Welcome to part two of our annual Christmas Scran specials. We're fully engrossed in all things Christmas and we're pleased to say this episode is jam packed full of joy, tradition and cheer.
First up on this podcast Rosalind meets Peter Gilchrist, Scottish Food Historian, writer and friend of the podcast who takes her through the evolution of the Scottish Christmas and how we have arrived at many of our modern day customs and traditions. Peter and Rosalind met at the beautifully decorated The Ivy restaurant in Glasgow to enjoy a festive brunch. Peter is always a fascinating guest and we guarantee you that you will walk away from today's episode knowing something new about Christmas.
Then we head back to Bow Market in Fife to talk to Chris Miles of Inchcolm Distillery who makes a very interesting spirit from leftover apples, and Stephen Wade of Woodmill Game who tells Rosalind about how he created and moulded his business.
Finally you'll hear from Barry Bryson who lets us in on the life of a chef at Christmas time as well as his exciting plans for the year ahead..but most importantly - he has tips for the Christmas dinner! Something we all relish in the run up to the big day...
Thanks to listening to Scran throughout 2024, we will return in 2025 with lots more tales from inside the food and drink industry we know and love in Scotland.
Merry Christmas and happy new year!
First up on this podcast Rosalind meets Peter Gilchrist, Scottish Food Historian, writer and friend of the podcast who takes her through the evolution of the Scottish Christmas and how we have arrived at many of our modern day customs and traditions. Peter and Rosalind met at the beautifully decorated The Ivy restaurant in Glasgow to enjoy a festive brunch. Peter is always a fascinating guest and we guarantee you that you will walk away from today's episode knowing something new about Christmas.
Then we head back to Bow Market in Fife to talk to Chris Miles of Inchcolm Distillery who makes a very interesting spirit from leftover apples, and Stephen Wade of Woodmill Game who tells Rosalind about how he created and moulded his business.
Finally you'll hear from Barry Bryson who lets us in on the life of a chef at Christmas time as well as his exciting plans for the year ahead..but most importantly - he has tips for the Christmas dinner! Something we all relish in the run up to the big day...
Thanks to listening to Scran throughout 2024, we will return in 2025 with lots more tales from inside the food and drink industry we know and love in Scotland.
Merry Christmas and happy new year!
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hello and welcome to part two of our annual Christmas grand specials. I'm fully engrossed
00:14in all things Christmas at the moment and I'm pleased to say this episode is jam-packed
00:18full of Christmas joy, tradition and cheer. First up I meet Peter Gilchrist, Scottish
00:23food historian and friend of the podcast who takes me through the evolution of the Scottish
00:28Christmas and how we have arrived at many of our modern day customs and traditions.
00:34Peter is always a fascinating guest and I guarantee you that you'll walk away from today's
00:37episode knowing something new about Christmas. And then we have St Andrew's Baker who is
00:45arrested and charged for making Yule bread and filling his home with light and fun on
00:51a Yule day. Next up we return to Boathouse Market in Fife to talk to Chris Miles of Inchcombe
01:00Distillery who makes a very interesting spirit from leftover apples and Stephen Wade of Woodmill
01:06Game who tells me about how he created and moulded his business.
01:09Is this quite a busy time of the year for you? Mental. I've just juiced about 12 tonnes
01:18of apples. I also caught up with Barry Bryson who lets us in on the life of a chef at Christmas
01:25time as well as his exciting plans for the year ahead. But most importantly he has tips
01:30for the Christmas dinner, something we all relish in in the run up to the big day.
01:35I have the benefit of cooking 365 days a year. There are people who really do on Christmas
01:43decide to give cooking a go. Peter and I met for a festive brunch at the
01:49Ivy in Glasgow which was beautifully decorated and bringing all of those wonderful festive
01:54vibes. In this first part we talk about how Scottish Christmas of today came about.
02:04I'm in the Ivy in Glasgow up the stairs in the beautiful dining room and we're about
02:08to have a lovely festive breakfast but I'm joined once again by food historian and writer
02:13Peter Gilchrist. Hello. Hello, good morning.
02:16Welcome back. Thank you very much for having me. I am not
02:19only delighted to be seeing you again but delighted to be trying the Ivy for the first
02:23time. Nice, well I'm looking forward to breakfast
02:25and thank you again for your wonderful Halloween facts. We're here now to talk about Christmas.
02:30Yes, the best time of the year. If anyone can hear this I've got a Christmas
02:34jumper on. You're looking very smart with your tartan jacket.
02:38Thank you very much. So obviously Christmas is a huge celebration
02:42for a lot of people. It was traditionally a Christian festival but a lot of different
02:46people celebrate it now. Could you take us right back and give us a sort of potted history
02:51of Christmas in Scotland? Yes, I mean the odd thing about Christmas
02:54is that Scotland's ancient people are far more focused on the change of season so it's
02:59actually quite peculiar that we celebrate this midwinter festival and it really starts
03:04out as the winter solstice. So among Scotland's ancient people there was a group we believe
03:09called the Druids. They were very secretive but we believe that at the shortest day of
03:14the year they would go out into the woodland and they would have a ceremonial cutting of
03:18the mistletoe which did used to grow in Scotland in abundance. And that celebration then starts
03:26bringing communities towards themselves. And you've got to remember the time that we're
03:30talking about, people are much closer to death. Winter is a very scary time for lots
03:34of people because it's cold, there's less food, you're perhaps relying on things you've
03:39stored or hunting and, you know, it's a time of great drama. So people come together, they
03:45light fires, they congregate and then sometime around the 5th century the Vikings arrive
03:51in Scotland. And now they bring with them technology, they bring with them their culture
03:56and they bring with them their feasts. And the most important of these feasts is Yule.
04:01And that's where we see the beginning of a new ceremonial community big celebration.
