01 October 2010

I Do Like Vegetarian Haggis

There is a serious lack of Mexican food in Scotland. In fact, the whole food scene in Scotland is fairly grim. When we first met, Steve kept praising a certain Chinese restaurant chain, claiming that the proprietor deserved to be knighted for bringing the best Chinese food Scotland had ever known to the UK. Then we ate there. It was not good. We chose the buffet, so I tried just about every dish Steve's dearly-loved proprietor had on offer and it was uniformly disappointing. All of my lunch companions (two Scots and two Canadians) assured me, though, that it was absolutely the best Chinese food in Scotland and that if I had tried the other Chinese food available in the country, I'd be singing its praises too. Hmph.

Anyway, this week (except for a surprisingly GORGEOUS day yesterday) is cold and rainy and I found a recipe for tamale pie that seems so utterly warm and comforting that I insisted we track down the ingredients at the grocery store this week. When I asked Steve if they carry canned green chilies in the stores here, he had no idea what I was talking about. They don't have them here and they don't have them in Nova Scotia either. We found some pickled chilies that we're attempting as a replacement, but I have my doubts about their suitability in a tamale pie. We did manage to find a bottle of enchilada sauce in the tiny international section of the grocery store and some cheap turkey (because chicken is outrageously expensive) and we located cornmeal in an African market, although it's white and not yellow. We'll see. I may be making Mexican food equivalent in quality to the best Chinese food in Scotland, which is not saying much.

Completely unrelated, E recommended Dala for the Song of the Day a while back, and I am loving them!

5 comments:

Lady Susan said...

Oh dear, I see that I will need to stop complaining about the pitiful offerings of our local supermarkets. Yours are obviously Much Worse. ;) Good luck with the Tamale Pie!

E said...

Yay Dala! Here's a link to an entire concert, if you're interested:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111394837

I'm impressed with your dedication to finding tamale pie ingredients. I'm sure it will be tasty.

MBC said...

Lady Susan--Thanks! Pie turned out really well.

E--Ooh, excellent link. Thanks!

Jefran said...

For Mexican food you need Lupe Pintos in Edinburgh - http://www.lupepintos.com/
As well as Mexican, stocks some Spanish things like boquerones and wonderful fresh chorizo and manchego. Also some American groceries if you're homesick. I'm not related to the owners btw, it's just my local deli.

MBC said...

Hey, thanks for the recommendation. Going to Edinburgh today and will check it out.

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