The Sacred Art of Eating

I walked my mum up Leith Walk this evening to get the train, and found myself ambling down it again at about 6:30pm. Dougal had texted to ask me to get spring onions and if poss coriander for tea. I thought ‘no probs’ as I was still at the top of the walk (Haddington Place/Elm Row) and so would be able to pop into one of the half a dozen asian grocers between there and the flat.

Before I got to any of said Asian Grocers, I discovered that Tattie Shaws , the fab little green grocers that looks like a green grocers ought to look (great piles of multicoloured produces stacked and hanging at the door) is still open at that time of night! Having bought all that I needed (plus a butternut squash and a sweet potato) I enquired as to whether they were normally open this late. The shopkeeper said that for the time being they were open till 7pm.

This is exciting news. Once I start uni (six weeks, eek!) I will be walking home down Leith Walk any evening I have been in. It is brilliant to know that this fantastic shop- gorgeous fresh, seasonal veg; a great selection of tinned and packaged goods; very fairly priced- will still be open, even if I am a bit late home. I’ll be able to see what looks nice as I pass and cook tea accordingly. They even had radicchio.

It never fails to bother me that we import so much in the way of prawns and shrimp in this country. Why oh why do we fly prawns in from Madagascar and Indonesia when this is available all round the coast of Scotland (and mostly sold to restaurants in France).

We had this for dinner at The Old Inn whilst on our wee Highland Escape and it tasted as good as it looked.

The squat lobster and langoustines tasted so good we barely touched the aioli, going instead for an au naturel licked off the fingers and washed down with ale flavour instead.

I just, on Dougal’s suggestion, made myself a drink by the recipe on the back of a bottle of sugar syrup. Now I deviated somewhat, in that while it was a bottle of Monin Sugar Syrup, Dougal had just refilled the bottle with home made sugar syrup. Equally, whilst called for Monin Elderflower Syrup I used regular Thorncroft’s Elderflower cordial. 20ml sugar syrup, 10ml elderflower, a squeeze of lemon juice and top it up with tonic water.

It tasted like bitter lemon! It was very sweet- not surprisingly- and yet also very bitter and tart, almost savoury. I’d only used a 150ml can of tonic and I reckon a bit more could easily have gone in (need to check which type of glass it was I was supposed to be topping up with tonic!) and probably a whole measure of lemon juice. Regardles of these tweaks it was refreshing and tasty…and now, Gone!

No piccies as a)it didn’t look like anything and b)I didn’t expect it to turn out so noteworthy!

Is one where you are met with the words ‘are you going out again now? Only I’ve done some home baking, and it’s got fresh cream in it….’

I don’t usually go in for reviews, but….if anyone is holidaying in Inverness or thereabouts, Dougal and I would thoroughly recommend An Grianan B&B on Crown Drive. It is gorgeous; clean and modern yet traditionally decorated (as opposed to 20 years out of date ‘traditional’); the owner was lovely; the food (both the cakes and the breakfast the next day) excellent; there were fresh flowers (sweetpeas!) in the room and it was also by far the best value for money B&B of four we stayed in on our recent jaunt round the Highlands. The only thing which would have improved it would have been Fairtrade tea and coffee in the rooms (we were even given a thermos of cold fresh milk to go in our tea!) and perhaps a slightly bigger towel- to add to the air of luxury. It felt like how a B&B ought to be and we both really hope to go back.

Nice little lunch the other day; just what was in the fridge or on the side but very satisfactory all the same.

Dougal’s bread….fabulous, warm tomato….home grown basil….tasty mozarella (?tesco finest)…parma ham…coppa….a little salt, pepper, oil and vinegar…foxy!

I had two visitors to my blog the other month who had googled Mike Sowden….not quite what they were after, I’d wager.

We recently had cause to celebrate: our Lovely Canadian Friend recently became Dr Lovely Canadian Friend MD. To celebrate her impending (then) graduation we laid on the best weather Scotland had (then, 30th May) seen in months, chilled a bottle of Champagne, and produced a fancy cake. Yet again Nigella comes up trumps, the Malteser cake was as scrummy as last time, despite my having got impatient with the folding in, beaten it with a whisk, and watched as the whole thing went flooooomp and lose about 50% of its volume.

Last Thursday night was possibly the hottest I ever remember in Edinburgh. Not so much the heat at the peak of the day- in fact if I recall correctly it wasn’t that spectacular at lunch- but the way that when I left work at 6pm the wall of heat as I stepped outside was like being in the Mediterranean. We walked home from a trip to the pub at midnight and then it felt like 4pm temperature. I am loving this whole ‘actually getting a summer’ malarky- and I don’t care that every day of sunshine seems to need to be followed by torrential rain :o)

As it was so hot there was no way I was cooking, so I cast my mind back to a recipe that Dougal and I last ate the nights we both Graduated. June 2005 had some similarly hot nights; on both days we’d eaten huge lunches but wanted a little something to see us through to bed time. I happened upon the Gary Rhodes short cut recipe for Gazpacho- tinned or bottle roasted peppers, tin of tomatoes, some chopped up cucumber and garlic and bread crumbs all blitzed up in the food processor with some olive oil and red wine vinegar. Chill, and serve with all the requisite bits.

We didn’t have this quite as cold as it ought to have been (the problem being that all the ingredients were at room temperature, which on Thursday was more like blood temperature) and this time I felt the flavours were a bit intense. Perhaps a handful of ice cubes would have cooled it down and lessened the over powering nature of the flavours. Either way this has been a great hot night meal in the past and I’m sure we’ll come back to it in the future!