The other night, I attended a Scotch tasting at Atkins Park, here in Atlanta’s Virginia Highlands neighborhood. Atkins Park is a nice joint, full of dark hardwoods, and the site of Atlanta’s oldest continually licensed tavern. There we — being a bunch of old friends from CCP and I — drank a dram each of Glenkinchie, Lagavulin, Talisker, Oban, Singleton, and Cragganmore, to get a sampling of single-malts from across most of Scotland’s discrete whisky-making regions.

When I mentioned this on Twitter, Chuck Wendig suggested I write about it. So here I am. If you’d rather, you could go watch something like the Three Sheets episode on Scotland. I’m not the boss of you.

(A note here about links: I don’t have a favorite whisky site, so I’ve linked mostly to two general sources. One is Wikipedia, the other is the official website for these spirits — watch out for biases.)

Scotch is an acquired taste, but can be as fun to drink and parse as wine, if you’re so inclined. To me, it’s like a drinking in a sense of place, and since that place is Scotland, you know I dig it. It’s about downing the distilled essence of a landscape, tasting the waters and grains and peats of a far-away land; about turning Scotland into smoke and fluid and taking it in through your nose and mouth.

It’s a form of vicarious travel. More aptly, it’s a form of vicarious travel that gets you drunk. So, yeah, I like it a lot.

Let’s talk a little bit about that word, whisky. Near as I can tell, whisky (no “e”) is the word for the stuff that comes from Canada and from everywhere east of Ireland. Whiskey (with the “e”) comes from Ireland and America. Scotch whisky, sometimes (often) just called Scotch, is whisky that comes from Scotland.

Bourbon, by comparison, is a whiskey from the States, or more strictly, from Kentucky, or more strictly, from Bourbon County, Kentucky.

What we were given the other night was a sampling from the Classic Malts collection of single-malt whiskies, owned by Diageo, and the evening had a bit of a sales-pitch vibe to it, for better or worse. (But the price was low for all these whiskies and paired foods, so I’m not complaining.) If the goal was to get me to buy more Scotch, it worked. But I was buying Scotch anyway, so whatever.

A very rough guide to the origin regions of Scotch whisky.

Officially, according to the Scotch Whisky Association, Scotch comes from one of five regions: the Lowlands, the Highlands, Islay (I’ve been saying is-lay, but it’s eye-luh), Speyside, and Campbeltown (note my typo in the graphic at right). Practically, the Island region (technically a subregion of the Highlands, I guess) is sometimes counted as a region unto itself. In fact, I thought it was a region unto itself until I set out to write this thing, so either I was wrong before or I’m wrong now. Have a dash of salt — I’m not yet a renowned whisky writer.[1]

• We were started off with a Glenkinchie and soda, which was rather a disappointment. We came to taste Scotches, not Scotch-like cocktails. As a result, I can’t tell you much about Glenkinchie’s taste, except that it can’t be too dark or smokey, as the glass I was handed was all but clear. Glenkinchie is one of the few Lowland distilleries left, but I can’t tell if it’s typical of the region or not. I’ll report back when I know more.

Our cocktail was served with a pasty parmesan shortbread cookie that was helped bring out the brightness of the drink when it wasn’t crumbling down the front of my sweater.

• Next up, the lovely Lagavulin, an iconic Islay. This was one of my favorites, already: a smooth, dark, smoke-filled whisky. Peaty; a little like drinking a bog, in all the best ways. A little bit of water or a single rock of ice and this thing opens way up — it’s a great Scotch to learn with, as it tastes pretty distinctly different neat and with water. Good stuff.

This was served with a blue-cheese risotto ball, but I missed out on those because they didn’t bring enough for the table. They looked and smelled good, though.

• After that: Talisker (10-years old, I believe), the Scotch of the Isle of Skye. I’m a sucker for these island Scotches, it turns out. I started paying attention to Scotch when I bought a bottle of Scapa on Orkney island, so it may have helped to set my palate for the stuff. Talisker’s light and airy, nicely smokey, with a salty edge. I thought I’d had it before, but this isn’t what I remembered. Damn good, though — possibly my next bottle, if I don’t go for something peatier.

Our Talisker came paired with a bacon-wrapped oyster, perhaps to remind us how the flavor mates well with seafood, maybe just to evoke a rich, ocean-side sense of place. Welcomed, either way.

Maybe it’s just me, but Talisker sounds like the name of a rogue cop (”You’re a loose cannon, Talisker!”).

