Honey and marmite - weird or brilliant?
"a beautiful balance of sweet and umami flavours" This American Bite
This post is sort of serendipity. I didn't know what to write about, and pondered on stuffed things - we are having stuffed ham rolls for dinner tonight - and I came across a website with the 15 best stuffed things - or something like that. And as I scrolled I realised that stuffing things was far too big a topic really. Well I'll have to find some sort of tiny focus sometime. Anyway as I scrolled I came across a recipe for Scotch Eggs with honey marmite aioli. I won't give you the link because the website was incredibly slow to load, but here is a picture and the recipe. It's only fair that I do this as this was the inspiration for this post, and maybe you would like to try it some time. Well the aioli anyway. I'm not a fan of Scotch eggs myself, but I should probably 'do' them some time too.
Paleo Scotch Eggs
Now it is a paleo recipe so I guess that's why we have lamb bacon in there. Surely ordinary bacon would do, and ditto for the sausage meat.
"You will need the following ingredients for 7 scotch eggs
Seven eggs
2 lb lamb sausage
1 lb lamb bacon
1 jalepeno pepper
Begin by boiling your eggs. Once they have boiled, peel them and set them aside.
Grind the lamb sausage, lamb bacon and jalepeno pepper, then mix the meat together with your hands.
Once the meat is mixed, fill your palm with the meat mixture, flatten it into a patty then wrap it around the egg.
Once you have wrapped each of the eggs in meat put them in a pre-heated 425 degree oven for 45 minutes.
Honey Marmite aioli
Ingredients
1 raw egg
Juice of one lemon
1 teaspoon marmite
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 cup walnut oil or olive oil
Combine ingredients with an immersion blender until they form an aioli."
Or you could just make an ordinary aioli and flavour it with the honey and marmite (and lemon). And now that I look at it it's not really an aioli anyway - no garlic and aioli is all about garlic. It's really a kind of mayonnaise - but a whole egg? Anyway I give the recipe just to show you how I got started on this flavour combination.
The picture at the top of the page is from a Marmite advertising campaign that actually won a prize. There were two other versions - one with butter and one with marmalade. I think the idea was to play on the fact that people generally tend to either love or hate marmite, and that you should think outside the box. As you should. Remember Nigella's marmite spaghetti? It seems to have become a bit of a classic - I found several references to it.
Jay Rayner of the Guardian wrote about this constant need for surprise and innovation amusingly and at the same time thoughtfully.
"Look, you can be damn sure that your average fearful eater, forever suspicious that the kitchen has set a collection of gustatory booby traps, would not be happy if you offered to put some Marmite with their fish. Me, I'm sure it would be a fabulous combination. Or at the very least I would want to find out. Because how sad would it be to have let some of the greatest food experiences pass you by simply out of squeamishness?" Jay Rayner - the Guardian
Which is very true, although I'm probably in the squeamish realm most of the time. I mean I never liked marmite anyway - and by the way I always thought it was from meat, but no it's from yeast extract and therefore even vegan as well as paleo! Although honey isn't vegan so substitute maple syrup or something I suppose.
So I did a quick search on marmite and honey and was amazed at the number of recipes that came up from a simple sandwich from WW2 to a version of a well-known cocktail. Most of them, it has to be said, were for various glazed things, but anyway here is a selection, just to give you an idea. Maybe even inspiration. First of all five glazed things: Gammon with marmite honey glaze, Honey and marmite glazed parsnips, Glazed honey and marmite chicken with lemony potatoes
And I can see that it could be an interesting component in a glaze.
Then there are the oddities:
Marmite, peanut butter and honey popcorn and Honey and marmite old-fashioned, which was one of several cocktails concocted from everyday items in your supermarket basket.
The verdict on this one was:
"Amazingly good. The Marmite's only role is to provide a killer depth of flavour. The honey beautifully brings out the natural sweetness of the Jack Daniel's. And the Led Zep CD case it sits on? Adjust according to taste."
I have no idea where the Led Zep CD case comes in!
I can sort of see that, theoretically at least this flavour combination could work. It's almost like salted caramel isn't it? But probably not for me because, as I said, I don't like marmite, and I'm not that big a fan of honey either. It does make you think though.
