A very Scottish...curry

Many years ago, when the idea of moving to Scotland was still lurking behind an penchant for Celtic music and British telly, I was an English literature major at the University of British Columbia.

One professor, whose name I cannot recall, possessed a deep monotone voice that was fed by one of those English accents you would expect to hear in an old fashioned gentleman’s club. Only once did he speak of British food. Slowly, pausing periodically for effect, this is what he said:

“The food in Britain…as you know…is terrible. If you can avoid eating while you are there…do. Unless of course…you are having a curry.”

Now obviously I don’t agree that the food in Britain is terrible, but I do agree that the curries are spectacular. There is a world of flavour waiting to appeal to every palate, from mellow kormas to taste bud busting vindaloos.

By far the most popular curry in Scotland (and the rest of Britain) is the Chicken Tikka Masala. Last year Glasgow City Council backed an MP’s bid for Glasgow to be officially recognized by the EU as the home of the famous dish.

Just as Vancouver is recognized as one of the best places in the world to eat Chinese and Japanese food, so it is with Scotland and curry. When you come to Scotland, don’t miss a chance to try some of the best Indian food outside of India itself.

Today marks The Scottish Love Curry Awards 2010, and to celebrate I have made the famous Chicken Tikka Masala, using a recipe I gleaned from the internet.

Behold the ingredients for the marinade, which consists of lemon juice, a teaspoon of crushed garlic and ginger, a generous blob of plain yoghurt, and a teaspoon each of chilli, cumin and coriander.

Go slow. Curry responds well to letting spices mingle, so let the marinade-covered chicken (cut into bits) sit in the fridge overnight.

A chopped onion, some more ginger and garlic, as well as more cumin, coriander and chilli are fried up and some tomato puree is tossed in before the chicken. Oh the beauty of it when the mixed spices start to heat and the scent blooms from the pan. The cream is added last, and the whole thing is served with rice (and a sprinkling of fresh coriander over top, if you fancy it).

There are many recipes on the web. Some call for ghee, which adds another dimension of (calorie dense) flavour to things.

Can’t get enough Scottish curry? A few extra links for curry lovers:

Check in with the Scottish Love Curry Awards to see who came top this year.

Based in the Highlands, Caledonian Curry has created some wild and wonderful sauces. With names like “The Kilt Lifter,” “The Sporran Splitter,” and “After Burns,” you know you’re in for an adventure.

Follow the exploits of Trampy and the Tramp’s Glasgow of Curry. Worth a read: their interview with Scot Shaw about his attempt to take on Scotland’s hottest curry at Kismot in Edinburgh.

What is your favourite curry?

On the move with Glasgow's Museum of Transport

Just a few years after Kelvingrove Museum was completely revamped and revitalised, Glasgow’s Museum of Transport Technology is set to move to a new location in the Riverside Museum at Glasgow Harbour, overlooking the River Clyde.

Closing day is not scheduled until 18 April, but the last time I was there more than a month ago, the extensive exhibit of model ships had already been closed in preparation for the changes.

The Transportation Museum was born in the 1960s after Glasgow stopped using trams, and it has lived in Kelvin Hall (built 1927) since 1988. Despite the fact that the museum attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, Kelvin Hall no longer does the attraction justice.

The location is nearly perfect- just down and across the street from Kelvingrove, however the museum's entrance faces away from the road and in a somewhat tucked-away position that can still be easy to miss if you don’t know it’s there.

With any big change that deals with historical objects like those in the museum, including trams, old stagecoaches, bicycles, cars, and even trains, there is concern that the same spirit that honours these items will be reinvented in the new location.

There are a few aspects I hope the museum curators seek to rebuild in the new facility, the most dramatic being the charming reproduction of a typical Glasgow Street as it would have been in the late 1930s. From the moment you walk into this area, there are cobbles underfoot, welcoming you to another era. There are shops like the fishmonger and the pharmacy, then the sound of classic cartoons coming from the cinema, and the sight of a milk truck parked at the side, as if the driver had just ducked out to make a delivery. There is even an underground train station platform. The whole scene is an exercise in frozen theatrics and I just adore it.

A few of my other favourite exhibits include the collection of trams from different years, a brightly coloured van that I should very much love to drive, and of course the most gorgeous thing of all: the cherry red gypsy caravan, with all of its detail and adornments.

