Scottish Fare: Rumbledethumps

I am of mixed Celtic heritage.

Every March we gravitate towards Irish recipes. Not wanting to limit ourselves to a single day, we eat Irish fare all month long and have acquired dozens of favorite recipes.  And like any good Irish family, that means we go through more than our share of potatoes... and inevitably end up with a few lost tatties hiding in the bottom of the spud bin. You know the ones - barely worth peeling and small enough that they slip down to the bottom, where they sit growing eyes and wrinkles until you find them staring up at you. 

My Mummy traced our Irish ancestors to Counties Cork, Kerry, and Tyrone in Ireland. And I am proud of my Irish roots... but I am MORE Scottish. My Granduncle took a DNA test that came back 98% Northern Great Britain... and Mummy's OTHER side is full of Highland clan names! My own DNA is 2/3 Northern Great Britain - which is SCOTLAND!!!

So this year with my Celtic blood begging for hearty heritage-fare, a desire to try something new, and a bin of little lost tatties making eyes at me, I decided to see if I could find a few authentic Scottish recipes.

I didn't find a few, I found 40. And most of them had the most amazingly fun names like cranachan, cock-a-leekie soup, Strathbogie mist, skirlie, stovies, clapshot...

...and rumbledethumps. I HAD to try rumbledethumps. Who WOULDN'T want to eat something with a name like that? I checked over a dozen recipes and discovered that rumbledethumps are essentially Irish colcannon that's been baked. We LOVE colcannon! From October through April, we make it at LEAST once, sometimes twice every week... and usually make enough to ensure leftovers as well!

Armed with my new knowledge, I carved the eyes from all my lost little tatties and began what I am hoping is the beginning of a weekly Scottish adventure... because I have GOT to try some of these other funny names as well!

I won't bore you with a recipe for mashed potatoes, because anyone who's been in the kitchen for any length of time knows how to prepare them and has their own favorite version. I have been mashing potatoes since I was 7, and have dozens of ways to prepare them, depending on my mood and what may or may not be in the fridge at the moment.

For this dish, I hand mashed my cooked tatties, milk, butter, and a dash of salt and pepper, substituting buttermilk for our regular almond milk this time because it makes the taters taste extra special, and I had some on hand.

To this, I mixed in an equal amount of chopped fresh cabbage. You COULD use less; I've seen recipes for as little as 1/4 cabbage... but this way I can justify a slightly larger portion because it lowers the calories and carbs of the total dish! I smoothed the colcannon into my baking dishes and topped them with cheese. Because I found recipes with every possible type of cheese and wanted leftovers, I made two pans; one with American cheddar, and the other with Kerrygold Skellig. Then I popped them into a 375F (190C) oven for 30 minutes.

Baking the cabbage made it less crunchy than we're used to, but it still had enough texture to add interest, and the 'taters took on a rich buttery twice-baked quality that was absolutely divine.

Despite having the exact same ingredients, this is completely different from colcannon... but every bit as enjoyable and easy to make! We all loved it, and have decided that this is definitely one for the family cookbook.

Rumbledethumps were a complete success, and now I can't WAIT to try more Scottish recipes! Who knows what amazing treasure we'll discover in my next kitchen adventure?