From Scotland with love...
Travel and Food, the ultimate soulmates
Isle of Ewe Smokehouse, Aultbea
Great Glen Charcuterie
St.Brides Poultry, Strathaven
Scotland – my beautiful diverse homeland
The cuisine of the people of Scotland has long been a self-deprecating joke about deep fried food, a loathing of anything green and all washed down with any liquid on the yellow to brown spectrum. Though you only need to dig beneath the surface of modern day Scotland and take…
Fyne halibut from Gigha – Smoked halibut crostini
Food festivals are one of the true highlights of spring and summer, the opportunity to get into some wonderful scenery and eat true local artisan produce while chatting to the passionate people who produce it never grows tiring. At Loch Fyne Food Fair on the beautiful banks of that sea…
Gran’s spring vegetable soup
When I was younger I spent a lot of time with my Gran, she looked after us whenever my parents were working, usually with her elder sister. One of my abiding memories of meals with this hilarious double act who would both go on to become nonagenarians was lunches of…
Tablet ice cream
‘What’s tablet?’. It’s a question that probably every Scot has heard at some point in their lives. It’s a kind of Scottish fudge type thing, but isn’t. It’s just tablet. Then you start to explain the ingredients, and get to condensed milk, and you see the eyes light up! Tablet…
Travel and Food, the ultimate soulmates
Travel and holiday has always meant food for me. Whether paella cooked over orange wood in Valencia, oysters from Étang de Thau, or squats lobsters from Applecross, its always been about first experiences, about aroma and flavour of the local cuisine. Recently holidays have been all about Scotland and it…
The Mountain Cafe Cookbook
I used to spend a lot of my childhood holidays in and around Aviemore but I’ve not been to the town in about twenty five years. I think that might need to change in the near future with a visit to The Mountain Cafe, where Kirsten Gilmour, after an interesting personal…
Smoked haddock and queenie chowder – Mother’s Day with Fishbox
This recipe was developed for Fishbox and their Mother’s Day recipe feature. It’s a dish based on one of my favourite traditional Scottish dishes, Cullen skink, along with the chowder I can remember my Mum making us as kids. To make this a bit special I’m adding queen scallops and also…
Festy cock
Scottish cuisine is full of dishes with ancient names that seem fairly odd to the modern tongue; Cullen skink, skirlie, rumbledthumps, and clapshot all spring immediately to mind. However ‘festy cock’ seems to take this tradition to a whole new level, but what exactly is it? Whether celebrating Shrove Tuesday,…