By Tom MortonNovember 22nd 2021
Tom Morton

As autumn turns to winter there is something undeniably comforting about tucking into a warming plate of hearty food. Tom Morton offers one or two Shetland-inspired recipes.

My mother was terrified of the pressure cooker that used to sit balefully in a corner of my childhood, and with good reason. It exploded at least twice, covering the kitchen with, as I remember, a gravy which smelled so delicious I was tempted to lick the walls, work surfaces and, had I been a lot taller, the ceiling.

These aluminium beasts were – are, you can still get them – basically large, heavy-duty pots with sealed lids and weighted valves. Pressure within them can rise to 15 pounds per square inch, meaning that food cooks very quickly – several times quicker than in an open pot – and meat can be very thoroughly tenderised.

Basically a kind of user-friendly, non-threatening electric pressure cooker, it comes with pre-sets for things like stews and soups, and is thus perfect for the two Shetland winter warmers I am going to describe here.

Tom Morton

They were very handy crofthouse implements in the days when a kitchen would have a peat-fired Rayburn stove and a single gas ring – you could get the thing up to steam on the gas and then leave it pressurised on the top of the stove. I have a feeling this also appealed to a certain generation of former merchant seamen who enjoyed the technical similarities with a coal-fired ship’s boiler.

Nowadays, while direct-heat pressure cookers are readily available, the microprocessor-controlled Instant Pot and its copies have taken over. Basically a kind of user-friendly, non-threatening electric pressure cooker, it comes with pre-sets for things like stews and soups, and is thus perfect for the two Shetland winter warmers I am going to describe here. As long as there’s not a power cut.

Versions (non-pressurised) of both these recipes can be found in the book I wrote with my son James, Shetland: Cooking on the Edge of the World, though they have been modified slightly to make them simpler and more amenable to pressurised cooking. Basically, you want an Instant Pot (which is, like ‘Portakabin’, a registered trademark) or one of the many, nearly as good, and much cheaper copies. It will have a setting for stew and one for soup. Use them. I promise, there will be no explosions. Or there shouldn’t be.

Eshaness lentil soup

First, soup. I had an absolutely superb plate of lentil soup in the Peerie Shop Café the other day, following a very chilly sea voyage. Well, a trip from Bressay on the ferry. It was a delight and while an Instant Pot was not deployed by chef James Martin, loads of time was, and that made the lentils into the smooth and rather unctuous creaminess I so enjoyed.

In our book James (Morton, not Martin) and I called our soup Eshaness Lentil Soup. This is because the Eshaness community hall is famous for its Soup Sundays, when up to seven different soups can be offered to the public by local folk whose level of expertise far, far surpasses the Morton family’s. Anyway, here goes:

Eshaness lentil soup

Ingredients:

  • 1 small unsmoked gammon joint (for making stock) or three ham stock cubes

  • 1 large onion

  • 1 leek

  • A large knob of salted butter

  • 2 large carrots

  • 250g of red lentils (must be red)

  • Black pepper

Instructions:

  1. You need stock. So, cubes or not? This is the question. A gammon joint is your best bet if you want to make your own stock, and then you can tear up the ultra-tender meat that results and put in the soup or serve it alongside, à la reestit mutton tattie soup. This is where your Instant Pot can help.

    Put a small unsmoked gammon joint in the pot, and fill it up to the safety line with water. Press button ‘stew’. Once at pressure, this should cook for about half an hour, but when the machine pings, give it another half an hour. Check the tenderness. If not tender, another half an hour. You’re still ahead of the three hours of simmering it would otherwise take.

    Or just dissolve three ham stock cubes in 1.5 litres of boiling water from the kettle. Which is what I tend to do.

  2. You’ll need to have cleaned out your Instant Pot from making your stock, if you have taken that tortuous route and are using it on its soup setting. Anyway, start with a big ordinary pan, or use the “browning” setting on your IP.

  3. Chop the onion and leek finely and soften with the butter in said pan over a low heat. Grate the (cleaned) carrots into this, and mix it all up, continuing to heat.