04:10And Yule starts to become a centre in the year. Outside of those quarter days where
04:15the seasons are changing, people have superstitions and people might be, you know, baking special
04:21bread, special bannocks, Yule begins to kind of rise in importance. At the same kind of
04:27time the Catholic Church is trying to spread the word of Christ. And they find the best
04:33way to do this is to take holidays which exist throughout Europe and adapt them slightly
04:38and create a feast day or assign a saint to them. And so at the time in the south of Europe
04:47there's Saturnalia, which is this kind of big feast day, people exchange presents, they
04:52dress up. Saturnalia is focused on celebrating the undying sun. So the Catholic Church creates
04:58a feast to celebrate the birth of the son of God who overcomes death. And this is a
05:03mass to celebrate Christ. Christ mass is born. And it takes about 600 years really, it takes
05:10quite a while for it to reach Europe, the first time it's mentioned, sorry, to reach
05:13Scotland, the first time it's mentioned in Britain is 1038 AD. So at that time, we have
05:19the Celtic Church in Scotland and they're okay with polytheism, everyone can have their
05:24only gods, there's also this guy called Jesus, do you want to have a word with him, come
05:29along to church, we won't make you get rid of your quarter days or your special feast
05:32days. And then Queen Margaret changes or kind of influences the church for it to become
05:38Catholic. And Scotland begins to subscribe to the feast days to the saints. And that's
05:43where Christmas begins to kind of being ingrained in Scottish society.
05:48That's really interesting. I did not even think about Christmas as Christ mass.
05:51And Christ mass, Christmas, it does stick around for about 500-600 years. But then I'm
05:59going to introduce our next topic. I have a Christmas cracker, would you pull it with
06:03me?
06:03Yes, of course.
06:08So if in here, do you want to
06:11we have a tonic caramel wafer
06:14perfect size for a Christmas cracker, by the way. But anyway, so in here, we've got a party
06:20hat, of course, of course. And then do you want to read out the clue?
06:25Yes, right. So the clue is, you'll not believe what happened in 1640 and you'll being you'll
06:34as in Y-U-L-E.
06:36I love a bad pun. So in 1640, Christmas was made illegal. So in the last century, we have
06:44the beginning of the Reformation, people start to push away from the Catholic Church. It
06:48is a big feast day, there's 12 days of Christmas, it's called the Feast of Fools, there's an
06:53Abbot of Mistral, who's basically in charge of party planning for Scotland. And in the
06:57Reformation, people decide to push away from kind of Catholic feast days in favour of a
07:02Protestant church. And then we have St Andrew's Baker, who is arrested and charged for making
07:09Yule bread and filling his home with light and fun on a Yule day. And we have people
07:15in Aberdeen who are arrested for singing filthy carols. And it's a really beginning where
07:19we start to suppress Christmas culture and this big celebration. And it goes underground.
07:25At the beginning of the Reformation, Mary, Queen of Scots, she comes back from France,
07:28and she brings with her, I'm not going to attempt to pronounce the French word, but
07:32it's a French word that sounds a lot like Huguenot, and it's essentially Galadie in
07:37French, and we believe that's where Huguenot comes from. And people take everything that
07:40they've been bottling up for Yule, and begin to push it over to Huguenot. Because now we
07:45know a lot more about seasonal affective disorder now. And we know that people need light and
07:49greenery and company and fire and joy in the middle of this terribly dark time where food
07:55is scarce and people are fearing what's going to happen during winter. And so this is where
08:00we begin to see Huguenot rise as the most important holiday day in the Scottish festive
08:08calendar.
08:09And it still is very important. I mean, we obviously also celebrate Christmas, but we
08:12get an extra bank holiday, which we don't get in England, so...
08:16I mean, Christmas wasn't a holiday until 1958.
08:19In Scotland?
08:20In Scotland.
08:21Wow.
08:22It was a bank holiday in some places around. It was really kind of regional. In the Victorian
08:26era, when we're seeing Scotland begin to become a bit more anglified, and people begin to
08:30work in factories, cities begin to adapt to what's happening down south, because business
08:36and trade is so important. And so we begin to see it become a bank holiday, but it's
08:40not until 1958. My grandparents did not have Christmas as a holiday when they were growing
08:45up. So you can understand why Huguenot is so important, and why there's so much kind
08:50of emphasis in Scotland. And when Scots left Scotland to move around the world, they took
08:54with them Huguenot, and this very big kind of celebration.
08:58And a lot of traditions around that as well.
09:00Absolutely. The traditions really come from when you understand that throughout the year,
09:04there's these quarter days. When the seasons change, they do lots of things like divination,
09:08fortune telling, there's special things they bake, there's special celebrations. That all
09:12gets transferred to Christmas. And then when Christmas is made illegal, it's transferred
09:17to Huguenot. So it may seem slightly odd, the kind of sort of first fitting and the
09:24kind of special gifts you bring to say good luck to people, it's a bit odd. But actually
09:29it's really connected to 2000 years of kind of working class culture, peasant folklore,
09:36that then gets bottled up and shifted over to Huguenot. Are you ready for another Christmas
09:40Cracker?
09:41I am. Yes.
09:42Here we go.
09:43Oh, that one was much better.
09:45We have Kintyre Gin.
09:49I was just looking for Scottish things that would fit inside a cracker. I'm going to put
09:52a party hat on now. Excuse the rustling. Now, our next Christmas fact.
09:58Okay. The boring reason we might eat turkey at Christmas and boar being the animal.
10:04So there is a, I mean, we're talking about folklore here, lots of this isn't substantiated,
10:09it's oral history. There is a theory about why we eat turkey. And it all stems back to
10:16the fact that when King James of Scotland became King James of Britain, of the United
10:20Kingdom of England and Wales, he had been educated in Scotland. He'd brought up in Scotland
10:26and in Scotland, especially in the Highlands, there was lots of superstitions around pigs.
10:31They weren't necessarily very lucky to have around. There was lots of kind of mysticism
10:35that they might be a bad omen. I think it's a lot to do with the fact that pigs survive
10:39on food waste in Scotland and at that time didn't have a lot of food waste, people were
10:43living in poverty.
10:44So when he came to the throne, there was a trend at the time to serve a whole roast
10:50pig as the kind of the centre stage of Christmas. And he didn't want to serve that, didn't want
10:56to serve swine to his guests. So in the reign of King Henry VIII, there has been rumour
11:01that he had had a turkey on his Christmas table. And one of the advisors of King James
11:06said, why don't you import one of these new bejeweled chickens? And King James did. And
11:13on his first reign, we see on his first Christmas and under his reign, we see that he serves
11:18a turkey and he calls it the King of the Bird, the Bird of Kings. And very quickly, within
11:24three years, we see turkey take over goose, which at the time was the most popular kind
11:30of middle class bird to serve. And so actually the reason we still have turkey today, we
11:35believe it's because of Highland mysticism around eating pork.
