Scottish Saturday.

I was inspired by my own childhood to do a Scottish Saturday theme for MoFo this year. Both of my parents are Scottish and although I mainly grew up in the South of England classics like mince & tatties, kedgeree and haggis would grace the dinner table regularly. Mince & tatties was definitely a favourite of mine, if you aren't down with the Scottish lingo tatties is slang for potatoes and in the case of mince and tatties they are usually served as mash.

I didn't think you could screw up something as simple as mash but I managed to chop up all of the potatoes and throw them into the pan before realising that I'd forgotten to peel them!

Whilst there is a place in this world for skin-on mashed potatoes this classic Scottish dish is not it! Peeling tiny pieces of potato is hard but highly amusing, of course it was all okay in the end and aside from a scraped knuckle I came out unscathed.

For the mince part I used Fry's Meat Free Mince with Vegan Gravy.

I love Fry's mock meat products, they're always reliably tasty and I had no qualms about using an as yet untried product in this recipe.

I also used this recipe from Rachel's blog Thistle & Yellow Rose as a flavour guide. Now I don't usually publish recipes on my blog so this is more of a guideline as I didn't really measure anything and the credit for the flavour profile definitely goes to Rachel. This serves about three people and I served a jug of packet gravy (Bisto!) alongside it to make the potatoes all gravy-tastic too, this is a little untraditional but I'm a gravy fiend!

Ingredients:

• Enough mash for three people. Make it nice & creamy with lots of vegan margarine, this isn't the place for health mash!
• 3 small carrots
• 100g of peas
• 1 box of Fry's Meat Free Mince & Vegan Gravy
• 1 TBS of olive oil
• 1/2 an onion, diced small
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 tsp vegan worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp mixed herbs
• pepper to taste
• salt to taste (I felt like this didn't need any extra salt but everyone has different tastes)

Method:

• Put the potatoes on to cook, mash when ready.
• Start steaming the carrots, you know how long that takes. Throw in the peas a couple of minutes before the end.
• Fry the onion and the whole box of mince until the mince is browned, around 8 minutes. Throw the garlic in & fry until fragrant. Mix the gravy packet with the 200ml of water (as directed on the packet) and pour over the mince. Cook until thickened. Add the worcestershire sauce, herbs, pepper, and salt if desired. Throw in the carrots and peas, stir, serve alongside the mash & eat.

Me & Nick both loved this, the gravy that comes with the mince is excellent and I thought that the actual mince was the closest in taste & texture to the kind I used to eat in my pre-veggie days. This recipe turned out to be super simple and really delicious and we'll definitely be making it again.