RobbsSlowCookerBook: Brotchan Foltchep (Leeks and Oatmeal)

Here’s another recipe trial from Robb Walsh’s forthcoming recipe book  Braised, Simmered & Stewed: Heritage Dishes from the Slow Cooker. This time it’s Brotchan Foltchep, an ancient Irish recipe using oats and leeks in a kind of soup/porridge marriage.

The notion of cooking everything in one pot very much appeals to me. Partly laziness (less washing up) but also somewhat romantically. I like the idea of uniting all my ingredients into one harmonised, convivial communion.

Nonetheless, I wasn’t totally convinced by this recipe when I first read it; sitting somewhere between a porridge and a soup. I like both. But leeks in a porridge? Oats in a soup? This seemed somewhat outside my window of culinary tolerance. However, I trust Robb and am generally up for giving things a try. But first I had to get past my oat-related preconceptions.

Oat porridge was the staple breakfast in my house growing up. Rolled oats were soaked in water overnight and whoever was first up started it cooking on the hob in a saucepan. Whoever was last up got the congealed, gluey remains (that was usually me). The only additional elements were milk (cold) and maybe a little bit of honey. Savoury porridge was never on the table.

After trying this recipe, I realised I had pigeonholed oats by thinking of them mainly as fodder for gloopy 1980s breakfasts. I’d never cooked pinhead oats, which are used in this dish. Pinhead or steel cut oats are less processed and require more cooking time than oat flakes or rolled oats, which are steamed and flattened.  Pinhead oats are definitely a bit more interesting and are perfect for the slow cooker.

Oats are also a big part of Irish food history with a long history of cultivation here. This was confirmed to me by Associate Professor Meriel McClatchie from University College Dublin’s School of Archaeology. She studies the prehistoric to early modern period and has a particular interest in food and archaeobotany (the study of plant remains).

Meriel confirms that both oats and leeks have been a key part of the Irish diet for many centuries and that oats grow well in Ireland. She says,

“Fergus Kelly‘s study of early Irish law texts, many of them more than 1000 years old, indicate that leeks were part of the annual food-rent due to a lord in Ireland, highlighting the importance of this vegetable in the diet. Oats were also a staple food around this time. The charred remains of oats (usually the grains) have been recovered from many archaeological excavations across Ireland, particularly in western and northern regions, where crops such as bread wheat can be more difficult to grow.”

But back to this recipe. It was a very simple process. I combined milk, some proper chicken stock, what seemed like an overwhelming amount of leeks and a tiny amount of oats in my buttered slow cooker. I added a pinch of salt, some nutmeg (I couldn’t get any mace), plus some black pepper. And then left it to do the job. I may have been a little too casual – the oats stuck a little – so no harm to give it a stir every so often.

Soon my kitchen was filled with an enticing smell of leeks as I pottered around waiting for the magic to happen. After a few hours, the leeks had melted and no longer dominated the pot, and the oats had gained some confidence and were asserting their presence. All the same, this was quite a leek-forward dish.

After eight hours or so, I spooned some of the thick, wet contents into a bowl. It was incredibly comforting, very soft in both texture and flavour. Leeks are just a bit more gentle than onions, so while they certainly added structure to the taste, they were not overpowering. I tried the dish with and without cream, and I preferred it without. It already feels quite rich in spite of its humble ingredients. I did add more salt as I ate it, as this really enhanced it for me. I do love salt though.

To my mind, risotto is a close relation to what’s going on in this recipe. At the risk of alienating Italians, situating this as a roguish oat risotto endeared me to the recipe, as I love risotto. The stirring, the starchiness, the slow and gentleness of it all. With the slow cooker version, you get the starchiness, the slowness, but can skip the stirring. More laziness.

I was also reminded of Heston Blumental’s iconic early 2000s dish, snail porridge, which captured the attentions of newspapers puzzled by the machinations of molecular gastronomy. I also felt echoes of another rice dish, congee. The porridge, while more robust, had a similar glutinous mouthfeel and the same starchy, comforting properties.

It was fun to make a recipe with such an ancient lineage and my mind has been opened to using oats with savoury ingredients. I will be replacing my porridge, seeds and berries for this and variations of it occasionally. It would be perfect to leave on overnight to have it ready for breakfast.

I also reheated the dish a few times and it was very amenable. This allowed me to experiment with more congee-style toppings, like crispy chilli oil, soy sauce, and gomasio, a lovely sesame seed salt I got recently from Hips and Haws Wildcraft. So definitely give Brotchan Foltchep a go – an dish from the past that feels modern, with plenty of room for experimentation and innovation.

Recipe from Braised, Simmered & Stewed: Heritage Dishes from the Slow Cooker

Brotchan Foltchep (Leeks and Oatmeal)

Leeks, milk and oatmeal were mainstays of ancient Irish cooking.  This leek and oatmeal soup, (“brotchán” means broth and foltchep means leeks or onions) is the one of the oldest Irish recipes on record. It was described as “monk’s food” in the ninth century manuscript The Monastery of Tallaght. It’s ridiculously easy to make in a slow cooker and surprisingly tasty. The mace and black pepper arrived in Ireland with the Anglo-Irish around the eleventh century.

Recipe:

2 knobs of butter

500 grams (half pound) leeks, well cleaned and thinly sliced

500 ml (2 cups) chicken stock

500 ml (2 cups) milk

Half cup (120 ml) pinhead oats.

Salt

Dash of ground mace

A few grinds of black pepper

100 ml (half cup) cream

Chives to garnish

Butter the inside of a slow cooker and add the leeks, stock, milk and oats plus a dash of salt, mace and black pepper. Cook on HIGH for 6 to 8 hours or until the oats and leeks are meltingly soft. Check the seasoning. Serve in warmed bowls garnished with a dash of cream and freshly chopped chives.

 

 

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