Porridge is a subject about which seemingly every detail is mired in controversy. Take, for instance, its origin myth. Robert Burns may have hymned “the halesome parritch, chief o’ Scotia’s food” and George Orwell, sarcastically, called it Scotland’s gift to the world. But porridge is no more Scottish than Rod Stewart. Nor is it necessarily directly descended from medieval English pottage, as the Oxford Companion To Food claims. Southern Europeans were drying and grinding oats 32,000 years ago. In 1001 variations globally, porridge has always been with us.
Then there is the issue of the grains, with numerous factions pushing the case for pinhead, coarse, jumbo or rolled oats, with a vociferousness that the average Trotskyist would find, “a bit much”. And that is before, in this age of porridge temples such as London’s 26 Grains, we get into retro-futurist, post-oat ingredients such as amaranth, spelt and black quinoa.
The only thing that people seem to agree on is that porridge is almost uniquely healthy for you. It is good for the heart, blood pressure, waistline (the soluble fibre in it, beta-glucan, makes you feel fuller for longer), and your general pep, as its complex carbs release energy slowly into the bloodstream. Wilder claims that porridge can do everything from prevent a hangover to boost your libido, should be taken with – as Scottish porridge pedants would approve – a pinch of salt.
Cooking
How to Eat (HTE) is relatively open-minded in such matters. Much instant porridge is beige baby food of negligible gastronomic value, but, frankly, even the greatest porridge (patiently toasted pinhead and all), is no revelatory taste sensation. The real flavour elevation is in the toppings.
Decent rolled oats, such as Flavahan’s, do a sufficiently earthy, nourishing job in presenting a little residual bite amid all that creamy starch gelatinisation, and if HTE rejects microwaving as a method of preparation it is primarily for psychological reasons. There is a restorative meditative quality to be found in slowly stirring a pan. It will take you longer to clean the pan than it did to eat the porridge, but it is good for the soul.
On occasion, there is a certain ascetic pride to be taken from eating basic, salt ’n’ water porridge. It feels hardcore. But that only lasts for a day or two before you start cutting what was historically known as water pudding 50:50 with semi-skimmed milk (any more milk, particularly full-fat, makes it too rich), and topping it with cinnamon roasted pineapple or, erm, Sriracha hot sauce.
Sweet or savoury?
With all due respect to Heston Blumenthal’s snails, Chinese congee and René Redzepi’s mornings of porridge with fried pork and butter, this is not a savoury dish. Or, rather, it is a savoury dish which, to bring it to its fullest expression, you sweeten.
At its best, porridge is defined by cohesive, complementary contrasts; flavours and textures that click together as satisfyingly as the proverbial Volkswagen car door. Think of the contrast between that savoury, nutty base and its sweeter toppings; the hot grains and cold milk: that wan canvas and the bright fruits on top; the gloopy, cereal texture of the porridge and its softer or harder garnishes: from jams and compotes or pert fruits that pop in the mouth to large nuts coddled in the warm, nubbly embrace of the porridge.
Equally, this is not dessert. Anything that requires you to lace it with cocoa powder, lemon zest, cardamom or nutmeg – particularly if it requires you to oven-bake it and serve it with Chantilly cream – is not porridge. That, my friend, is pudding.
Toppings and additions
Like pizza, porridge can be topped with pretty much anything and, like pizza, this does not mean that it should be. Many of those toppings are disastrous.
Good toppings: dark rivulets of demerara (although any sugar is sweet); maple syrup (adds a smooth, almost burned toffeeish depth that makes it, arguably, the perfect sweet foil for all that oaty roughage); cold milk (the ubiquitous moat!); chopped dates (finally, a use for them); very, very ripe mango; stewed, sweetened apples or pears; soft, lightly tart berry fruits, particularly blackberries and blueberries (either warmed and squished, or whole and cold for an entirely different sensation); nuts and seeds, particularly almonds, hazelnuts, pecans, pumpkin seeds; dried fruits (cranberries, apricots, papaya); toasted coconut; black treacle (a speciality in Yorkshire, apparently).
You may choose to go about all this by hand, painstakingly combining toppings. However, there is another way. Simply buy muesli that offers a suitable combination of the above and toss that across. No one will judge you. No one can see you. You are in your own kitchen.
Bad toppings: honey (that foul, floral-medicinal contaminant that taints everything that it touches); cream, much less double cream (because you can have too much of a good thing); banana (weirdly ineffectual in this context, it does not offer a definitive counterpoint); grated or diced raw apple (often full of jarringly, well, apply flavours that leave a peculiar off-chemical aftertaste); mixed spices (this is not mulled wine and nothing should aspire to taste like that); pomegranate seeds (because it is like chewing a mouthful of your own broken teeth); scallops; bacon; harissa; miso; poached eggs; hot sauce (HTE is not making this up, this is all really happening, right now … probably in east London); single malt whisky (it seems, frankly, like a terrible waste).
When
Winter mornings, when it is still dark outside and the rain is audibly lashing against the windows with such force it drowns out the radio. Days when you need not just the internal central heating, but the gently reassuring, spoon-by-spoon repetitive consistency that only a bowl of gluey porridge can provide. It eases you sleepily into the day, with nary a jolt. Only a damned fool or someone deliberately cultivating a rep as an eccentric “character” would eat porridge in summer. Or after 9am. This dish, so appealing in its core blandness in the fuzzy irritation of an early morning, reveals itself, at lunch, to be a great lump of unedifying griege stodge. Porridge at lunch is a laborious chore.
Bowl
It must be a high-sided bowl with no lip. That uninterrupted circle is a psychological and aesthetic manifestation of the hug that this porridge will give you. Moreover, served in a large shallow bowl, porridge looks like an unedifying splat. Like hastily slopped-out gruel. More prison canteen than perfect breakfast. HTE can see the appeal of using a wooden bowl. It is more than a hipster affectation. At 7am there would be something appealingly quiet and restful about the scraping of wood-on-wood. “The sound of a spoon on a wooden porridge bowl is gentle, comforting and homely,” reckons Nigel Slater. But, ultimately, life is as busy as it is short, money is tight and there are only so many things you can engage with. Bowls come very much down life’s pecking order. From a bowl, HTE wants something cheap and convenient that it can chuck in the dishwasher. Standard white, vitrified factory-made crockery will do just fine.
Spoon
Use a wide round soup spoon not an oval dessert spoon. The latter always feels a little stiff and prissy, if not odd in the mouth, when eating something that requires you to dig deep, like porridge.
So, porridge. How do you eat yours?
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