Category: isle of skye

Good friends planned a secret birthday treat for me today and prayed for good weather. The goddess must have heard and accepted whatever sacrifices they made because the day dawned clear and sunny, with hardly a breath of wind.

Perfect weather to be out in their boat.

The destination became clear after about twenty minutes on the water. There is a tiny island off the coast of Skye called coral island. It’s uninhabited and deserted, and at low tide the seas retreat to reveal a beautiful beach of white coral, or Maerl.

I’d seen it from the coast before but never imagined that I’d ever see it close up, not owning a boat. But here we were, wading through the shallows with picnic bags and a blanket with the whole island to ourselves.

The feast was unpacked. Scottish cheeses from the Highlands and Islands, sourdough biscuits, good olives, sliced venison salami and a bottle of chilled wine. There were cheese scones and home baked pizza slices. There was a blueberry cake with a sparkler and little French macarons.

It was perfect.

We toasted gently in the highland sun watching the seabirds and the boat bobbing on the ebbing tide. Good company, good conversation, good food and the most perfect location.

It was soon time to pack up and leave for the boat trip home. Time and tide wait for no man.

Thank you Andy and Jude for such a special treat and a very memorable birthday. You’ve made a mad old cat lady very happy.

Ok – now I’m feeling as if I’ve definitely entered hedgewitch territory. Today I made elderberry syrup.

One day we’ll have enough elderberries in our newly planted hedges to make elderberry syrup from our own fresh berries, but for now I’ve used dried ones.

Full of vitamins and antioxidants, it may look blacker than a demons heart but it’s actually full of health-giving goodness. Trust me.

It’s a simple enough process. Simmer elderberries with water to make a black, mushy juice.

Then drain and squeeze to extract as much juice as possible.

Once the remaining pulp is as dry as you can get it, looking like dark purple coffee grounds, pop the extracted juice back into a pan.

Add a few lemon slices, cinnamon, ginger root, honey and cardamom (the recipe uses cloves but I don’t like them) and simmer some more.

Then strain into a sterilised bottle or jar.

Despite extra simmering my syrup never actually achieved peak syrupyness. It’s more like a cordial to be truthful. But I’m sure that it will help us repel bugs over the winter with its dark, inky immune boosting goodness.

I’d recently noticed a hedgerow containing rosehips whilst out and about. I think it used to be a cottage garden once and the hedges were full of old roses long since gone wild. Now it was full of lovely rosehips.

We checked that we had permission to pick, and one morning descended with thick gardening gloves and secateurs. We left plenty for the birds but picked enough to make a few generous bottles of rosehip syrup.

Always just take what you can use.

Rosehips are full of Vitamin C and natural antioxidants and I have distant memories of being fed rosehip syrup as a child to ward off winter colds. The flavour still stays with me to this day.

I used the River Cottage recipe as it was the simplest I could find – https://www.rivercottage.net/recipes/rosehip-syrup for any of you wanting to try it.

First they needed to be topped, tailed and washed before being finely chopped ready for the next stage. I used gloves to protect my hands as the seeds can be irritant, and they’re chock full of them.

After ten minutes of fiddly chopping I gave up and zapped them with a few pulses in the food processor. Sometimes being purist in the kitchen isn’t a benefit.

They’re next simmered until soft and the resultant mixture is strained through a double layer of muslin, leaving the fruit juice. The juice is strained a second time, has sugar added to it and then is heated again.

It’s finally decanted into hot, sterilised bottles and jars ready to be cooled.

The part filled bottle went into the fridge and we’ve been using it as a cordial with soda water for a sharp-sweet, healthy drink. We’ve also tried a splash of it with gin and tonic. It’s delicious. I swear I can taste a faint hint of roses.

I’m going to try elderberry syrup next as I have a jar of dried elderberries on the pantry shelf waiting for inspiration, and I love the look of the dark, purple cordial.

Very hedgewitchy

Oh yes, it’s proper autumn now.

It’s perceptibly chillier and blustery autumnal winds have started, blowing the dark clouds quickly across the skies. There are rumours of the first snow on the high peaks.

I love it in early evening when the skies turn ink-blue, then gradually darken to black. We don’t get dark evenings in the summer at all really, so it’s good to feel a return to proper night.

We cosy-in with the woodburner on, and I light candles. Hugh wouldn’t bother with candles at all left to his own devices, but I love their warm glow on a dark, cold evening. I guess I’m just an old romantic at heart but I much prefer them to the glare of modern lights.