11:40Because you would think it's quite a modern thing, like from America, but it's actually
11:44and it was for the richer people, whereas now everybody probably has a turkey. And if
11:49you're going to spend a lot of money, you would spend on a goose.
11:51I know exactly. I've heard you had a look at the prices of geese in the supermarkets.
11:56They are extortionate. And again, it's something that's very much a treat. But the industry
12:00at that time supported the farming of geese. And it's just it's not as popular now. So
12:05it's more expensive to rear them, to sell them. In Scotland, we have always been more
12:10focused on beef for celebrations. We have a thing in Scotland called the Yule Mart,
12:15which is essentially the mart was beef that was kept, it was salted and kept for Christmas.
12:21And I think it's kind of, it's interesting to think about how we think about Christmas
12:25as a community feast. Because if you were someone who didn't have your Yule Mart, if
12:30you were too poor, or you didn't have beef, or, you know, you were experiencing a downturn,
12:35your community would all cut off a bit of their beef and give it to you. So you had
12:38your Yule Mart. And it's a throwback to that time where it was a community festival of
12:42people looking after each other to get through the winter. When Christmas is made illegal,
12:46it kind of goes underground and becomes a family affair. And I think that's a really
12:52good way to look at in Scotland, having beef, having goose, having turkey. It's all part
12:56of our history. But beef is definitely very special to us.
13:00Wow. This is so interesting. I honestly didn't know that. Okay, we've got one last cracker.
13:05I've got one last Christmas cracker for you. Here we go.
13:08Okay. Oh, yes.
13:11A caramel log. I have to say my absolute favourite.
13:14Yeah, me too. You'll have haddock up to here with these presents.
13:19That is my favourite thing I've ever come up with. So this is about a traditional gift
13:24that's given around rural Scotland, especially in seaside towns. And it's a thing called
13:28the Yule couple. Now essentially, and we believe it's something very close to an Arbroath Smoky.
13:34But if you're going to someone's house around Christmas time, you would take two smoked
13:38haddock and give that as a present. Now, we see gifts of food around Christmas and around
13:44the winter time, again, because food is so scarce. And it's actually one of the most
13:47precious things that you can give to someone, especially something like a smoked fish, which
13:50is cooked and keeps for a wee while, especially kind of in cold storage, or if you're in a
13:55croft, you might hang it outside or in the wreath above your hearth. This is one of the
14:00things I would like us to bring back to Scotland, is actually re-engaging with some of our kind
14:07of food traditions. I got some Arbroath Smokies from a fishmonger the other week, and they're
14:12delicious to eat. You can add them into a wonderful tomato creamy sauce, or eat them
14:18on a charcuterie board with some cheese and crackers. I think they are absolutely delicious.
14:22Yeah, no, they are, they're great. And we get them from a farmer's market that's a couple
14:28of times a month, and every so often the guy will give the dog some as well, and the dog
14:31loves it.
14:32I love that. And if you look after my dog, I'll love you for life.
14:35Oh yeah, me too.
14:40You'll hear more from Peter shortly when we move on to talking about more modern Scottish
14:43traditions. Here's my fascinating chat with Chris Miles, who is selling his unusual apple-based
14:48spirit Pockle. We met at Boathouse Market a few weeks back when he was setting up his
14:53stall. While there, I also chatted to Stephen Wade of Woodmill Game about the genesis of
14:58his business, and how Christmas is their busiest time of the year.
15:05We were watching you and we were wondering what it is, so we were like, we should talk
15:08to this guy.
15:09Yeah, I get that a lot. So what we do is we go, it's how you represent a city from what
15:13comes out of a city in a drink, so in wine you call it tewa, when you're representing
15:17land from the stuff that comes out of it, and how you achieve that in urban environments.
15:21So we take the surplus apples we find in the city, we turn it to a cider, and then we distil
15:27it into a spirit. So if you think of whisky as essentially a beer that you then distil
15:32twice, this is a cider you distil twice.
15:37And the company is called Pockle?
15:40This product is called Pockle, the company is called Inchcombe Distillery Limited.
15:44And sorry, you were telling us there what Pockle means, so it's...
15:48Pockle is taking something, if it was no one's to begin with and it's now yours, that's okay,
15:53but technically it's stealing.
15:55The best description I heard was a guy from Liverpool saying he worked in a scrapyard,
16:00and as the scrap comes in, it's not really anybody's yet, so they all take a little pockle
16:03of their own scrap.
16:08So we are obviously here at Bauhaus Market, you're just setting up, you've got your spirit
16:14there and you've got some nosing glasses and lots of apples, is this quite a busy time
16:18of the year for you?
16:20Mental. I've just juiced about 12 tonnes of apples. So I go round to people's gardens,
16:28allotments, castles, wall gardens, collect everyone's apples, take it to a warehouse.
16:33Once I've collected all the apples, then I juice them. We literally wash them in a bath,
16:39put them through an apple crusher, put them into a hydro press, and then turn it to juice,
16:44so it's a pretty busy time of year.
16:47How long have you been doing it and where are you based?
16:49I think I've been doing it about six years total from the start. We did two years research
16:55and development with Heriot-Watt Uni, the international centre of growing and selling
16:59how we can make use of any amount of any apple, and then make it taste nice.
17:04I'm just moving now, so I was juicing this batch in Hopeton House, and I've just taken
17:12it on a unit in Carlton Road in Edinburgh at the Vaca Waverley station, and we hope
17:16to put the distillery in there to make stuff from other wastes as well.
17:21In terms of Christmas, what are they buying from you? Are they gifting? Are they taking
17:25it home to drink?
17:26A bit of both. 50-50, I'd say. We do nice hot winter warmers. We do a mulled pomegranate
17:33and apple with the spirit in it, and a spiced hot toddy with apple spirit, obviously, so
17:37it's quite nice.
17:39And where can people buy it?
17:40You can taste it in bars in Edinburgh, restaurants in Edinburgh that know what it is and how
17:45it represents locality. You can get it at Royal Mile Whiskies, Bottle Shop, Leith Bottle
17:49Shop, anywhere in Edinburgh, really.
17:51And Bauhaus Market?
17:52If you smell it in that, and then I'll let you taste it in a wee cup. 44.5% ABV.
17:57This is going to sound really stupid, it smells really like apples. It's not like a sort of
18:00spirit that makes you go, oh!
