Let’s just pause, bow our heads for a moment and pay our respects to Highlander Condensed Milk or perhaps to its inventor, Robert Blair, and therefore one of the finest en-Zedders.
I can’t find a picture of real Highlander Condensed Milk, you know, pre-Nestle and pre-grams, the stuff that was made in the factory at Wallacetown just out of Invercargill, before it was turned into a stinky freezing works. But what self-respecting eN-Zedder even needs a picture, right? Surely the Highlander Condensed Milk tin is as recognisable as the Silver Fern with its bagpiper on the label. Actually he’s a Drum Major, almost certainly modeled after Drum Major James Macgregor of the Invercargill Pipe Band, which in 1900 was part of the Commonwealth contingent to the Boer War. Highlander Condensed Milk’s history is interesting, but not so much when you’re a greedy wee pig with a sweet tooth.
I think it was my Nana who introduced me to Highlander Condensed Milk caramel, made by putting a tin of eN-Zed’s greatest contribution to world cuisine into a biggish pot of boiling water for 2 or 3 hours. The longer the better, but remember to top up the water because boiling water evaporates and if you forget…, well…, that happened to me, just once. The tin made a low boompf sound as it exploded (while I was in another room watching Coronation Street – shut up). The pot lid went flying and my entire kitchen was peppered with tiny, sticky, sweet drops of caramel. I’ve never enjoyed cleaning as much as I did that evening. Yum!!
Condensed milk makes the essential filling, between the short-bready base and chocolatey topping of caramel slice. Brits call this Millionaires’ Shortbread but in egalitarian eN-Zed, you don’t have to be a millionaire to make caramel slice.
And if you can’t be faffed boiling a tine for hours or making caramel slice, there’s nothing at all wrong with just consuming the elixir of life straight from the tin. It’s better (thicker) if the tin’s been in the fridge for a few hours. A teaspoon is classier than using your finger(s) or as a certain older-brother was wont to do, drinking the stuff from a hole punched in the top of the can (with another smaller hole as a breather – and knowing that helped me in a Physics exam once).
Condensed milk is a global sensation. In Viet-Nam, you can buy coffee that involves dripping boiling water through a small dish of coffee grounds which then drips down into a half-cup of condensed milk – unless you use the teaspoon to eat the condensed milk before the coffee gets anywhere near it.
On my first day in Almaty (Kazakhstan), I visited a little neighbourhood shop and there on the bottom shelf was a tin that was the right size and weight to be condensed milk. There was no Drum Major, but without hesitation, I bought 2 tins: one to open immediately to see if it really was ‘the good stuff’ and the other to boil up in a pot making sure not to let the pot boil dry. In Ladakh, in far-north-west-ish, mountainy India, suffering from altitude sickness and real live Delhi Belly, I spotted a dusty tin of condensed milk in a shop, bought it, asked the hotel kitchen guy to open it for me and please can I have a teaspoon and guess what… next morning no altitude sickness and a much-better belly from Delhi. And in a supermarket in Moscow, beneath the condensed milk shelf was another set of tins looking very similar, but with a teddy bear on the label. Guess what? Pre-made condensed milk caramel. No need to clean the kitchen.
Thank you Mr Robert Blair – as fine an eN-Zedder as Ed Hilary, Lydia Ko, Charlie Upham, Alison Holst and Richie Mounga.
eN-Zed 