[Sca-cooks] oatmeal/hot cereal?
Gretchen Beck
grm at andrew.cmu.edu
Wed Jun 21 15:14:35 PDT 2006
--On Wednesday, June 21, 2006 5:01 PM -0500 Anne-Marie Rousseau
<dailleurs at liripipe.com> wrote:
> hi!
>
> has anyone had success making oatmeal/hot cereal on the fire? I'm hoping
> to find a method that involves real oats (not the rolled kind, etc) that
> I can start a fire, set it burbling and ignore for a bit while I chop up
> dried fruit, etc
>
> 1. what kind of oats/grains did you use?
> 2. what were your favorite add ins?
> 3. I remember vaguly a recipe for a hot cereal dish from le menagier?
> maybe? anyone have access to their books who can look it up?
>
> bascially I'm looking for an easy breakfast dish to do during a weeklong
> re- enactment event. the rest of camp may be happy living off smoked
> fish, hard boiled eggs and such but me, I needs me some fiber ;)
As I understand it, what you want is called brose. You use pinhead oats,
and make it just like you would instant -- put the oatmeal in a bowl, cover
with boiling water, cover and let it steam for about 5 minutes.
The Scots Independent provides a lovely description of the process
(<http://www.scotsindependent.org/features/food/oatmeal_brose.htm>)
Oatmeal brose was the true foundation of the expedition, and the correct
method of making it must be put on record. A quantity of coarse oatmeal -
with salt 'to taste' as they say - is placed in a bowl and boiling water
poured over it. The water must be boiling hard as it pours and there should
be enough of it to just cover the oatmeal. A plate is immediately placed
over the bowl like a lid. You now sit by for a few minutes, gloating. This
is your brose cooking in its own steam. During this pause, slip a nut of
butter under the plate and into the brose. In four or five minutes whip off
the lid, stir the mass violently together, splash in some milk and eat. You
will never again be happy with the wersh and fushionless silky slop which
passes for porridge. This was the food whose devotees staggered the legions
of Rome; broke the Norsemen; held the Border for five hundred years; and
are standing fast on borders till. It is a dish for men. It also happens to
taste superbly. We ate it twice a day, frequently without milk, although
such a simplification demands what an Ayrshire farmer once described to me
as a 'guid-gaun stomach'. He is a happy traveller who has with him a bag of
oatmeal and a poke of salt. He will travel fast and far.'
toodles, margaret
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