18:02It's really hard to do that, because as soon as you distill something, you're stripping
18:05the flavour out. So to keep the flavour of the apple in it is what took two years.
18:10With Heriot-Watt?
18:11With Heriot-Watt, yeah.
18:12I very much love a mulled drink, so I'm happy that you have that.
18:16Take a recipe card. It's mulled pomegranate and apple, that's a really nice one. Spiced
18:20apple toddy, lovely.
18:21Yeah, no, that looks good as well.
18:22That looks good as well.
18:23There you go. So it's just a tiny bit, because if you take too much, it's going to burn your
18:25mouth.
18:26Yeah, thank you.
18:27This is many things in many countries, so in France they call it Eau de Vie, in Germany
18:31they call it Schnapps. Schnapps with one P, not two, so it's not got the sugar added
18:34to it. This is closer to Schnapps than it is Eau de Vie. Eau de Vie is normally a little
18:37bit lower, 40% or below. Schnapps is always like 40% up, maybe. So it's closer to Schnapps,
18:43but in Romania it's Palenka, in Poland it's Bimber, Czech Republic it's Jablonska Pizza.
18:48Anyway, there's lots of fruit grown, and there's surplus fruit. This is how they use it, so.
18:55But it's our attempt to represent cities.
18:58We also make a product, or we're starting to produce a product from waste bread. So
19:02the waste bread comes from supermarkets or various places and goes to charity and they
19:05try and distribute it in the fridges, but nobody wants it because it's out of date.
19:09So we're trying to make a product that we can make a koji, so we add Japanese bacteria
19:13to the bread, make a koji from the bread, then add yeast to that liquid to take it to
19:19something similar to sake and then distill that into something roughly describable as
19:23But it's just about challenging the spirits industry to, you can actually make stuff
19:29sustainably and supporting circularity. You just need to think about it a little bit better.
19:36It's lovely, it's really nice. I was probably expecting it more to be like Calvados,
19:41but it's punchier and it's not, it's sweet but not in like a sugary way. It's very nice.
19:48This is largely probably drunk with a mixer, so with ginger ale or with tonic, the white spirit.
19:55We do have a single varietal ODV that I did with that apple, which is a Kingston Black Apple,
20:00and we used a champagne yeast for that one, so we'll release that as a white spirit, but
20:04the other products will be aged in much the same way as Calvados is, it's just not made in Normandy.
20:10We've got stuff aging in bourbon cask, we've got stuff aging in a Pedro Ximenez cask,
20:15a Virgin American Oak, Wild Cherry, Chestnut, and they'll all take on the flavours of the casks.
20:21That's very nice, good. Well thank you very much and I hope you have a busy day today at the market.
20:25Me too.
20:34So Stephen, we're here now at your stall at Bow House Market in the lead up to Christmas.
20:38For anyone that doesn't know, could you just tell me a little bit about your business, Woodmill Game?
20:42Woodmill Game started 20 years ago as a deer stalking business, we were entertaining people
20:47from all over the world, and after a number of years trying to sell the venison that we produced
20:53with the price we were getting was pretty unsatisfactory, so we decided after about
20:58six years ago that we were going to do it ourselves, so started in a cold windy car park
21:03in St Andrews in a February Moor Saturday, got thoroughly wet, miserable, and took £300
21:08and thought, is this it for the rest of our lives? But anyway, we set ourselves on a path
21:13and youngest son, coming back from university, invested in food trucks, selling game products,
21:19so game burgers and game sausages, and so the two came together quite well. His logistical skills
21:25then took the business forward and we're now doing up to six or seven farmers markets on every
21:30Saturday along with wholesale and retail and online sales, yeah. And are you still getting the
21:36game yourself? Yes, all the deer, well 50%, because the business has grown so much we can
21:42only supply 50% of the venison that we now sell, so we link closely with other neighbouring estates
21:49in Perthshire. And just to confirm for anyone that doesn't know, the estates have to cull the deer,
21:53so it's not, you know, it's part of what they're doing anyway and you're just getting it into the
21:56sort of supply chain and out to people as it were? Yeah, we've been, as managers of Highland Estates,
22:03looking after red deer and fallow deer. We've been tasked by the Scottish Government to reduce
22:06deer numbers in order to try and help mitigate the climate change that is a very high priority
22:12to the Scottish Government. In order to achieve our aims, we have to reduce the deer herd,
22:17the national deer herd in Scotland. When I call it deer herd, it's a wild herd. We have to try
22:21and reduce that by more than 50%. So Christmas, segwaying into Christmas, are you finding that
22:28people are choosing venison and game for Christmas? Is it an alternative or is it something
22:34they're doing alongside a sort of turkey dinner? Yeah, the autumn is always a great time for people
22:39who enjoy eating game. First of all, the harvest is at its height, so we're harvesting birds and
22:44deer at the same time. People are thinking a bit more about more hearty meals as we go into the
22:49winter and this really is a perfect platform for us. So yeah, this time of year is our absolute
22:54boom time. It's just the best time to max out on all these wonderful seasonal products and of course
22:59game is seasonal and you have to recognise that and so this is the best season and this is when
23:04we sell the most and we try and make the most of every animal, every bird that we process. But
23:10we start our autumn off with an increase in game sales but then as we move towards Christmas,
23:15then we get people asking us about loins, haunches of venison, venison wellingtons that we produce
23:21and so definitely there has been, I would say over the past few years, a distinct
23:26increase in demand for venison, for game, specifically for Christmas but generally
23:31also throughout the winter months. And can you talk us through some of the products we can see
23:35in front of us in terms of how they might fit into people's Christmases because I can see you've got
23:39some pate and you've got some pies, there was a partridge thing somewhere. We're kind of ever
23:44moving, ever evolving all the time. We come up with new ideas, some stick, some don't but if you
23:48were to start at the, what we do is we try and lay out our market stall at the beginning,
23:52so you've got the beginning of the deer and then you've got the animal and you've got the end of
23:55the animal so at the far end of the table we sell haunches of venison, we sell tenderloins and then
24:00we move along the table a little bit more and we sell diced and minced venison and you come along
24:05the table a little bit more and then we've got sausages that we make, lovely venison sausages
24:09and some venison burgers and then you move a little bit further, we've got ready meals now
24:13also made with venison, so we've got a cranberry venison casserole, you've got venison lasagna,
24:18you've got venison cottage pie, we've got a red thai venison and so those are just ready to eat
24:24meals and then alongside that we've got our ready to warm food which is our pies, we've got some
24:29lovely venison and red wine pies, we've got mixed game pies, we've got partridge and tarragon pies
24:34then we're moving on a little bit further now to just eat cold which is this year we've started
24:39making raised game pie so they have pheasant breast for example mixed in with some lovely
24:44one of our pheasant sausage recipes so there's pheasant sausage meat with game and then right
24:49at the very end we have these delicious pates made from venison, made from deer, made from pheasant,
24:55partridge, wild boar and roe deer so yeah a complete range from the beginning of the animal to the end.
