Kale casting and autumn feasting

By Osla Jamwal-FraserOctober 28th 2021

Like many of our annual holidays, Halloween is the descendant of a truly ancient celebration that goes back to pre-Christian nature-worshipers. If you’re up for a bit of nature worshiping and a simple way to revere the king of Shetland’s vegetables, read on!

According to both Celtic and Nordic tradition, the year is divided in two terms, that of the light and that of the darkness. In the Celtic world, Beltain, the beginning of summer, was welcomed with bonfires and revelry at dawn – a celebration of nature’s rebirth and all that keeps us connected to light and life. While Samhain, celebrated on the 31st of October, marked the beginning of winter with bonfires and revelry at sundown symbolising the coming of the darkness, and the death of the life and energy of the summer months. It was also the Celtic New Year, a logical point in the calendar to ponder nature’s great cycle of life, death and rebirth.

The night of Samhain was the time when the barrier between life and death was thought to be at its weakest. The dead were believed to walk the earth again. Benign spirits would visit their relatives and share Dumb Suppers, common across Scotland, where ancestors would be invited in, through open windows, to dine with the family and hear their news.

Evil spirits would set forth to wreak as much havoc on the living as possible. All over the world, this festival exists in myriad forms and lanterns of various kinds are still set to ward off evil, and precious sweetmeats proffered as a token sacrifice in exchange for peace or protection. Our traditions vary but the raucous revelry and dark humour born of our mortal fear and uncertain hope that the soul lives on are universal.

A classic Shetland neepie lantern | Osla Jamwal-Fraser

Makkin' neepie lanterns

Today the neep, or turnip, versus pumpkin debate rages in Shetland as it does across the rest of Scotland. A true Halloween celebrant in Shetland will grasp a sturdy soup spoon, an array of knives and weapons of cunning ingenuity, and prepare for the blistered fingers neepie lantern carving begets. Once the lantern is prepared, your candle is lit, and the first heady notes of swee’d neep waft on the air, none of your wishy washy trick or treating here. Halloween festivities could take one of two forms: either you donned a ghoulish disguise and set forth guizing or you could go mischief making among your neighbours with a spot of kale casting.

Guizing is a slightly grotesque parody of the Dumb Supper. Disguised guests would arrive, unannounced, bearing lanterns and settle in to eat and drink in mysterious and complete silence until their selected host could tease some identity-revealing clue from them. Hilarity would then ensue on how long it had taken the host to quiz the guizers or how poor the disguise had been!

The advent of kale casting

When we are not busy contemplating the meaning of life or the coming of death, what else could possibly occupy us than how we will fair in love? In his poem Halloween, Robert Burns told of the unmarried pulling up kale stalks in an attempt to predict the true nature of their future spouse. Having uprooted the vegetable with no intention of eating it, gleaned whatever mysterious knowledge it held on your romantic destiny, what to do but hurl it against somebody’s door? Perhaps thankfully, the belief in the romantic divining powers of the kale stalk died off before the other hijinks associated with kale. Burns’ poetry and Richard Waitt’s mischievous painting of The Cromartie Fool bear witness to the fact that these were traditions once wide-spread across Scotland but which must have died out in most other areas long before they waned in Shetland.

The merriment of kale casting and guizing were both still very common all over Shetland during my own youth, though I doubt that there are many places now where either is still practiced with any frequency.

Kale and cabbage have long been staples of the Shetland winter diet Osla Jamwal-Fraser

Cooking with kale

Kale and cabbage along with the fruits of Shetland’s October tattie picking holidays are still very much a feature of the Shetland table at this time of year. Hearty hairst soups and stews, made with a variety of seasonal vegetables, make for warming comfort food during the first of the colder, darker nights. Below is a recipe I first came across in Italy, billed as a Calabrian speciality that could just as easily have come from Aywick, Levenwick, or anywhere in between. Cavoli e Patate is exactly that, cabbage and potatoes, simplicity itself and the ultimate comfort food. The flavour is lifted with a bit of sautéed pancetta or in my version pan-fried chorizo chunks. For a lighter version, you could also just add a little extra chopped, fresh chilli, or top with extra cheese and brown it lightly under the grill. The original calls for savoy cabbage but you can make it with whatever kale or cabbage you have to hand.

If you can get your hands on it, Shetland Kale would be marvellous. Shetland Kale is a marvellous vegetable, thought to be Scotland’s oldest surviving indigenous variety, with an excellent green, peppery flavour. Listed in Slow Food Scotland’s Ark of Taste project for heritage foods, it is difficult to source and has been saved from extinction by a handful of private growers. Although seed became commercially available in 2021 through the Growing Local Northmavine project so hopefully it will become a more common feature of Shetland’s larder again soon.

Cavoli e Patate

Course: Main
Servings: 4
Cook Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

3 tbsp olive oil
3 cloves garlic, peeled
5 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-size chunks
300g savoy cabbage, roughly chunked
100g Shetland kale leaves, or curly kale, coarsely chopped
1 pinch dried chilli flakes (optional)
1 pint boiling water, as required
salt and freshly ground black pepper
100 g pancetta or spicy chorizo, diced

To serve

4 tbsp excellent quality extra virgin olive oil
freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano, to taste
toasted crusty bread

Instructions:

Heat two tablespoons of the oil in a large heavy-based saucepan over a low heat. Add the garlic and sauté gently for a few minutes. Be careful not to let the garlic brown at all.
Add the potatoes and toss together. Then add the cabbage, kale and chilli flakes, if using. Mix well and add the water. Season with salt and pepper.
Increase the heat, cover with a lid and bring to a simmer. Lower the heat to keep the water at simmering point. Leave covered to cook for about 20 minutes, until the potatoes are tender.
While the vegetables are cooking, heat the remaining tablespoon of oil in a small frying pan over a medium heat. Add the chorizo and sauté for a few minutes, until the it is lightly browned and has begun to release its flavoursome oil.
Check the seasoning of the cabbage stew, then add the sautéed chorizo and its fat. Mix well and then ladle the vegetable stew into warmed soup bowls. I like the whole pieces of garlic but they can be removed now, if you’re not the biggest garlic fan!
Drizzle each bowl with a tablespoon of really good quality, extra virgin olive oil, sprinkle with Parmigiano and serve with toasted crusty bread. You can use this sop up the juices like a true Italian!

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