For Harry Potter fans, the museum also features a car like the one owned by Mr. Weasley. If you look closely, you will see that Hedwig has snuck into the back seat and looks somewhat annoyed that Harry is taking so long.

Farewell celebrations start at the museum on 2 April and end 18 April, when the doors will be shut and the real restoration and moving work begins. The all new and improved Glasgow Museum of Transport Technology is scheduled to open in the spring of 2011.

As they say at the museum, all aboard!

A lesson in light

As I approached the building that is home to Glasgow’s prized Burrell Collection, my first thought was that I was about to waste precious hours of sunlight by going indoors. I could see how much glass there was to the structure, but it still looked to me like some enormous and jagged main course served on bed of flat green fields. I was disheartened before I had even begun.

If only all disappointments transformed into such succulent experiences. Walking through the main entrance and past the shop, I saw to my right the most beautiful hallway - so beautiful that I stood there open-mouthed for a full 10 minutes, letting my eye be drawn away into the distance.

Suddenly all those hours I had spent swooning over the television programme Grand Designs imploded into a single fragment of perception. In that moment, I understood light.

Everywhere I went, light was there: pouring, splashing, sifting through spaces and around corners. Taking nearly all of Sir William Burrell’s more than 9,000 assembled pieces of art and treating each one as if it were on a pedestal. Some doorways are framed with Romanesque arches, while others are clad with warm wood. Here, ornate frames and glass simultaneously separating and connecting two sections of exhibition space while around the corner, a nibble of shadow that gives way to a cavernous room filled with dark furniture.

Obviously most people come to see the collection itself and must be awed by the number of items that this one (very wealthy) man managed to amass during his lifetime. Medieval tapestries, ancient pieces from Rome, Greece and China, paintings by European masters, and elaborately carved English oak furniture, including a four poster bed from the 1600s, the sight of which made me groan with jealous pleasure. But as I wandered through the floors, I knew that this amazing compilation of works would not wield the same power were it not for the complimentary nature of the building that houses it.

The collection was gifted to the city in 1944 and the building was opened in 1983 (praise be to the architects Barry Gasson and Brit Andresen), so obviously this is not a new attraction. However Glasgow residents have every reason to still be bulging with pride at this magnificent (and free!) addition to their city. This vast and varied assemblage of beautiful objects, combined with the subtle genius of this building, gives the Burrell Collection an artistic vigour that will no doubt continue to strike visitors dumb with wonder for years to come.

A day out in Pollok Park

It was one of those clear, cold mornings that lasted all day, the sun nothing more than a distant and blinding pinprick of warmth. The kind of day when the frost hangs on in shadowy corners, straight through the afternoon and into the dark again. Without much time to escape the urban landscape, I left from Glasgow Central station and two stops later was a short walk from what in 2008 was dubbed the best park in Europe.

Once part of the Maxwell family estate, Pollok Country Park was gifted to the City of Glasgow in 1966 and is a pick n’ mix of natural and manmade features, quiet corners and interactive attractions. It is the largest park in Glasgow, is highly accessible and also a magnet for families looking for a cheap and cheerful day out with plenty of options for bairns and adults alike.

For children growing up in Glasgow, this park is likely the first place they will see one of their country’s most recognizable rural icons - the hulking, shaggy Highland Cow. I stood next to the fence and watched the plumes of frosty air burst from their nostrils as they stared into the middle distance and chewed their cuds. They were either the most bored cows I have ever seen, or having reached the zenith of their bovine yogic powers, they no longer felt the need to engage with their surroundings.

A short walk away lies Pollok House, an 18th century mansion that overlooks the meandering White Cart River. Run by the National Trust, the home is filled with beautiful paintings and a multitude of antiques, but the strict policy against photography means I cannot show you any images of my favourite rooms, being the drawing room and the truly lovely library, where the thick bound books are stashed away on tall shelves, the kind that require a small ladder to reach the higher volumes.

Less able to absorb historical facts than I am the feel of a place, I will report that my best moment in the house lasted approximately 30 seconds, which is how long I was alone in the music room with just the sound of the clock ticking. I imagined that was how quiet it must have been, once upon a time.

