A sense of smell
Katt pies recipe
What do you mean when you say that something tastes delicious? What is it you are actually tasting? Salty, sweet, bitter, sour and umami are the five universally accepted tastes, but where does that leave all of the flavours? The answer is quite simply, in the nose. It’s estimated that between 75 and 90 per cent of what we taste is actually what we smell. Fragrant herbs, sweet cooked onions, potent garlic, tropical passion fruit are all mostly enjoyed by the nose, rather than the tastebuds, although of course, we do get their texture and bitterness or sweetness from our mouths.
So what happens if you lose your sense of smell? Well, this week thanks to coronavirus, I’ve found out. Thankfully, I feel well in myself, but I have lost my sense of smell and taste. It’s infuriating, not just because I hugely rely on my senses for my job as a food and wine writer, but it also makes food and drink awfully dull. Over the last few days, I’ve eaten prime steak, Marmite, Spanish tortilla, chocolate chip cookies, and quaffed gutsy Rioja, strong tea and sorted out my herb garden, and it all tasted and smelled of the same nothingness.
Besides the obvious, there are things I hadn’t really thought that I relied on my sense of smell quite so much. Sundays are the day for clearing out the fridge ready for the weekly shop. Now, I’m never one to go by ‘best before’ dates, I always just thrust my nose into it and breathe deeply. If it doesn’t smell bad or look off colour, it stays. I used to be the gatekeeper of my Nan’s milk, telling her almost down to the hour, how long before it went bad. She could never seem to smell or taste it going sour. It’s just as well I’m pretty good and know when things were cooked in my own fridge.
One thing this nasal problem has done however, is made me think more about how I taste things. I’ve never been a scoffer, choosing instead to savour each mouthful, but when you can’t smell or sense flavour in that way, you come to appreciate other elements. When I did my wine training, they talked a lot about mouth feel, and eating at the moment, I’m much more conscious of how things feel as I eat them. Is there a silkiness, does it crunch, or does it make my mouth water? Mouthwatering is a term I never use in food writing, but it is perhaps the best way to describe that feeling when something is sour or sweet or any of those other things and give you that delightful tingly feeling under the edges of your tongue and in the cheekbones. We all know that face-pulling pain when something sour gets you in the jaw.
The one upside to this situation is that I can still feel the burn of chilli or whisky for example. That paired with the texture of the food is what’s getting me through at the moment. I did contemplate just drinking water and eating lettuce in a bid for a health kick, but that’s also an incredibly dull sensation. So, I’m back in the kitchen trying to get inventive with texture and heat until my senses return (hopefully soon, as I can’t test recipes for you in the same way at present).
If anyone else is struggling, Ryan Riley and Kimberley Duke over at the inspiring Life Kitchen put together a special digital recipe book for those suffering changes to taste and smell brought on my Covid-19. You can download it here.
The Recipe
Katt pies
I was going to give you my version of this more than 250-year-old recipe, but as I couldn’t taste the finished result, I thought I’d give you the most classic version I could find from Croeso Cymreig. Before we go any further, Katt pies do not contain any feline components you’ll be pleased to hear. They are a version of a sweet meat pie – the precursor to modern day Christmas mince pies for example. These Katt pies were traditionally served at Templeton Fair on 12 November in Pembrokeshire, and are a mix of lamb or mutton, currants and sugar encased in a hot water suet crust.
According to Bobby Freeman in First Catch Your Peacock, the name comes from ‘Christopher Cat’s Shire Lane pie-house where in James II’s time leading Whigs of the day – Steele, Addison, Congreve, Vanburgh – met and formed the Kit-cat Club, dining of course on Cat’s mutton pies, which became known as “kit-cats”, abbreviating finally to “katt”’. She continues, ‘I speculate that the name might have been carried west by Whig politicians amongst the Halls of Pembrokeshire, whose home was at Gumfreston near Tenby, not far from Templeton… who could conceivably have been members of the famous Kit-cat Club.’
It’s thought that spices and sugar were added to meat to trick the tastebuds from acknowledging that the meat was on the turn – apt for this week perhaps!
Ingredients
1lb flour
½lb suet
Good pinch salt
½lb minced mutton
½lb currants
½lb sugar (brown)
Salt and pepper
Method
Make a hot-water pastry by boiling suet in water, add to flour and salt, stirring well with wooden spoon. When cool make into pies about 4ins. in diameter. Arrange filling in layers – mutton, currants and sugar, salt and pepper; cover with a round of thin pastry. Bake in a hot oven 20 to 30 minutes. Eat hot.
From Croeso Cymreig
If you try the recipe out, don’t forget to tag any photos with #mywelshkitchen.
The Playlist
To me, cooking and music go hand in hand, whether that’s singing at the top of your voice using a wooden spoon as a microphone while waiting for pasta to boil, or dancing around with the oven gloves on as the oven timer counts down. Here are this week’s ideas for your Welsh Kitchen playlist.
This week we have two pieces in honour of Remembrance Day. The first is a rousing battle march performed by The Band and Male Voice Choir of The Prince of Wales’s Division. The second is a song made famous by Dame Vera Lynn, but here performed by another forces’ sweetheart, Katherine Jenkins.
Men of Harlech by The Band and Male Voice Choir of The Prince of Wales’s Division
We’ll Meet Again by Katherine Jenkins
The Pantry
Good food is nothing without good ingredients and thankfully there are plenty of fantastic Welsh products on the market. Here is where you’ll find recommendations to stock up your cupboard, fridge or fruit bowl, or a really great place for food.
Travel by Telephone Beer
We’re talking beer this week and travelling to Newtown in Mid Wales to taste the farmhouse style beers from family-run Wilderness Brewery, who describe their beers as ‘simple, unfiltered and vegan friendly’. Travel by Telephone is a rustic beer, aged for 18 months in Bordeaux barrels, then blended with fresh saison and lightly dry hopped with Citra.