25:01In terms of your Christmas will you be working at Christmas or what will you be up to?
25:04The business works pretty hard till about the 23rd of December, the time when we can't sell anymore
25:09because the shops are shutting, people are going home, they're shutting the doors so we work up to
25:13about the 23rd. We have a few days off over Christmas, a little bit over New Year, people
25:19are certainly buying online, there aren't many markets open, a little bit of a quiet time beginning
25:24at the beginning of January and then of course we've got this wonderful thing called Burns Night
25:28and everybody loves to celebrate all things Scottish and now there might be the odd haggis
25:31in there but there's also quite a lot of venison as well so we have quite a good
25:36January leading up to the end of the month. And what are you going to be eating over Christmas?
25:42This year, well I'll tell you what we've had for the past three years, it's pheasant and guinea fowl,
25:47this year we're actually going back to free-range turkey. I thought you were going to say turkey!
25:53So I won't say turkey, no I'm not having turkey for Christmas, I'm having venison. The point I
25:57suppose I'm making here is that we alternate every year and some years we'll have venison,
26:00some years pheasant and some years turkey. I think it's quite nice to mix it around a bit
26:04but the wonderful thing is that you can be 100% safe and assured that if you have venison,
26:10it's wild, sustainable, it's fantastic food, it's lovely flavours and it's very robust meat so you
26:15can mix so many different flavours with it, you can mix so many different drinks with it,
26:20lots of different wines you can try with it. And where can people buy if they can't come to a
26:24market? So we've got a very good online shop, woodmillgame.com and you'll find us on there.
26:30People can come and purchase from us but we don't have a shop, it's more a production facility
26:34but really the best way to find us is really online.
26:37Well thank you very much and Merry Christmas. Thank you very much too.
26:45It's that time of the year when we all wish we had formal chef training, I know I do. We can't
26:49sort that out but here's Chef Barry Bryson with some solid cooking advice to help you through.
27:00I'm joined by Chef Barry Bryson who has the company caterer Edinburgh and Barry Fish.
27:05Hi Barry, how are you? Hey, good morning, nice to see you. You too, so Merry Christmas. I know
27:11it's a bit early but we're getting there. It's funny, you never think it's going to happen and
27:16then there we are. And then when you're in it you never think it's going to end and then
27:20you know it's over really quickly. You do private catering amongst other work so you must work at
27:27Christmas time. So what kind of events do you end up doing over Christmas? Well I suppose a bit like
27:33your greeting there, the one thing I've noticed in the last sort of five or six years is how
27:37early Christmas comes now. So my really busy Christmas work schedule is actually towards the
27:43tail end of November going into December mainly because the majority of the work that I do over
27:50Christmas is actually for brands so they tend to host quite early and they will basically invite
27:56their clients into their stores or their studios to showcase what they have on offer that Christmas.
28:01Do you end up working Christmas day or are you sort of done with maybe sort of right just before
28:06Christmas? I kind of keep the diary open for private clients. I would say I work about one
28:13in every three Christmases. I don't work every Christmas mainly because I think if I only do it
28:17once every two or three years it means that I'm not jaded with the whole concept of cooking for
28:22people on Christmas. It's as much of a novelty for me as it can be for them having someone there.
28:26It stays pretty busy for me work-wise right up until the early part of January. And what kind
28:31of events or things would be on on Christmas day that you would be working? Over Christmas it tends
28:36to be more clients who I've maybe cooked for in a professional capacity in their work environment
28:43who've asked me to maybe come to their home environment to look after them but I've got
28:46clients kind of all over the UK really so the last few times that I've cooked on Christmas day
28:52actually once most recently was in Edinburgh but actually broadly speaking it hasn't been
28:58in Edinburgh that I've been asked to do that. I tend to find that clients are only really keen
29:03to ask me to cook for them when there's it's an extra special Christmas for them when they
29:07maybe got more people coming or maybe it's an anniversary as well as a Christmas or something
29:12like that or they've got people visiting from overseas and they really want to relax and enjoy
29:17that time with them so they'll sometimes reach out at that point and ask me but it's very
29:21varied. I mean what I do is extremely varied. And do those menus tend to be quite different,
29:28quite modern or does everyone quite like to stick to the traditional whether it's a
29:31luxury brand, a commercial brand or a private client? Yeah I think early in the Christmas
29:36season I can get away with being very Christmassy and then towards Christmas I have to start
29:41thinking a lot more cleverly about things that people have already eaten that month and not
29:45kind of overloading their palate with things that they've already had. Although there are
29:49lots of things that people are never sick of, roast potatoes being one of them, but you know
29:53you've definitely got to be conscious of the fact that it's not just cooks and chefs who
30:00prepare kind of slightly richer food, it's everybody does it around Christmas and New Year
30:05and I think by the time it gets to Christmas and New Year I'm just trying to be a bit smarter and
30:10give them things that they maybe haven't eaten that month. And what would that look like? Is it
30:13maybe a bit more of fish? Because I know your pop-up Barry Fish is very kind of focused on that.
