A Bit of Scottish Home Cooking (July 14)

I met my first REAL Scottsman here in Italy. His name is Lee and he has a beard, river dances, owns a kilt or two, throws logs, bathes in Guiness, and can sort of play the bagpipes. He also likes to paint and cook. It took me about a week to begin to understand what he was saying (he has a really thick accent), and by then we'd become pretty good friends.

Back in Scotland, Lee owns a confectionary company that produces this amazing thing called "tablet" (Tah-blah). He brought some to the studios for us to try and now I'm hooked. It's basically a large block of sugary goodness made of all sorts of things that would make Jenny Craig faint: butter, milk, cream, and sugar. It seems pretty simple to make, but Lee swears that it's a rather complicated and delicate process and that the best tablet can only be created by the most experienced confectioner (such as himself). Curious, I went over to his place today for a lesson on how to make a proper tablet. Despite its simple ingredients, tablet-making is a sensitive process that involves a lot of precise mixing, boiling, stirring, temperature-checking, frothing, stove-switching, and waiting. When cooked correctly, the result is a hearty slab of pure caloric deliciousness.