The Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes contains the following recipe: 'Oatmeal Porridge for Six Persons'
To five pints of skim or buttermilk, add a couple of onions chopped fine, and set them to boil on the fire; meanwhile, mix six table-spoonfuls of oatmeal with a pint of water or milk very smoothly, pour into the boiling milk and onions, and stir the porridge on the fire for ten minutes; season with salt to taste. It will be apparent to all good housewives that, with a little trouble and good management, a savoury and substantial meal may thus be prepared for a mere trifle.'
I cook my porridge in 1/2 measure milk and 1/2 water and I soak the (pinhead) oatmeal overnight in the water to reduce the cooking time. But at this time of year I add a chopped, (gloved) handful of fresh young nettle tops for a gruel that might not win the Golden Spurtle but is guaranteed to put hair on your chest.
Nettles aplenty in the back corner of the garden.
2 comments:
Somewhere down the line, somebody must have gone "Nettles — prickly, stinging, horrible — I wonder how they'd taste?"
Would the queen take kindly to being referred to as an 'other'? Or did someone lose their head.
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