30:18Yeah I mean I would describe myself as being fish focused as a chef anyway for passion and for
30:25the fact that I find that you know it lends itself well to any occasion and I do get a lot of people
30:31I mean I suppose it does often start off with but I don't like fish and I hear that quite a lot
30:35and it usually ends with oh my goodness I do like fish because it's just really what you do with it
30:39or maybe the fish that you give people I'm quite open about what it is I'd like to do for clients
30:45and then they can feed back so it's not like they get presented with a menu that they have no say in
30:51but yeah fish is a good way of doing it maybe cooking a bit lighter maybe focusing a bit more
30:55on maybe the finesse side of things I think the roosting of you know big birds and stuff is great
31:01fun on Christmas day but maybe in the run-up to Christmas people want just a little bit more
31:06finesse and a little bit more lean protein and things like that so again it's just not massively
31:12complicated it's just about trying to identify what they're going to be eating on Christmas
31:17day so there's no point me giving people big turkeys in the middle of December because
31:21they've already got that to look forward to yeah going back to fish as well there is a tradition
31:25of having fish on Christmas Eve I think I'm right on that some people do that so there's already
31:31like a sort of tradition around that so it was kind of nice to sort of focus on that a little
31:34bit anyway and try and get more people into eating that way yeah totally I mean I find like you know
31:40it's just about suggestion with me more than it is about as I said with telling people what I think
31:44they should eat I'm kind of you know the position that we're in both with the private chefing with
31:49the with the brand cooking and obviously with Barry Fish is about giving people choice so most
31:55of all I'm massively concerned with is handling you know the best quality produce I can get a
32:01reasonably good at the best time of year to handle it there is a tradition on Christmas Eve I mean
32:06everyone has smoked salmon usually around Christmas I quite often say to people I think
32:12sea trout is a better version of salmon it's like a good version of salmon so I try to lead people
32:18more if you're going to be very classic and ask me to do a smoked salmon we do a dish called
32:22Barry Fish pastrami which is very similar to smoked salmon just with more flavor I suppose
32:27scallops are also really popular over Christmas prawn cocktail all of these things but I kind of
32:34do it with half a traditional head on and the other half of me goes well what can I do to this to
32:38make it a bit more interesting for people what would be your tips for people who are cooking
32:42Christmas dinner this year it's the same one I give every year which is to just don't leave
32:47everything to Christmas morning there really isn't any point first of all in the run-up to Christmas
32:52get rid of all that stuff eat all that stuff in your fridge that you're going to throw out otherwise
32:57so have a few house dinners using up all that veg using up all the stuff in your fridge and make a
33:01little bit of space so that would be my key one then that means that on Christmas Eve when everyone
33:07is uh you kind of hang around the house a little bit more often you can start thinking about things
33:11like peeling veg putting it into cold water in the fridge maybe make your gravy and stick it in the
33:16fridge try and think of things that don't have any detrimental impact on the menu that you can do ahead
33:22and that means on the day itself is more about relaxing and enjoying you can't cook the bird the
33:27day before so all I would say top tip with the bird is remember that it doesn't have to coincide
33:32with everything else I used to watch my mum who was a brilliant cook by the way
33:37I kind of watched her do it initially and then I always say to people afterwards like the bird
33:41can be cooked first thing in the morning and wrapped in foil and rested you can pretty much
33:45get that bird out the oven two hours before you're going to eat it wrap it up and that leaves your
33:50oven free because people are juggling oven space and that's the other thing that happens you get
33:55these really blonde roast potatoes and kind of peely wally veg simply because the oven door is
34:00being opened every five minutes and people are stressing about a bird cook the bird wrap the
34:04bird forget about the bird get your oven up nice and hot and focus on the other things because I
34:10mean as I said to you earlier I mean if there's one thing everyone's got an opinion on it's roast
34:14potatoes it's roast potatoes and people also like different kinds of potatoes as well roast potatoes
34:20are always a winner but then maybe somebody wants mash and like you know it's how do you how do you
34:25go about making sure everyone's happy I went to a friend's house for Christmas once and there was
34:29mash roast potatoes and weirdly boiled potatoes and I'm still I just was staring at it going that
34:34I bet it was perfectly normal just maybe not to me I like roast potatoes with a roast but yeah I get
34:40the fact that the potatoes are very very important but for me it's like just get a good potato use
34:45good oil good vegetable oil if you're on a veggie or plant-based diet and if you're eating the bird
34:52then I would use duck fat you can go to the supermarket melt the duck fat in a little pan
34:56get it up nice and smoky get those blanched potatoes in there and you're going to get
35:00absolutely cracking those potatoes it's good advice because I don't do Christmas dinner anymore
35:04but when I did um I used to watch my mum and aunt cook the turkey overnight on Christmas Eve and then
35:10when I said I actually want to start cooking it on Christmas Day it was like I declared all out
35:16I don't know well I mean they were just they could believe it and there are people who cook on
35:21Christmas Day I mean I have the benefit of cooking 365 days a year there are people who
35:26really do on Christmas decide to give cooking a go and on the one hand you can say yeah I get it
35:32Christmas food is traditional and we kind of all tend to eat the same things over Christmas
35:37but I will also say that it's hob space fridge space and oven juggling if in a domestic kitchen
35:42so cooking the bird early resting it resting any meat is crucial to the flavor of the meat
35:50you know preserving the moisture in the bird is crucial to that as well so when people say I don't
35:55have a fancy steam oven or anything like that I just say put a pyrex dish with boiling water in
36:00the bottom of your oven and create a little bit of a steam bath initially just to keep that moisture
36:05in and then remove it when you're wanting to get all that skin nice and golden but realistically
36:10with a turkey they are quite hard to cook because they are bigger than chickens they're bigger than
36:15other birds and you're just about preserving the moisture and getting it cooked properly
36:19so focusing on the bird and letting it rest means that you've got all that other time to think about
36:24the veg the gravy the tatties and all that. How are you going to be spending Christmas this year?
