Hermitcraft: Oat Bannocks

I often see in my blog stats that people have landed on my hermit bread (Canadian bannock) recipe while searching for information on Scottish bannock (or "bannocks", as we say; plural). This chagrins me, because hermit bread is nothing like "real" bannock, though a blessing in its own right, and the actual article is as fit to feed an honest man as any sad soft white thing in this wheat-weakened world. In a word, it's a crisp oat flatbread, having no wheat in it whatever. And as Boswell famously pointed out to Johnson, oats build a fine horse.

Therefore, to correct an injustice and educate the uncultured, I provide here-in the key to proper eating.

Oat Bannocks

1 cup rolled oats
More oatmeal for rolling
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon melted butter
Hot water

Set a rack six inches from the top of the oven and dial up 350 degrees.*

Pulverise the cup of oatmeal, with a blender or by rubbing it between your hands, and dump it into a small mixing bowl. Mix in the baking powder and salt.

Add the melted butter and toss well with a fork until it's absorbed and evenly distributed.

Sprinkle a baking sheet liberally with oatmeal.

Slosh a tablespoon or two of hot water into the bowl and mix well. Continue adding hot water a teaspoon at a time until you can press the dough into a ball. It should be slightly sticky, but not goopy. (Bannock dough dries very quickly. If it's a little too wet, let it sit until it reaches the right consistency, normally a minute or two.)

Turn the dough onto the oatmeal-strewn baking sheet. Working fast (see above), roll it around until it's covered with oats. Then shake the baking sheet to redistribute the oats that are left and roll out the dough over them, into a round about the size of a dinner plate and no thicker than 1/8 inch. Start with the palm of your hand, then your fingertips, and finally a lidded jar or other small-enough round thing. If the dough is too sticky, sprinkle more oats on it.

Shake the free oats

That's home-made bramble jam.

from around the sides and dump them back into the oatmeal jar. Then mark the round into eight pieces. (Everything in Scotland is marked in eight pieces. I've no idea why. Scones are marked in eight pieces. Shortbread is marked in eight pieces. Teacakes are marked in eight pieces. I'll lay you odds that Sawney Bean's lot marked their victims in eight pieces.)

Bake the bannock until the edges have turned up from the baking sheet and browned, 15-25 minutes. (This varies from oven to oven, and possibly place to place.) When done, turn off the oven and open the door, leaving the bannocks inside to crisp for ten minutes.

Serve hot (best) or cold (still brilliant).

*Before ovens were commonplace, bannocks were typically fried on a griddle, as indeed some still are.

Bannocks can be topped with anything, sweet or savoury, including fruit, custard, marmalade, cheese, kippers, and potted meat. Or plain old butter. Bramble jam, traditional confection of the Scottish working class, makes a tea fit for God's own Elect. For a decadent treat, dollop whipped or clotted cream on chilled fruit and crush a bannock over the top.

Oat bannocks are a primordial, fundamental food, having in common with most poor-man's fare that they're cheap, easy, and infinitely more delicious and sustaining than any posh gob. They're one of my favourite comfort foods, easily prepared, and I've heard no complaints from guests, either.

So there you have it, Scottish bannock searchers: the real deal.

Hermitcraft: Nettles

Stinging nettle, Urtica dioica.

(Adapted from The Neighborhood Forager, by Robert K. Henderson. Copyright 1999 Chelsea Green Publishers, White River VT. Available in bookstores; signed copies available from the author [me] for $24.95 plus shipping.)

The Eatin' O' The Greens is hard upon us, so to kick off the bacchanalia, I propose a pæan to that prince of the pot: Urtica (stinging nettle).

Mediæval monastics, greatest scholars of their time, lived on nettle broth, tea, beer, and greens. Nettle root soup was virtually the only dish served in the severest orders. They also wore habits of nettle fibres, sowed it in fallow ground as green manure, boiled the whole plant for fertiliser and organic pesticide, and whipped their backs with bundles of fresh nettles to strengthen their spiritual discipline. Today, banks of nettle veil monastery ruins all over Europe, an ever-faithful servant shielding the bones of the once-great monastic system from the mocking view of the profane.

On the other side of the planet, the North Pacific tribes slurped steamed nettle shoots and nettle root soup while building their own highly-advanced culture. They used fibres from pounded nettle stems to spin cordage that made industrial-scale salmon fishery a reality, which in turn formed the basis of the entire coastal economy. The Harpooneer, central figure of the whale hunt and an important religious figure, plunged his hand into a bag of nettles to prevent his thoughts wandering as he searched the misty ocean.

But it's nettle’s food value that makes it central to my own practice. Few vegetables, wild or domestic, approach it. Protein-wise, nettle outperforms beans. It also packs a significant wallop of iron, fibre, vitamins A and C, calcium, magnesium and a long list of others. And it seems the monk-physicians of old were right to put their patients on nettle broth, since in addition to being sustaining and easily-digested, it's also hypoallergenic.