• I’ve been wanting to try Oban (oh-bin) for a while, and now I have. It’s a Highland whisky with profuse flavor and a rounded character, not too dark and not too bold.I drank mine neat, but if I was smart I would’ve put a rock in it to see how that affected the taste.

We were served a slice of an unidentified fruit with this, and whatever it was did the trick. The Oban came off much brighter and more floral with that taste still swimming around. Good stuff. I’ll get this again soon, I hope.

• On to Cragganmore.  This one’s from the Speyside region, and struck me as being mellow with its smoke yet pretty flavorful overall. I prefer a smokier, peatier Scotch, though. To be honest, my recollection of this one’s pretty vague, and that’s pretty telling. Either it didn’t pack much punch, or I was getting slippery by this point. Probably both.

This was served with slices of bread melted with mozzarella and pancetta, which were delicious. The effect of the pairing was lost on me, though, as I pretty much ate these and then drank my drink, in that order.

• We ended with the Singleton, also from the Speyside region. The website says this thing was a big hit when it debuted, but to me it tasted too much like bourbon to scratch my itch for Scotch. Don’t get me wrong, I drank this and the dose served to a friend of mine, who rejected it for its bourbon-ness, but I won’t be ordering this anytime soon…

…unless, maybe, it comes with more of the soft, juicy rabbit sausage this was paired with. That was tasty. The pairing effects may have been lost on me by then, but I didn’t find the Singleton opening up much with its flavors. I just remember, “Mmmm, sausage,” and saying, “Sure, I’ll finish your glass.”

Some of us faded the evening out with a nightcap at the Indy — a black velvet for me — and, all told, it was a stellar evening. Let’s do it again sometime.

^{[1]The fella who led our tasting, though, mentioned a few “whisky writers” that night, and now that I have heard the phrase I cannot shake it. How does one become a whisky writer? If the answer is “by trying real hard,” then stand back, because I may have a new goal to chase.}

Originally published at McSweeney’s Online as a Review of New Food.

A lady at the grocery store was giving out free samples of these. My wife tried one, then brought home a bag of them. She said they were so rich, so ridiculous, that a single one of these seasonal treats could be a dessert. I must have eaten six of them just now, while proofreading this.

They’re new, but I’m not sure they’re food. Though these are Hershey’s candies, they’re not chocolate at all. Each dollop, though, is presented in the shape of a gnome’s hat, wrapped in crinkled foil, so I guess they qualify as Kisses. Each little candy is a compound of orange outside and, on the inside, where the almond would be in an almond Kiss, white stuff. The package includes a little cutaway schematic. Depending on ambient lighting, the orange may seem to be the exaggerated peachy flesh tone of a crayon or the cartoonish pallor of a woozy Oompa-Loompa.

They are weirdly soft. Instead of chewing them, try pressing the candy with your tongue to the roof of your mouth, forming a spread. Imagine that each is a dose of pasty homeopathic medicine prescribed by a witch, a bit of Halloween doled out to heal the need for holiday sweets.

To be sure, a Pumpkin Spice Kiss is sweet, but also subtly savory. Pumpkin spice, it seems, is any combination of cinnamon, clove, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, and mace (which isn’t what I thought it was; it’s the sheath the nutmeg seed comes in) or anything that tastes like any combination of that stuff.

My wife put one at the bottom of her coffee, to make a knockoff pumpkin-spice beverage, and it sort of melted into a dose of autumn flavors, but it also transmuted into a waxy, oily slick across the coffee surface.

Still trying to puzzle out this mix of old-fashioned flavors and newfangled paraffin-like substance, I offered a couple of friends some free sample Pumpkin Spice Kisses. One of them stopped in midchew, her face contorted, unsure how to get away from the thing in her mouth. “I feel like I ate a candle,” she said.

A bit more of my work went up at McSweeney’s Online today in their patented (not patented) Reviews of New Food section. This time: “Hershey’s Pumpkin Spice Kisses.”

A lady at the grocery store was giving out free samples of these. My wife tried one, then brought home a bag of them. She said they were so rich, so ridiculous, that a single one of these seasonal treats could be a dessert. I must have eaten six of them just now, while proofreading this.

New reviews are published on top of older ones, so search for the title or my name to find my earlier pieces. Or just read on down the line, since they’re all some kind of good.

I wouldn’t say I’m an Angle, but I’m Anglish. Our Anglophile streak continued this past weekend with an attempt to create the kind of English breakfast we never got around to on this trip.

We ate on the run most mornings. Most of my breakfasts were coffee and WiFi at Starbucks followed by a sandwich from Pret A Manger — the All-Day Breakfast and Mature Cheddar and Pret Pickle were favorites of ours. (I love Pret A Manger to a stupid degree.)