  4. Clean the lentils in cold water (there’s nothing worse than gritty soup) then add to the pan. Mix. Add your hot stock, whatever its origins. Mix again.You can then transfer the lot to your Instant Pot If it’s not already in there being browned, and press the ‘soup’ button, or cook on the stovetop for about half an hour, or until the lentils have gone Peerie Shop Café creamy. If it comes out of the Instant Pot too thin, reduce on the stove.

  5. Sup and enjoy, in the full knowledge that it will taste even better the next day if left out and covered. Unless a mouse somehow makes its way under the lid. That’s never good.

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New Year steak and sausage pie

Steak pies are a tradition for New Year’s Day in Scotland, but frankly they’re great at any time of year. There is something wonderful about that combination of puff pastry (it must be puff pastry) and melt-in-the-mouth meat, cooked or at least heated in, preferably, an enamelled steel dish or ashet. In Scotland, these are known as ashet pies, as they don’t have pastry bottoms that can get soggy. They’re also easy to make.

You can buy them from a butcher or a supermarket, and many do. Shetland butcher’s pies are all good, but with supermarkets it’s a bit of a gamble. The Russian roulette experience of biting into a heated-according-to-instructions bought pie only to find the meat is tough, chewy and gristly or – even worse – non-existent, causes trauma that can last years. Better to ensure your meat is tender from the off. So make a stew first.

A pressure cooker or Instant Pot (or equivalent) will do this quickly and effectively on ‘stew’ setting. You can use two beef stock cubes. Or you can make some concentrated beef stock (I wouldn’t bother).

New Year steak and sausage pie

Course: Main
Servings: Four hungry people
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: Three hours in oven at low hear

Ingredients:

  • 500g of stewing steak or beef skirt

  • 225 g of good beef sausages

  • Lard or dripping for frying (no veggie options here)

  • 1 large onion

  • 2 tbsps plain flour (enough to coat the beef)

  • Salt and pepper

  • 2 beef stock cubes.

  • 1 bottle of Tushkar Oatmeal Stout from the Lerwick Brewery. Or two, if you plan to drink and cook at the same time.

  • Pre-packed puff pastry and flour for rolling

Instructions:

  1. Chop the beef into cubes, season the flour with salt and pepper, and coat the beef in it. Brown the onions in the dripping or lard, then add the coated beef and fry until brown all over – best done in a big open pan I think your Instant Pot may be up to the job.

  2. Add the stock (cubes), the stout and a lot of black pepper. Make sure it’s liquid enough to sustain pressing that ‘stew’ button on the IP, or if you’re cooking it in the oven, transfer to a casserole dish and keep an eye on things to make sure it doesn’t dry out over the two or three hours it will need, at a low heat, adding more stout or water if necessary. Again, if the ‘stew’ programme doesn’t result in soft enough beef, just fire up the Instant Pot again until it is tender. Making sure there’s enough liquid in there.

  3. Now, you will have noted the absence of the sausages, traditionally deployed in poorer households to bulk up a lack of actual meat. They are added late. You do not want them falling into a slough of savoury despond. Fry them until they’re deliciously brown. Then add them to the stew and cook on the stove top for about 15 minutes, careful watching that liquid quotient. You know what you want to find inside the steak pie. Go for that consistency.

  4. Once cooked, the stew can be kept overnight, or just cooled sufficiently not to attack the pastry with its juices as you make the actual pie. Roll out some pre-packed puff pastry on a floured surface and make it thin – about 3mm. Pour the stew and sausages into the ashet, pastry over the top. Press down the edges and trim.

  5. Coat the top with beaten egg, poke a couple of holes to let the steam out, and then into the oven for about 45 minutes or until the top is golden brown.

  6. Serve with neeps (turnips or swede) and tatties. Or chips.

    It strikes me that you could do all of this in an old-school pressure cooker, and that modern versions are likely to be less dangerous than my mum’s. You are welcome to try but keep a long-handled brush handy to get at the ceiling. Or a stool so you can lick the residue.

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It strikes me that you could do all of this in an old-school pressure cooker, and that modern versions are likely to be less dangerous than my mum’s. You are welcome to try but keep a long-handled brush handy to get at the ceiling. Or a stool so you can lick the residue.

Food and drinkWinter warmersSoupPie

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