When in doubt, simply pet the plant you're looking at. If the experience is unremarkable, it ain't this.

Nettle shoots start coming on about this time of year in the northern hemisphere, generally in moist, rich soil with partial shade. A single square stem bears heart-shaped, deeply toothed leaves, so that the plant closely resembles a big, hairy mint, to which it is a close relative. The "hair" is actually a million tiny, needle sharp spines that sting like the dickens when touched. (They lose this power with thorough steaming.)

Food also has to taste good to get on my menu, and nettle brings plenty of that kind of "food value" to the table as well. The greens have a complex bouquet, mingling faint mint overtones with a hint of the seashore. Boiled shoots are a good bed for steamed or baked salmon, and fresh ones can form a bed for steaming clams, then be eaten as a side dish. I call the blue-green water left over from steaming “nettle nectar,” because it tastes something like clam nectar. It can be mixed with tomato juice, eggs can be poached in it, or you can just drink it hot. To make delicious, nutritious broth, boil shoots until soft with onions and garlic, run through a blender, and strain. In its day, this concoction enjoyed as much prestige as chicken soup for healing the sick.

Wild greens generally excel supermarket produce in savour and sustenance, and nettles are among the best of the already best. And they're only available now, for a few weeks. So go eat some.

But don't make a salad from them.

Bad idea.

Cereal box prize: An uplifting teisho from one of the great Zen masters of our time. "Anything is possible when you smell like a monster and know the word 'on.'" Grover-roshi

Hermitcraft: Trinity Tar

(I mentioned this stuff last time, and since it's a handy thing to have around, here are the particulars for anyone who'd like them.)

Trinity tar has been around forever. It's the West's original varnish, our equivalent of Asia's lacquer and t'ung oil. And unlike a lot of pre-industrial standbys, it can still be whipped up from ingredients found in any hardware store. You may even have them sitting around the house right now.

Everybody ready? Sharpen your pencils and listen carefully, cos here it comes:

1 part boiled linseed oil
1 part gum turpentine
1 part white vinegar

Method:

1. Pour ingredients into a tightly-lidded container.
2. Shake

Shhhhh. Don't tell anybody.

Yeah, that's all there is. The chemistry works like this: linseed oil cures with exposure to oxygen, into a hardish, satiny, impermeable surface. Boiled linseed oil (which in our day is really chemically treated) dries much faster than raw. Turpentine thins it up to penetrate more deeply. Vinegar contradicts the oil's natural tendency to mildew.

The proportions can be altered according to taste and application. When used to finish furniture (an excellent idea, by the way), the vinegar is sometimes omitted, since the expected environment is dry. But at least half the reason to use this stuff is its smell, very homey and aromatic and unpetrochemical, so I always add vinegar for the bouquet. Hey, you can never have too much (medically benign) antifungal.

And the fact is that in its traditional form, trinity tar is about as inoffensive as it gets. If made with raw oil instead of boiled, you could even use it as vinaigrette, which it closely resembles in the jar. In fact, I'm told veterinarians once used the same philtre to treat constipation and colic.

Users have developed their own tweaks on the formula to need. Sometimes a measure of commercial varnish is added to get a faster, harder finish. (Generally half a part or less, in my experience.) For outdoor use I replace the gum turpentine with paint thinner to give the mix even more antifungal kick, and may add a touch of roofing tar as well, to darken it up. (See photos of some of these projects here.) This is, after all, the Urpaint; pretty much all paint started as trinity tar with added colorant.

Application is simple. After sanding the wood, lay on a thick coat of trinity tar. I usually apply the first coat with a brush, to get as much on as possible. Then leave the piece alone for an hour or so, or until most of the oil has been absorbed, and repeat. (This can happen once, or go on for a day, depending on what kind of wood you're working with.) When the oil no longer disappears quickly, rub that final application well into the wood with a soft cloth, until evenly distributed and no slicks remain. Leave the piece to dry overnight. (Faster if set near the woodstove.) You can repeat this step ad infinitum, deeping the finish each time, but never leave wet oil on the surface of the wood; it will coagulate into a dirty, gummy mess.

As this is an emulsion (an uneasy alliance of oil and water; remember the salad dressing?), it needs shaking up a bit during work to stop it separating.

In a matter of weeks the finish will oxidise to a pleasing honey colour, and continue to smell great when it warms, as when the sun streams in or you handle it. The finish can be updated occasionally by a good wiping down with straight turpentine, then reapplying as before. To remove it entirely, either sand the piece lightly or scrub well with naphtha.

In its purest form, this concoction will neither offend chemical sensitivities nor provoke same in habitual users, and will impart to any room a memorable "Grandpa's house" glow and smell, at least if you come from country people. Let me know if you innovate on the recipe; it's all about the experience.