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…
Speyside is a place that I’ve always held dear, seemingly less rugged than the west coast where I spent most of my childhood holidays but at the same time majestic in its own way. I always loved coming to Coylumbridge to camp, the soothing sound of the river never out of…
For me when it comes to a celebration of Scottish food venison is the ultimate flavour and venison loin the perfect treat for guests. I particularly enjoy when it is from wild red deer but any venison will do for this. I always find myself serving venison with fairly classic…
Spending a lot of my childhood summer holidays camping in the highlands I got to know that part of the world pretty well. During these holidays I became acquainted with wild brown trout, picked wild raspberries and made jam, and had my first prawns and crabs I’d watched landed that…
As you walk into The Old Butchershop in Roy Bridge, home of Great Glen Charcuterie you are enveloped by an amazing aroma that speaks of passion, of integrity and of quality. The soft sweet oak smoke, aromatic spice and rich game tells of artisans in the truest sense of the…
I think the marriage of Scottish produce with Spanish flavours is fairly sublime. So do the Spanish I imagine, they import enough wonderful seafood from these shores. A couple of years ago Anja Baak from Great Glen Charcuterie sent me a sample of their wild venison chilli chorizo and I was…
I was recently asked by a friend who was visiting what Scottish food was. I explained that to my mind Scottish food is defined by produce rather than flavour. However I also realised when asked by Jus-Rol to create a recipe for them, that if you asked a cross section…
As a child I never realised just why Robert Burns was so important to Scotland. My childhood memories of reading ‘To a moose’ while struggling to understand the language and the significance remain with me, alongside Burns suppers being plied with whisky by elderly relatives to pour (wastefully) over my…