So this is what I made the Saturday morning after we got back:

That’s fried eggs served on herb-garlic toast, vine-ripened tomatoes, fried mini sausage patties, baked beans with ginger and brown sugar, plus a dash of rocket (arugula). For the second plate I put the tomatoes through the still-warm frying pan, over no heat, just to snag some of the fried-egg flavors. They turned out great.

(There are a couple more pictures of these at Flickr, if you just can’t get enough.)

The night of the crisp party we made Coronation Chicken for everybody, starting from the original 1953 recipe, which uses mayo and whipping cream and no raisins. (Added the raisins anyway.) Now, listen: I’m not a fan of chicken salad. I’ve pretty much cut mayo out of my life and mixing it with the worst chicken in your sandwich shop isn’t going to change my mind about it. Coronation chicken, though, sings a siren song.

The day after this, I ritually returned us to the American South with a full chub’s worth of sausage for biscuits & gravy with red pepper and fennel. I had pictures, but I think I mistook them for more sausage and gravy and ate them.

It was Sara’s idea. We brought back seven oddball flavors of British crisps and turned them into a little game.

Six of the flavors were odd even to the Brits, offered up in bundles by Walkers as part of a promotion to vote-in the next weird snack food for the United Kingdom. Obviously, we had to bring them home and share them with people, but we weren’t sure how to get folks to actually, you know, eat them. Answer: a game.

The seven flavors were dispersed into anonymous cups, each marked on the bottom with a number written in black Sharpie. Two cups for each flavor yielded fourteen cups. Every player got a note card on which to record their guesses. Once everyone had made their guesses — and eaten however many chips it took to make up their minds, bounded only by their tolerance for the taste — I revealed the answers from my master card:

1. Onion Bhaji
2. Builder’s Breakfast
3. Crispy Duck & Hoisin
4. Prawn Cocktail
5. Fish & Chips
6. Cajun Squirrel
7. Chilli & Chocolate

Winning scores were a couple of ties, at four right answers. You’d be surprised how little Cajun Squirrel tastes like squirrel (or cajun) when you don’t know what it is.

We didn’t get any kind of consensus on the best or worst flavor. The fake-egg savor of Builder’s Breakfast (with its sausage and spicy tomato back-up flavors) was so peculiarly rank that it made my hands shake — and still I had to taste it three or four times to get over my fascination with it. Some liked the Fish & Chips flavor just fine. Sara declared, “It tastes like under a bridge!”

I have audio for that, but Vimeo’s having a smoke, so that’ll wait. Here’s a clip:

Crisp Party Excerpt from Wordwill on Vimeo.

There’s a handful of pictures under the “crispparty” tag at Flickr, though.

Borough Market, London.

Review of New Food:
“Butterfinger Crisp Candy Bar”
by Will Hindmarch

The guy at the store said it was good. He said it was “like a Butterfinger humped a Kit-Kat.” Not untrue. By taste alone, we can glean a fair bit about this candy’s parentage. It’s inherited its mother’s body type—large, but with layers of light wafers cushioned by sugary creme—from which we can discern it comes from the Big-Kat line of Kat cousins. Knowing that reduces the impact of the bar’s complexion, which would normally seem to be inherited solely from the Butterfinger side. Sure, the size of the Butterfinger Crisp makes it look more like a Butterfinger, but when you get to know it you find that the Crisp acts, and even tastes, more like a Kat.

The candy’s name implies a bit about the relationship between the parent bars. Despite the candy’s texture and flavor traits, its mannerisms and voice, coming so clearly from the Kats on its mother’s side, it uses its father’s name. Hell, it’s even been titled in the surname-first tradition of the Butterfingers, eschewing the maternal name for the faddish, bland “Crisp.” Why not just call it “Butterfinger Madeline” or “Butterfinger Jack” if you wanted it to sound like every other candy bar in kindergarten? If ever it would have been appropriate for a candy bar to be given a hyphenate name, this would have been the one. Imagine: Butterfinger-Kat Crisp. It might have sounded pretentious, it might have raised an eyebrow when some glitterati read it off the platinum card, but at least it would have been honest about who it was and where it came from.

Butterfinger-Kat Mirumoto would probably be asking too much, though, I suppose.

Alas, not a poker post. Instead, I’ve been tinkering the last few days with spiced and roasted nuts, both sweet and savory. (I’m at home, I figure I should be in the kitchen at least part of the day.)