36:29I'm not working this Christmas it's going to be pretty quiet this year in that I'm working up
36:34until sort of Christmas Eve so I think I'll head home on Christmas Eve I'll probably make some nice
36:39snacks to go with during the day we're not massive early eaters on Christmas Day historically I think
36:47we generally don't eat Christmas dinner until sort of four or five o'clock because I'm quite lazy on
36:53Christmas morning and ordinarily I quite like a wee walk to Portobello or something like that
36:58so lots of snack making I'm a big fan of grazing over Christmas you know making sure that you've
37:03got some nice things in the fridge in advance you can either make or just graze on like you know
37:08nice nice pate nice prawns nice fish parfait whatever you can buy or make all of this stuff
37:14but yeah grazing's a big part of me for Christmas this Christmas will be pretty quiet until maybe
37:19just after dinner and then really close friends of ours have a restaurant just a few minutes walk
37:24from where I live so we usually end up in there and then it gets a bit nonsense always good to
37:30have some nonsense on Christmas it's vital to have some nonsense because you can kind of leave all
37:34the dishes behind just for one night and go right we're heading up going into 2025 do you have any
37:40plans or things you can tell us about I think you know what I'm going with yeah yeah well it's a
37:44very exciting point to be I'm slightly I'm almost at the push the button stage but obviously with
37:50what I've been working on so for the last eight or eight to ten years I've been solely focused on
37:55working within the the event sector and it's been phenomenal and I don't want to necessarily leave
38:00the event sector entirely I've got amazing clients and there's still so much certainly with the
38:05travel side of things that I get to do it's wonderful so I suppose with that in mind it
38:10would be silly for me to not also concentrate that I've been spent two years working on a pop-up
38:16restaurant that I would very much like to be a permanent restaurant so looking into the early
38:21part of next year I'm hopeful around towards the end of this year that I've got some cool
38:26news to share with everyone about that okay so watch this space basically watch this space and
38:31especially watch a space in Leith well that's exciting and do you have any tips on how to make
38:37Christmas extra special you know when I think about it I think about the fact that it's a really
38:42luxurious time of year for all of us it doesn't have to be about how much money you spend it's
38:46more just about the quality of the experience so food plays such a big way that you cannot spend
38:54huge amounts of money and add on a little bit of luxury having nicer wine you know we've
38:59trying to spoil ourselves a little bit more over Christmas and New Year so all I would say with
39:04that is don't feel pressure I don't you know to have absolutely everything just kind of relax and
39:10enjoy it because we'll be straight back into the gloom of January before we know it so blink and
39:15it's over relax and enjoy it and that's what I intend to do well thank you very much Barry it's
39:20been great to chat to you and hope you have a very Merry Christmas when it comes Rosalind
39:25Merry Christmas Merry Christmas
39:37that's a lot of historical traditional food that maybe or things that people don't necessarily
39:43do so much anymore what are the modern day food traditions of Christmas modern day Christmas is
39:50very difficult because we have a very generic Christmas now I would say in comparison to even
39:5750 years ago where we still have lots of things like clotted dumpling my grandparents would have
40:01made my parents never kind of introduced that to me in the house I remember it with my granny
40:07but and like fruited cakes are really big at this time of year but I wouldn't say it's Christmas
40:11again I think when we talk about the festive season we have to look at Christmas right through
40:16to Yule even through to Twelfth Night which some people celebrate especially in the kind of
40:19northeast things like clotted dumpling which is kind of boiled in a bag right through to black
40:25bun or special Yule breads that they make especially kind of Orkney and Shetland there's more
40:31these kind of fruited bannock type things and that's really kind of focused I mean historically
40:36fruit isn't available and so people have used dried fruits and when food is very monotonous
40:40we rely a lot on spices to try and make it exciting make it something special there's a
40:45kind of there's a golden rule that Florence Marion McNeill of Scottish Food Writers she talks
40:49about where it's for Yule you take the food that you eat throughout the year and you add butter
40:55cheese cream and that makes it special I don't think that's very dissimilar now actually because
41:00we have a year that's filled with relative feasting compared to even what my grandparents
41:04experienced in their lifetime and so we try to make it special and that might be buying in special
41:09things it might be cooking something that we don't normally cook throughout the year I never make
41:13mashed potato anymore except at Christmas I never make roast potatoes anymore I'm not a big kind of
41:18Sunday feast person so I suppose really Christmas now in Scotland is about the individual the
41:24individual choice that people make to try and make it special and I do think people can kind of lean
41:28into some of those more historic recipes and we don't have to think about historic as 17th century
41:33we can think about historic as our grandparents our family recipes the things that make us feel
41:39nostalgic sometimes I think when it comes to feeling connected to food sometimes it's about
41:45not taking the convenient if you have the resources and the time not taking the thing which is the most
41:52exciting not taking the thing which is the easiest to make or perhaps committing yourself to something
41:57that feeds nostalgia in you when you make I think baking is very special because if you follow a
42:04family recipe and you add eight ounces of flour and four ounces of sugar whatever you're making
42:08you're making the exact same thing that your granny made and you're eating it 80 years later
42:13and if you're following a recipe you're standing in a kitchen the way she would have using
42:18implements that she would have and you're copying a generational inherited cultural practice and
42:27I think when we talk about eating mindfully a lot of time we think about health and nutrition
42:32but actually baking mindfully and eating mindfully and thinking about how lucky you are to be here
42:38the fact that your generations your ancestors lived through terribly cold winters and huddled
42:43together with other families and sat around fires I think is a beautiful thing that we can
42:48feed ourselves with if we lean into that nostalgia a wee bit more. That's really nice it's so much
42:54nicer than just going out and buying a Christmas cake or a Christmas pudding just make or a
42:57well you can't buy well no you can buy clouty dumpling but trying to make the one that your
43:01gran made. Yeah but even sometimes I mean lots of people we're in a cost-of-living crisis
43:07people are working multiple jobs people have side hustles there's nothing wrong with buying
43:12but actually sometimes you can buy from a local bakery and they'll have a clouty dumpling or
43:16they'll have a Christmas cake or a black bun and those things again if that's what you can do to
43:20be mindful in that moment or to I don't want to talk about honoring ancestors but actually
43:25in that way that maybe let's make it special and choose something I wouldn't always choose
43:29you know we've got lovely gato mousse things which can be delivered from a supermarket
43:34and that might feel more attractive than a slightly drier celicote bannock or you know
43:40something that might be a slightly harder kind of fruit cake that reminds you a bit of your
43:43like that bit of like Christmas cake that was left over on your granny's plate cake by March
43:47that no one touched because it was three months old and stoned. Yeah there's choices we can make
43:52today that might feed us in a different way than just about excitement but actually nostalgia.
43:58We've mentioned black bun there which last week we spoke to Stuart from Barnett's bakery and they
44:04are a traditional bakery in Fife and they still make and sell quite a lot of black bun
44:09which is interesting because I only really knew about it through work and tried to get it some
44:16in a couple of places a few years ago with a friend and couldn't but it's these sort of
44:21traditional family bakeries that are keeping that alive so if you go and buy it you're obviously
44:24keeping that tradition going but can you tell us a bit about the history of black bun?
44:28Historically speaking a black bun is a very dense fruitcake that's wrapped in pastry.
44:35As far as records go we start to see it coming out in the big kind of the beginning of the 1800s
44:40where we see the first recipe I believe is around 1826 the year before we have the first mention
44:47of it in an advertisement for a bakery down south in London and they're talking about a scotch bun.
