Category: Food and drink

Posts about food, drink, recipes and resaurants

Food and drink

A local classic – Cullen Skink

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I always want to feature more Scottish food, especially recipes from the north-east where I’ve lived my whole life. Cullen is a small village on the Moray coast, north of Aberdeen which is famous for one particular dish. A soup made of fish, milk, tatties and onion – Cullen Skink.

This is a very simple dish to make. You can knock it up in under half an hour if you’re efficient and have everything ready to go. I had a read through my books and found I had at least 5 recipes for this in my small collection. Most of them followed the same general pattern, with the River Cottage Fish book deviating the most and Leith’s Cookery Bible strangely adding tomato into the mix. The recipe below most closely follows Nick Nairn’s from New Scottish Cookery. Continue reading “A local classic – Cullen Skink” →

Food and drink

Veal escalopes with sage and garlic sauce

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First of all, sorry about the pictures of this one. One of these days I’ll learn to do the sauce last but yesterday was not that day. I was planning to have my glamorous and able assistant see to the tatties while I made the sauce for the veal, but of course the phone rang as soon as the meat hit the pan. Instead of remaining calm and working through everything in a relaxed manner I panicked.

What I should have done was make the mash then leave it on a low heat to keep warm while I made the sauce. What I actually did was put the veal in the oven to rest, start the sauce then drain the tatties and start mashing them while the sauce reduced…and reduced…and continued to reduce some more until there was hardly any of it left. Oops. Continue reading “Veal escalopes with sage and garlic sauce” →

Food and drink

Homemade Pizza

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Is there anything better on a Saturday night than beer and pizza? As long as we’re not talking a can of Tennents and a supermarket oven pizza anyway! There’s no excuse for not making your own pizza now and then and it’s guaran-damn-teed to be much better than the frozen ones.

Basically, if you can make bread you can make pizza. It’s really just dough stretched and rolled extra thin so it cooks quickly with a crispy crust. You can do it by hand using the recipe below or chuck it all in a machine to make the dough. The hardest bit is the sauce and if you’re not in the mood to make that you can just buy a jar of passata with herbs as a perfectly good alternative. Continue reading “Homemade Pizza” →

Food and drink

Low Fat Whisky Cream

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One of the things my girlfriend has been missing the most since being diagnosed with gallstones is Baileys. Unfortunately as it’s made with cream it’s on the banned list for her. In the meantime she’s been making do with White Russians using semi-skimmed milk as a substitute, or at least she was until boxing day.

We were watching some TV after the second large feast in as many days but not really paying attention to what was happening on the programme. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that they were talking about Irish whiskey cream and the presenters were going to have a go at making their own. It was at this point I started paying a little more attention. Continue reading “Low Fat Whisky Cream” →

Food and drink

Delicious Chicken Noodle Soup

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After the usual attempt to double my bodyweight over Christmas it’s definitely time for something lighter. At least until the carnage of Hogmanay appears in a few days.

Inspired by a packet of ready-made Dim Sum dumplings I found in a supermarket that were actually low enough in fat for my girlfriend to eat safely, I made this awesome chicken noodle soup to go with them. Continue reading “Delicious Chicken Noodle Soup” →