Whisky, porridge and personal preferences

Porridge wars have broken out in the house. The in-laws are in between moving houses and have moved in for a few months. At least, they say it’s only a few months. While all is peaceful (bar my Highland Park collection taking a battering from the f-in-l), tensions are rising at breakfast time. They like their morning porridge. So do I. The only problem is that we like it in different ways.

I use coarse or pinhead oatmeal, cooked gently on the stove top with a mix of milk and water, stirred with a spurtle [Apparently, a stick elevated to the status of cooking implement in Scotland – Ed]. They use rolled oats nuked with water in the microwave. I add naught but a pinch of salt. They add all manner of things, including tinned prunes.

My mother-in-law says mine is no more than gruel. I feel that what she assembles – it can hardly be called cooking – is little more than grey papier mâché. You can see why there might be a slight difference in opinion.

I have no problem in admitting that I am a porridge traditionalist. My late mother – and her mother before her – would steep the meal (always pinhead) in water overnight. A spurtle would be used, salt would be the only thing allowed. That’s just the way it was.

Some feel this approach reflects classic Scottish parsimony. Others point out that this most traditional of fare was peasant food, and that sugar wasn’t widely available. Nor, I would add, were tinned feckin’ prunes.

Porridge wars: If you can drink whisky however you like, you can make porridge (almost) however you like, says Dave Broom

You could add milk and stir it in, though my aunt who lived on a croft in Lumsden had a different approach to serving. She’d place a bowl of fresh cream on the side, into which she would dip her spoonful of porridge. Extravagant, perhaps, and therefore uncharacteristic for Aberdeenshire, but it couldn’t be denied that it was good.

Sugar, it was felt, was an English thing and one that should be spurned, or perhaps unspurtled. On reflection, this is perhaps strange as sugar could be added without restraint to Corn Flakes or Rice Krispies. Porridge, its making, its consumption, was somehow sacrosanct.

Feeling that I was in need of winning my now daily argument, I sought out a potential ally in the shape of the Golden Spurtle awards. This annual competition for the best porridge, surely, would be where the rules of classicism would be respected. They are – up to a point… Every contestant has to make a traditional porridge, made with pinhead, coarse, medium or fine oatmeal, water and salt (hardcore! they’d sneer at my use of milk).

But then they also make a ‘speciality porridge’. All manner of adulteration is permitted: blueberries and almond mascarpone; spinach and mussels; whisky, cinnamon and apple; and others which make you wonder if magic mushrooms had been ingested... or, perhaps, used.

Chastened, I sat and mused on this. Hang on, isn’t your fundamentalism with porridge-making just the same as those who apply the same narrow and restrictive rules to whisky enjoyment? The ‘drink it neat’ brigade. The ones who dismiss dilution and sneer at Lagavulin and Coke. How can I, Mr ‘Enjoy your whisky however you want’, lay down conditions for porridge-making?

So I’ve relented. If whisky can be mixed, then what’s wrong about porridge mixed with sugar, or honey, or rooibos tea and banana brûlée if the result is one that gives you pleasure? After all, by eating oats you are doing yourself good. They’re low in calories and they lower cholesterol, though my traditionalist side points out that adding loads of sugar to them will slightly reduce those efficacious qualities. So, though, does salt. Tricky stuff, this.

Does fighting over the type of oatmeal matter? Surely that’s no different to entering into an absurd debate over which style of whisky is better – one with structure or one that is soft? So, while I’ll contest that coarse and pinhead give better flavour and bite, I won’t moan if other types are used. Magnanimous, eh?

The microwave is one step too far, though. There are still some standards which need to be observed and maintained.