Like most people I adored the squat hedge maze that lies adjacent to the house. Children ran into it, quickly loosing the desire to find the centre and preferring instead to crouch down and attempt to hide from each other or their parents. Grown adults giggled madly as they hurried on ahead of their small dogs, who could not see their masters but sniffed them out or followed the sound of their voices until the inevitable joyful reunion.

Seen through the lion-guarded gates, Pollok House is a beacon of symmetry, but an explosion of black birds from behind the home gave an illusion of deeper drama, as did the elaborate comb-over of dead vines adorning a quaint garden house nearby.

Standing idyllically next to the river like something out of a Constable painting is the old sawmill, with an enclosed stable courtyard that made me think of Italy of France. I stood for a long time next to the water, using the reflection to increase the sun’s strength on my skin (it has been a long, cold winter and I am eager for warmth).

Despite its many romantic qualities, I have to say that Pollok Park is not my favourite. It is too car friendly for me, which detracts from that sense of a serene escape to nature that many urban dwellers need from time to time. But there is one more gem in Pollok Park that I will explore next time, a world of light and beauty that caught me completely by surprise.

Kibble Palace and the mystery of Victorian decadence

Kibble Palace feels like a place with two histories. The bulk of the facts lay on a well trodden path through time, from the day it was built to its restoration and its ongoing status as one of Glasgow’s most famous buildings. But there are crumbs of another history that lead off in a different direction entirely, following a trail through giant ferns and emerging in the realm of pure imagination.

The facts are as follows: Constructed of wrought iron and glass, Kibble Palace was built by engineer and photographer John Kibble in the 1860s before it was dismantled and moved from his home at Coulport, Loch Long to Glasgow on a barge in 1871. Gifted to the city as the Kibble Crystal Art Palace and Royal Conservatory, it was used as a venue for concerts and exhibitions for several years until the 1880s when it began to be used for the cultivation of plants as part of the Botanic Gardens.

Following a lengthy and painstaking restoration, Kibble Palace reopened in 2006. The building’s innermost sanctuary continues to be dominated by a collection of Australasian tree ferns, many of which date back to the 19th century and have grown in the glass house for more than 120 years. A series of 19th century sculptures dot the outer walls as walkways splice through the jungle-like clutter.

Now on a typical weekend afternoon the dominant sound is that of children running and laughing as they chase each other or try to hide from their slower moving parents. Everywhere you turn, tiny explorers are bursting through the undergrowth, planning their next move.

It all sounds very straight forward, doesn’t it? Marvellously, Kibble Palace also looks a little like a Dr Who episode that has been set inside The Lost World, but there is still something missing. Despite the magnificence of the ornate columns and the surreal beauty of the centre dome, overall the place lacks the kind of warmth and lustre one would expect it to have.

Perhaps my expectations would not have been raised had I not read in my Rough Guide to Scotland that the palace, when it was first reconstructed in Glasgow, was used not as a concert venue but as a “Victorian pleasure dome.” The idea certainly changed things in my mind. Looking around, I imagined red carpeting, candlelight, ridiculous plush furniture and grown men and women playing very naughty games of hide and seek among the plant life. The Garden of Eden come to life.

Certainly, John Kibble himself paints an odd and intriguing character. Along with his decadent glass palace, Kibble’s inventions included a floating bicycle that he pedalled across Loch Long, and in 1858 the world’s largest camera, which was so big it had to be mounted on a horse-drawn cart.

For what it is, Kibble Palace is magnificent. It is an important piece of British architectural history and a valuable home to some very old and wondrous plants. But as I sat there all I could do was yearn for those morsels of magic that weren’t being utilized, and for the rest of the afternoon I continued to chase the ghosts of debauchery around my mind. Oh, what a luscious film set it would make.

Before we step away from the dreamlike world of glass and tall, strange plants, we have one more stop. A few steps from Kibble Palace is the Botanic Garden’s main range of glasshouses, there exists the most beautiful iron spiralled staircase reaching up-up-up towards the ceiling.

Rusting in places, the staircase is nestled among the trees and gated at the bottom to keep visitors from attempting to climb up. When the sun shines through the glass and pierces the gaps in the leaves, it is easy to imagine the stairs are ancient and abandoned and that they lead upwards into the clouds like in a fairytale. Or maybe it’s just me, following those invisible crumbs again.