I also made the first batch of our favourite spiced tomato chutney, tomato kasundi, this afternoon. It feels as if we’re on the approach to winter when the chutney making for Christmas starts!

It’s best matured for around six weeks, so an early batch is always a good idea.

I pace myself these days when it comes to pickle making. I’ll make Piccalilli next weekend, using my lovely friend Jan’s tried and tested recipe, and perhaps some rosehip syrup if the weather allows some foraging. I know where a big bush of rosehips are so I just need to make the time to go gathering.

Blackberries too.

It’s becoming distinctly autumnal on the croft now.

I guess it’s September, so it’s time, but as we’ve had no summer it feels strangely premature.

The blackberries are ripening in the lane, the plums are ready for eating, the trees are laden with rowan berries and the leaves are starting to brown and rustle in the afternoon Southwesterlies.

The early mornings are darkening perceptibly now, and there’s a crispness to the start of the day that wasn’t there in August.

We’re still picking and eating tomatoes and salad leaves, but it feels increasingly incongruous to do so. I’m starting to crave the heavier, richer food of winter as the temperatures fall and the days shorten.

Tonight will be a one-pot Toulouse sausage and lentil casserole that will be rich with tomatoes and pepper paste, and heavy on the garlic.

I love this time of transition between the seasons. It’s the anticipation of autumn with its log fires and smells of woodsmoke and spices. This has always been my favourite time of the year, with the donning of thicker socks (actually I never got out of my thick socks this year, to be honest), warmer layers and darker, cosy evenings.

I would burn a spiced orange candle if I were home alone, but sadly it sets off my husbands asthma so I can’t enjoy that sensory addition to the autumnal mood. I shall burn a beeswax or soy candle instead and be happy with that. Or perhaps bake a fruit cake with cardamom, nutmeg and cinnamon to evoke the same scents of warmth and comfort.

Whatever I do, enjoy the transition into autumn and watch the progression of the season with each passing day.

The croft embraces each season and so should we.

Covid has many horrors, but in some ways the worst of it is a long recovery period. We’ve been fatigued and as they say here in Scotland, “peely wally” for a number of weeks now. Not contagious, but not running at full strength either, and exhausted at the slightest exertion.

But we’re getting better, and things are slowly returning to normal.

Due to our relative inactivity for the last three weeks there’s nothing much to report, to be honest, but the blank page of my blog was looking up at me accusingly, so I thought I’d better check in.

We aren’t dead yet. Just waterlogged.

The weather has been atrocious. It’s been the worst summer on record here on Skye, with massive daily rainfall and almost no sunshine. Temperatures have been Baltic.

We’ve just read that it’s officially the wettest summer on record with one day last week recording over 60mm of rainfall, which represents the average total monthly rainfall for August in that one day.

As such, we’ve stayed in a lot. We’ve even lit the woodburner on the worst of the days. In August!

The Croft produce has of course suffered as a result. Hardly any tomatoes or cucumbers, and even the courgettes haven’t produced more than a few small offspring.

The potato crop was small, the carrots were lush but woody and have been gifted to friends goats, and the main thing that’s survived all this rain and cold has been the salad leaves, which have proved surprisingly resilient, although some of these are now starting to rot too.

The beetroot also did well and we’ve been enjoying roasted beets on whipped feta for weeks now. An easy supper with crusty bread and some salad when you have no real energy to cook.

Another surprising result was the onions, which were prolific, and mostly a useable size, and we managed somehow to harvest them, despite our fatigue, before they rotted in the beds.

They’re festooned around the polycrub in hanging bunches drying out ready to be stored in hessian sacks and used over the coming months. It looks quite festive in there really,

The Croft continues to be totally waterlogged. We will paddle on and hope for drier land soon.

We apologise for the disruption to normal service.

Our covid symptoms are largely gone and we are testing clear of the virus at last, after two weeks of full-on symptoms.

But we are both left with extreme fatigue and weakness and I won’t be blogging for a short while more whilst we recuperate fully.

So the flu bug turned out to be full blown Covid, and very scary it was too. All the symptoms – headache, fever, razor-wire throat, fluid on the lungs, no appetite.. thankfully he’s through that now and well on the mend.

I’m counting our blessings.

When a loved one gets sick it’s a real worry. I get anxious as well as trying my best to care for them. And then I came down with it too. Inevitable, I guess.

We’re now on the long, slow road to recovery. Covid leaves you drained of energy after it’s done it’s worst, feeling sadly depleted of resources and fatigued at the slightest exertion.

