’s just very different in the villages in the far north of Scotland.
I’ll start with fish & chips. Chips, as you may know, are thick-cut fries. Here in Scotland people tend to have them with malt vinegar and salt rather than ketchup. The fish is battered and deep fried, though our local “chippy” (take-away) will do a grilled version as well. Considering how many chips they give us it can’t be considered healthy, but the fish is flaky and tender and the batter has a satisfying crunch. We don’t have it often, but it’s a treat when we feel our arteries need a little clogging.
Completely new to me was the notion of single-serving savory pies. There are mince pies, now known as Scotch pies (mince = ground beef). A mince pie is a short-crust pastry shell filled with mince, onions, spices and a splash of gravy. The name apparently had to be changed to Scotch pies because manufacturers were getting a bit stingy with the mince. No one seems to wonder if there’s any Scotch in them, though! By the way, these have nothing to do with “mincemeat pies” which are something else entirely – those are sweet, served at Christmastime, and contain no meat at all. Is it any wonder I was confused when I first came here?
A few years back I thought I would try making mince pies myself since those in the shops are so salty. The pastry-making looked a bit fiddly but the filling was easy and it would contain ALL mince rather than fillers, so it was going to be great, right? Not so fast, Betty Crocker… I’ve blocked out the first attempt, it was that bad, but the top photo is my third attempt, closest to what Scotch pies are supposed to look like only because I gave in and bought pre-made shells. The photo below them is the, uh… thing… that was the result of my second attempt at doing it all by hand. They tasted fine but have you ever seen anything so sad on a plate?! I surrendered. Shop-bought pies, it is!
There are other kinds of pies as well, like this weirdest and cutest pie in the bunch. Contained in the shell is a mixture of baked beans and small sausages, with mashed potatoes piped around the top. I used to get these because I wanted the taste to equal the cute but eventually they defeated me.
Glass warming cases in shops throughout the land are filled with things like chicken and leek pies, steak pies, macaroni pies (yes you read that right), and Scotch pies with mashed potato “lids”. Have I mentioned Scotland’s love affair with the potato? The humble “tattie” figures in many Scottish meals, and even their crisps (potato chips) come in more flavors than I’ve ever seen anywhere else in my life.
They love their tatties so much that there is perhaps the strangest-to-me of all the snack foods, the “Chip Butty”. I have not tried it because I can’t comprehend why anyone would do this. A Chip Butty is a portion of chips (thick-cut fries, remember), smooshed in between two slices of buttered white bread. WHAT? It is actually on offer at the local chippy. It is really a thing.
There are other “fast food” pastry-encased comestibles as well. Bridies (somewhat-crescent-shaped flaky pastries containing beef), Cornish pasties (similar to bridies but with potato and veg in the filling), and a favorite of mine, sausage rolls. These are made of flaky pastry wrapped around sausage meat with onions and spices, baked until delicious. I did make these successfully at home, and they were very good indeed, though my rolling-up skills need some honing!
Out in the country, of course, there’s fast food of another kind, and some days you just can’t beat a handful of blackberries, growing wild and free for the taking. While I’ve heard that Scotland is known for deep-fried Mars bars (which I’ve never actually seen here), I’m happy to report that no one has suggested dipping these juicy beauties in batter and deep-frying them… yet!
Deb Segelitz was born and raised in Pennsylvania, and is astounded to find herself living in the Scottish Highlands. Equally surprising to her is that she now has a small business restoring and selling old fountain pens. These two facts have convinced Deb that life is either beautifully random, or filled with destiny created by someone with a sense of humor. She hopes the fine north state residents will accept her as an honorary member, since she has some cousins in California who she visited once, but even more importantly because the north state folks she actually knows are fabulous people, who are also the reason for her presence here on anewscafe.com. An enthusiastic amateur photographer, Deb is grateful that she lives in a place that’s about as point-and-shoot as it gets. Her tortoiseshell cat, Smartie, rates her as an average minion, too slow with the door-opening but not too bad on the food-dish-refilling, and her husband hasn’t had her deported back to the States yet, so things must be going all right there, as well.
