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01 January 2001
Whisky: an excellent ingredient to tipple your palate
By Isla Dewar

It's, rather than being used as an ingredient in recipes. It always seems something of a waste to shove good malt into a pan with tomatoes, onions and garlic.

Undoubtedly some of the subtleties, those tastes and wafts and lingering tangs of vanilla, toffee, peat and sea breezes, the Society's tasting notes are so famed for, would be lost but that doesn't mean whisky isn't magic when laced through food. It's a shame, then, that whilst brandy and sherry feature widely in cookbooks, whisky is still neglected.

It can be used over quite a wide range of meals. In many hotels, it is served for breakfast, laced through porridge. A delicate little drop adds interest to smoked haddock cooked in milk, whilst whisky marmalade on your toast is an unsurpassed treat. And, as whisky goes well with tart fruits, it also works in raspberry jam, as does Drambuie.

Inevitably, considering the sweetness of many distillations, there are many, many recipes for puddings that include whisky, Atholl Brose and Cranachan being the most well known. They both include oatmeal, which when toasted adds a nutty flavour to whipped cream. Atholl Brose is cream whipped with honey and oats, chilled, and about a dram (or more) added just before serving. Cranachan is similar. Toasted oatmeal and whisky are added to cream, served often on a bed of raspberries, or with them pureed through.

Oatmeal and whisky also make an excellent and very simple ice cream. You need large cartons of both double and single cream. Whip them with 6oz of sugar and put the mixture in the freezer. Make asugar syrup by boiling 2oz of sugar in 4 tablespoons of water. Set it aside. When it has cooled, add 3 tablespoons of whisky (more if you fancy). Fry 3 to 4 ounces of oatmeal in a non-stick frying pan till they are just turning brown. Add them to your whiskied sugar syrup. When the cream is frozen, but not brick-like, transfer it into a bowl and whip the oatmeal mix into it. Then freeze. It can be served with a little whisky poured over it. Or Amaretto, if you prefer. I have made this often and nobody has ever guessed that it is a simple frozen mix of oatmeal, cream and whisky. They fancy I have shopped at some far-flung deli for rarefied nuts!

One of my favourite whisky puddings is flambed bananas. The bananas are caramelised, whole, in a frying pan using butter and sugar. Whisky, heated separately, is set alight and poured over them. It can be served with cream laced with whisky, or for the more flamboyant, sweetened, whiskied mascarpone.

Mascarpone can also be iced. Whip a tub of it with an egg yolk (free range since you.re not cooking them), 2 to 3 ounces of icing sugar and a couple of tablespoons of whisky. Shove it in the freezer for a few hours. Just before serving, when your guests are starting their main course, put it in the fridge to soften slightly.

This alcoholic mascarpone is really good with Whisky Pecan Pie. This is a truly fabulous pudding. Raisins are soaked in whisky for about four or five hours. No hard work there. Set your oven to about 170C. Butter a 6 inch tin. Beat 3oz butter with 3oz of soft brown sugar. Add 2 egg yolks. Fold in 5oz self-raising flour. A pinch of nutmeg. Add whisky soaked raisins and any unsoaked up liquid and 5oz chopped pecans. Whip egg whites with another couple of ounces of sugar. Fold into the pecan/whisky mixture. Put this into your buttered cake tin and bake for about 50 mins. And talking of soaking raisins in whisky, my husband's grandfather used to spread them on his lawn to feed the wood pigeons. In the morning he just had to pick them up, plump and contented. It was an easier way of getting his supper than going out with a gun.

Whisky is always good with any sort of orange pudding. It mixes well with both oranges and lemons. It makes a good addition to rowan jelly with venison. And can be stirred into orange sauce to go with duck.

You can also make an interesting and extremely simple whisky and tomato sauce. Put about a pound of roughly chopped tomatoes in a pan with four tablespoons of whisky, a couple of crushed cloves of garlic and season with salt and pepper. Let it simmer over a low heat for twenty minutes. It may sound odd. But not so much so, when you consider how often sugar is added to tomato sauces to bring out the flavour.

This is good with a slice of thin pork coated with a mixture made up of equal quantities of Parmesan and flour and fried. Or with a fillet of chicken, basted with honey made runny with a little hot water, or orange juice, and put in the oven at 200C for about twenty minutes.