44:52So black bun, scotch bun, a Scottish Yule bun, these sorts of things are kind of what it's called.
44:59The advertisement from down south it says that it was the kind of dignified Scottish cake that was
45:06on the table of King James and that it's a great present to give to people. Perhaps a more traditional
45:12fruited cake is like that clouty dumpling or even the kind of Christmas cakes and things like that
45:19and kind of fruited Yule bannocks. My instinct is really that the black bun is far more owned by
45:27bakeries in Scotland. At the beginning of the 1800s very few people have ovens in Scotland.
45:32People if they're going to make a big cake or they're roasting a joint and they don't have an oven
45:36they take it to a bakery and the baker will fire the leg of mutton or bake your cakes for you.
45:43We do have some early recipes where it talks about a round black bun but then when we think about
45:47black bun today, for those of you that have never seen a black bun, it's essentially a kind of
45:53rectangle, a bit like a loaf, it's fruitcake and it's covered in pastry and I think really that belongs
45:59to bakers. So it's not a surprise that bakeries are still talking about a black bun. We see that
46:04in the north they refer to it as an Edinburgh bun and that really is because it was Edinburgh
46:11bakeries that were promoting it, advertising it, selling it. So buy it from a baker don't try and
46:16make it basically? I mean you can if you have a family recipe for it and again recipes have
46:21existed for as long as we've had advertisements for a black bun. To date would I make a black bun
46:26if someone was coming over? Am I going to make pastry? Probably not. And is a black bun the
46:33optimal way to eat dried fruits? Probably not either. I would much prefer like an orange
46:39zesty Dundee cake as I'm partial to but again if you've got a family recipe go for it. Yeah may as
46:46well. May as well. So what are you doing for Christmas this year? Are you working? Are you off?
46:51I save my annual leave. I am not a sun worshipper. I save three weeks of annual leave for Christmas
46:57and I luxuriate in the cold and wet and dark festive time. I wear pyjamas, I watch Vicar of
47:06Dibley, I do all the things that are slightly nostalgic from my childhood, eat far too much
47:11and feel slightly ill but I think that's what we're supposed to do. Like our ancestors did
47:17before, staying in their pyjamas all day and watching Vicar of Dibley. Yeah our ancestors.
47:23As they did back in the second century. Yeah of course. I mean I have on the day itself we have a
47:29smaller Christmas now. I did for a while I had like my entire like extended family over trying
47:35to cook for 13 people and sitting around like a table that's meant for four and everyone's got
47:41trestle tables and they're all eating like t-rexes with their knife and fork up high like it's it's
47:46just it was a bit of a nightmare and a lot of that was kind of I think a lot of people still feel
47:51this today when you get your first house and you have ideas of what you're going to be your
47:55Christmas is going to be and a bit of that like nigella. Oh this is going to be so effortless
48:00and everyone's going to be so impressed with all the food that I make. It's a bit of nonsense really.
48:04It's it's a day if you're not catering for 13 people on a normal day don't do it on your on
48:09your festive day. Ask for help. Reduce the numbers. Try and have the day as a day to kind of be with
48:15people that you care about and love. If you have problematic family don't feel compelled
48:20to go and visit them just enjoy enjoy the time that you've got and so yeah I do cook a big dinner
48:26though but I love cooking. I love kind of making a moment. I do try to subscribe just like slightly
48:32Dickensian ideas of Christmas where I have too many candles fire hazard number of candles and
48:38platters and plates and a bunch of us sit around a bit more of that kind of like friends giving
48:42Christmas time where I will cook some of my favourite things. I cook a couple of family
48:49recipes and yeah just enjoy the day. Yeah what do you cook? My partner cannot go through Christmas
48:56without turkey so I have subscribed to turkey now. I would never growing up we did not have turkey.
49:01I think it was just seen as too expensive. I would probably say my grandparents didn't know how to
49:06cook turkey and so when people talk about turkey being very dry it's because they don't have a meat
49:11thermometer and aren't checking turkey and taking it out at the right time. So I've never had a dry
49:16turkey. So I do do turkey but I always have beef because that's what I grew up with and that's a
49:21kind of a slow roasted joint. I do get a bit fancy now and have a sous vide machine. My friend
49:26introduced me to dolphin was when I was at university. Dolphin noise as I first called them
49:30and the best thing about Christmas dinner for me is like the three days after we were just eating
49:35sandwiches made with stuffing a sandwich with dolphin was and turkey. Are you joking? Yeah that's
49:41fantastic. And you're not working but you kind of are working aren't you? So and as well with the
49:48kind of festive season it's accidentally turned into my busiest season. I save on my annual leave
49:52but then I end up working through it as a food writer. So at the moment I am about to tomorrow
49:58record the last of a festive podcast that'll be going out on Mondays throughout December and you
50:03can find details about that on my Tenement Kitchen Instagram page. But myself and Dr Lindsay Middleton
50:09a friend and colleague we're exploring Victorian Christmas traditions. 300 years between Christmas
50:14being made legal and it becoming a public holiday and right in the middle of that we have Queen
50:19Victoria and Charles Dickens that create this ideal of Christmas that we still subscribe to
50:23today in many ways and we're trying to explore where were the changes happening? Was Scotland
50:29right up there ready for the changes? Who was celebrating and how were they celebrating? So we're
50:33comparing a crofter's Christmas in the Victorian period with maybe a slightly more fancy townhouse
50:38using menus are from old cookbooks and trying to kind of ask the question what is a very Victorian
50:46Scottish Christmas? Well that sounds absolutely fascinating and if you like this chat you should
50:50definitely go and listen and watch that chat it sounds great. Thank you very much yes. And we've
50:55had a wonderful breakfast here at the Ivy in Glasgow they've got a festive menu for breakfast
51:00lunch and dinner and yeah I can't say enough how lovely this space is it's very nice. Peter thank
51:06you very much and I hope you have a lovely Christmas. You as well Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.
51:11Thanks to my guests on this episode and thanks to you two for listening. If you haven't checked
51:21it out yet remember this is part two of our Christmas specials. Part one is waiting for you
51:25right now. Thanks for listening to Scran throughout 2024. Producer Kelly and I will return in 2025 with
51:32lots more tales from inside the food and drink industry we know and love in Scotland. I hope
51:36we all have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.