They’re super-easy to make, very forgiving in their recipes, and then, after all the spicing and the cooking, you get to eat them. Good stuff. That said, for all that they’re easy, I burned the hell out of the first batch. Burned them black and brown, straight through. The batches since then, though, have each been good in their own ways.

If you want to try something similar, here’s what you do:

Sweet Cashews

4 cups unsalted cashews
4 tablespoons butter
a little shy of 6 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon crushed/powdered ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground orange peel
some nutmeg
some salt

Mix all those spices, except the salt, in a little bowl and set them aside. Don’t lose them.

Get a saucepan, something with a lot of surface area, and put it over medium heat. (Don’t use a wok — I tried that, and not enough nuts were hot enough at the same time.) Better to use too little heat than too much. Cashews toast fast.

Put those cashews into the saucepan. They’re start to smell good almost immediately. You could pop a few out of the pan and into your mouth, but they’re, you know, in a saucepan over medium heat, so be careful. Stir them around for four or five or more minutes, and toss some salt in there with them. Even better: grind sea salt on them. Sea salt’s great. If some of the cashews are getting a little (or a lot) browned on the sides, I think that’s a good sign, because that is genuine toasting, and those cashews are going to taste great.

But it’s time for butter. Put the butter in the pan and stir it all around. A good measure for time I found: Put in that half stick as a stick and keep it all moving until there’s no more stick, just buttery cashews.

Next, sprinkle on that mix of spices. Do it in a few batches, maybe thirds, so you can get the cashews into the brown-sugar glaze that’s forming. Stir like crazy. I didn’t stir enough and I ended up with a bunch of brown-sugar goop all over, which sounds like it would taste great, and maybe is, if you like to just in front of the TV and eat brown sugar. (Looking at you, wife.)

Oh! You know what? If you got a good lid for that saucepan, put it on and toss those cashews like you were stir-frying shrimp or something. That ought to work.

When they’re done, pour them onto a cookie sheet with or without aluminum foil. (How will you know when they’re done? My experience has been that they’re done about 60 seconds before I stop stirring them.) Spread them out into a single layer. Eat a few. Remember: they’re hot. Also, at this point, they’re probably gooey. Scrape out any excess brown sugar goop. Maybe give some of that to the dog, if she’s good.

Let them cool about an hour. (Good luck not touching them for an hour.) You should end up with tasty, sweet cashews with a soft glaze and uneven coating of spiced brown sugar. These isn’t the kind of recipe that yields a lethal, teeth-splitting candy shell. If, through the delicate alchemy of the process, you end up with something unexpected, don’t look at me. I pretty much just cross my fingers and put in cinnamon when I don’t know what to do.

Savory Cashews

about 2 cups unsalted cashews
2 tablespoons butter
roughly 2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon crushed/powdered ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon or so jerk seasoning
too much garlic
several pinch-fulls of herbes de Provence (which you know I love)
a whole bunch of sea salt

The first time I tried these, I dressed them all up and then roasted them on the grill. Smelled great. Were ruined. I also made my classic mistake of putting a little bit of every damn spice I like or like the name of, which created a taste with no particular flavor. It was okay, but it wasn’t exactly compelling eating. My mouth was all, “Uh, okay, but I don’t know what this is.”

This time I just mimicked the sweet recipe but tossed in a bunch of savory junk. I’d read a recipe for rosemary roasted cashews that also used brown sugar, so I figured what the hell. Everybody likes brown sugar, right? Or, rather, my wife likes brown sugar, right? I put some in, and thought of it as insurance. Plus it helps the spices stick, and keeps stuff from getting too hot. (I love it when you eat something, and it’s sweet, and then it’s spicy, so you go back for more to get the sweet back, and get caught in that delicious cycle.)

The jerk seasoning I used was McCormick’s, which is mostly sugar, red pepper, thyme, allspice, salt and onion. All the sugar in there, combined with all the brown sugar I put with it, ended up with these savory things still being pretty sweet. Also, I only used about two-thirds of the spices and brown sugar I listed. It seemed like too much brown sugar. So, to counterbalance the spices that didn’t get added because they were mixed in with the brown sugar I didn’t add, I put in a bunch more garlic and jerk seasoning.

Anyway, the routine here is the same as above: medium heat, toast, butter, spices, stir, stir, stir, spread out, cool. If it doesn’t come out looking like the picture, or tasting any good, I don’t know what to tell you. I pretty much just cross my fingers and put in lots of garlic when I don’t know what to do.

Music: PJ Harvey, “The Devil”