A spoonful of whisky warms a venison casserole if added just before serving. And you can use whisky to make a peppered steak instead of brandy or madeira. A whisky and cream sauce is lovely with scallops.

And it goes well with pheasant. Melt butter in a casserole. Add chopped onions. Brown a pheasant on all sides in the melted butter, pour over whisky and then flame. When the flames have died, cover the casserole and put it in a medium oven for 45 minutes, till it is tender. Take the pheasant out of the pan. Set aside. Place the casserole on a high heat and reduce the juices, stirring constantly till there is about half a cupful left. Slowly stir in some double cream. Remove from heat, add half a teaspoon of mustard and another couple of tablespoons of whisky. Pour over the pheasant and serve.

It's not surprising that there is little reference to whisky in many of the major cook books, since a great many of their recipes originated in France or Italy.

However, at a gathering of international gourmets several years ago in Canada, classic meat dishes were made using whisky instead of brandy. Nobody knew the difference.

Food is always an interesting footnote to a country's history. Writing about whisky and food, then, you have to mention haggis. And everybody knows what to drink with that. Strange, isn't it, that whilst the sausage has reached points of culinary reverence, the haggis has remained a subject of mystery and derision. It doesn.t deserve to be. It's a real testament to the Scottish character. Something delicious made out of very little.

It is a concoction of oatmeal, suet and onion that crossed social boundaries. It was served in stately homes and crofts. The word haggis was once thought to derive from the French hachis. But these days we tend to think it came from the word hag, to chop.

It is ancient. There are references to a form of haggis in Greek literature. Aristophanes wrote of it in The Clouds.

Why now the murders out

So I was served with a stuffed sheep's paunch

I broiled

Bounce goes the bag, and covers me all over

With it's rich contents of such varied sorts.

The Romans also stuffed and boiled a sheep's paunch exactly as we do today. They used chopped pork, egg yolks, lovage, suet, ginger, rue and gravy.

Whilst these days the recipe for haggis, except for McSween's vegetarian one, is a mix of oatmeal, suet, liver and onions, I have, on searching through my cook books, found recipes that include capers, lemon juice, mutton and red wine. Since very few people make their own, and most butchers use traditional ingre-dients, it seems likely these more ornate recipes will die out. None-theless, haggis is always made even more delectable by pouring over it, a touch of the malt you are drinking with it. Haggis is always served with mashed tatties and neeps. But, should you find the mashed turnip, or swede, a little bland even with the addition of lots of freshly ground pepper, they can be spiced up with a little cayenne or a pinch of ground ginger.

Ginger, caramelised sugar, oranges, are all words that crop up in the Society.s tasting notes. Little wonder then, that when the malt is added to them when cooking, it makes wonderful eating. A Christmas Seance with His Grace The Duke of Gordon. At the risk of being predictable is Heaven like Scotland. At the risk of being predictable is Heaven like Scotland

A perceptive question. We have the contours  but it seems to be based more on the Duoro in Portugal, not that we drink port, nor, I confess, whisky. It is just endless ambrosia.

Do you keep your title in Elysium?

A few buddies know I was a Duke but you are known by your earthly deeds so we have rank in Heaven but it bares no relation to wealth or status amongst  mortal flesh.

You are remembered here as the man who passed the Act of Parliament, almost two hundred years ago, outlawing the small stills that used to generate all our whiskies. How is that balanced in the Scales of Eternal Justice?

Two hundred years? It seems like thousands. It gets mixed marks. If I'm frank my Bill was a clever piece of legislation  designed to help my fellow land owners. We put all the individual tenant farmers out of the whisky business for good. When Sir Walter Scott wrote his famous Tory pamphlet.Their Wee Bit Still and Glen. we thought the Whigs would vote against us.

Although my motives were entirely greedy I can claim to have created modern commercial whisky making. Distilling expertise is all very well but you need the regulations  to limit the sources of supply. I created a universally acclaimed drink. I deserve credit even if it was an accident.

What  did you think was your main contribution in life?

I thought  my tireless work to link Inverness to Aberdeen via Elgin by my new railway was my achievement  and remember  it was this that allowed Scottish salmon and whisky to reach the London markets.

Do you enjoy an enhanced wisdom in the company of the angels?

No, we carry all our follies and vanities. It is just we cannot  harm anyone.

Lord Keynes once said his only  regret  in life was he  didn.t  drink  more champagne....

The scoundrel. That is my line but it should be whisky....

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