We’ve been eating out of the pantry and the freezer for the last week, and luckily we’re still pretty well stocked. Today was the first day that I felt I could do some scratch cooking and I made a simple vegetable soup from leeks, carrots and celery needing to be used from the fridge, and some cheese scones for morale boosting purposes.

Everything else on the to-do list will just have to wait.

Poor Hugh is down with a flu bug. When he catches something, which is rare, it knocks him for six, and he’s unable to do a thing.

Dosed up with paracetamol and lemon drinks, he’s stayed in bed for the day trying to fight it.

Whilst he’s out for the count, life has to go on. It was still a 5.30am start for me, and my normal cinnamon bun and cake baking for the Stables still had to go ahead. Salad leaves were picked and bagged, deliveries were made.

By the time I got back home, replenished his meds and cleared up the remains of the latest furry unfortunate that Freya had left on the bottom step of the stairs, I was done for the day.

But I still had the kitchen to clear down after the baking session, and so when I eventually sat down for breakfast at 11.30am I felt I needed something more than a slice of toast.

I found a dish of cold new potatoes in the fridge, the remains of a meal a few days ago. Into the pan they went with butter, the last two slices of bacon chopped up, some cherry tomatoes, salt and paprika. Eaten from the pan with a piece of focaccia to mop up the buttery, crispy leavings, it was just what I needed.

That was enough to fill me up, but I fancied something sweet. I opened a tin of sliced peaches and ate that too. How decadent!

Now I sit, replete, feeling as if I’ve indulged in some sort of illicit guilty pleasure. It’s not at all what I would have eaten if Hugh was having breakfast with me.

Sometimes it’s good to rebel and eat exactly what you feel like..

I shall sit in the sun this afternoon and watch the swallows wheel around the house in the breeze. And count my blessings.

Before it’s time to check on the invalid again.

We don’t eat out very often.

Especially in the summer months when the restaurants in the vicinity are usually booked solid with tourists. We both prefer good food experiences to be stress free and uncrowded so that we can really savour the experience, so we tend to avoid going out much in July and August.

But recently we noticed that one of our favourite chefs, Verity Hurding, had opened up a scattering of evening supper clubs with her partner Jenny at the Eolach restaurant in Kyle of Localsh.

This restaurant is very unusual, and beautifully quirky. It’s located right in the train station at Kyle, alongside the tracks and the pier, right by the water.

The dining room is the old station waiting room, although Jenny and Verity have worked their magic on it and have turned it into a warm and utterly charming space with sheepskins on the chairs and many plants, candles and flowers. It has exactly the ambiance that I’d hope for if hosting friends at home. Inviting, unpretentious, comfortable.

The format is one sitting around a communal table with a handful of other guests. There’s no choice, just a set menu of dishes that change frequently and are based on what Verity has foraged or selected from local producers on the day.

When we arrived (early to bring some herbs for them) the candles were just being lit and the record deck was set up.

Jenny is the host and manages to change the vinyl selection seamlessly between serving drinks, bringing and removing plates of delicious food and chatting to the guests with an easy grace and charm.

Verity manages the kitchen all on her own, and when you see what she produces you’ll be astounded at what she makes possible.

The set menu that we had was truly remarkable. I loved every course . Everything was beautifully cooked, with imaginative and unusual flavour combinations, and it was all stunningly presented with flair and precision.

I’ve eaten in many Michelin star restaurants in my time and believe me when I tell you that this meal was up there with the very best of them.

We shared the table with a lovely American couple who were on the last night of their vacation, and to our surprise our friends Lynne and Darren. It was total serendipity that they were there too on that night. It made for a truly magical evening.

I’m not sure that our American friends were quite prepared for the exotica of our conversation. Cleaning hen poop from indoor floorboards, duck antics, Hebridean sheep, welly tales and all the weather. We were on top form..

Poor things. Certainly an evening’s conversation that they were unlikely to have experienced anywhere else in the world 😋.

Lynne is an excellent and very professional elopement and food photographer, and with her permission I’ve used her photos from the evening below, as mine were total pants in comparison.

Do check her work out at the links below.

http://lynnekennedyfoodstories.co.uk

lynnekennedy.co.uk

If any of you ever get a chance to eat at one of Eolach’s supper clubs, or need catering to an exceptional level for private functions whilst you’re up in the Highlands, do consider using Eolach. Two people at the top of their professional game, delivering beautiful cooking and service. And lovely people to boot.

https://www.eolachcatering.com/