Job: 29th to 6th October. Knoydart Peninsula, Scotland.

Job: 21st to 29th September. Perthshire, Scotland.

It’s SePtember and P is the operative letter. Pike, porcini, pfifferling. Porridge. Plums. That’s how it goes up here. Huddled in a wooded glen near the banks of Loch Lomond there lies a Lodge. It’s beating heart is the warm kitchen. It’s scent is fruit cake and surrounded by belching pots of porridge and piled progeny from the hands of hill-wandering huntsmen, glides one little cook….

Angel Wing oyster mushrooms, I think. Lovely to see but inedible.

"It was such a pleasure to have you with us for the last week.. Your cooking was just stunning & we all agreed that it had been quite the best holiday knowing you were there coping in your wonderfully unflappable manner. " 

V Lowes

Job: 11th to 14th September. North Pennines, Cumbria.

There’s nothing like my job for noting every joyful little change of the season. I feel like a cog in a system of wheels. A cog who gladly grabs what’s on offer from outdoor wheels and flicks it onto the plates of inside wheels. It wasn’t long ago I was churning out still-summery puds. In just a couple of weeks all has changed. It’s autumn. 

This week there’s a party for the grouse shooting. We’re high-up on the fells and on the menu is hearty fare: loin of venison with homemade rowan jelly followed by Grand Marnier soufflés. Proper traditional grouse with the obligatory bread sauce, fried breadcrumbs, game chips and Cumberland sauce. For pud: blackberry fool atop little wobbling blackberry gin jellies. One lunchtime I made a Claire MacDonald prawn and egg mousse. Downton-Abbey-Style. Sounds odd maybe, to current taste, but it’s super tasty and beautiful to look at. Turned-out of a high-rise mould, it was pale pink and shivered like a tremoring Edwardian gentle-lady. It wibbled on a plate on the lovely housekeeper’s lap, in a Landrover up a bumpy track all the way to the lunch hut nestled atop the fells. It sat, rather naked and embarrassed looking, on a rustic trestle table comforted by a roaring open fire. Then the big Gun’s arrived and ate it. With aplomb.

A repeat episode of that series (or Downton Shabby as it's now known) was on in the kitchen when one of the Guns put his head round the door and asked if he could sit and watch it with me. We chuckle at what Mr Carson would think; me with my apron and he in his tweeds, cashmere shooting socks resting on the table. At ease. Altogether more downstairs than upstairs. Bungalow, in fact.

"Thank you for all you did for us at G. The left overs we found were delicious and everyone on the ground here said you really looked after everyone to perfection." C Townshend

Job: 24th to 26th August. Gloucestershire.

Job: 9th to 22nd August. North Norfolk.

Now, two weeks cooking for a family in Norfolk. They have the most incredible aged walled garden. It feels like the secret garden. The espaliers have long since escaped, their gnarled limbs wrenched away from wire 'guy ropes', and the peach trees have burst through the top of the elegant glasshouses. Raspberries are rampant, ripe and ramble everywhere - liberated from Victorian corset-like stringency. A turn-of-the-century spade decays in what seems like the spot it was thrust into all those years ago. It’s moving and poignant. But, it goes without saying, that in August there grows gallons of glut. I’m here to help turn it to goodies fit for jam jars, bottles, the freezer and hungry tummies. Mostly, there is soft fruit. And herbs. Right now mostly blackcurrants, redcurrants and raspberries, so here’s how I made a start: Blackcurrant cordial, blackcurrant bunny-shape-jellies, Ballymaloe blackcurrant sorbet, blackcurrant pavlova with fudge sauce, gooseberry and elderflower cream crumble, raspberry ripple meringues, raspberry soufflés, raspberry and white chocolate ice-cream stars, raspberry jam, chocolate & blackberry mousse and a cherry mousse cheesecake.

Ready for the freezer...

One Sunday lunch there was good old fashioned roast ham and parsley sauce (it’s nice to use parsley in it’s own right, especially as there’s so much of it), and vegetables pretty as a picture - rainbow chard, new born carrots still with their tops, studded with precious podded peas and the green green insides of broad beans.

There’s a brilliant little fish shop (The North Norfolk Fish Company) tucked away in Apple Yard, Holt. They had glistening Dover sole so fresh they looked (taking a fish’s memory into account) as if they still remembered the sea. They were baked whole and once the top skin was removed bearing juicy bright, snowy white flesh they were spread with a jewel-green garden herb salsa verde and courgette flowers stuffed with courgette risotto.

One evening twenty people came over. For them a huge Thai green curry with handfuls of purple basil leaves and black onion seeds and lemon rice served in brilliant huge pottery bowls. For pudding; whopping cocoa meringues with whipped yellow cream and plenty of juicy just-picked raspberries.

Another evening there came forty teenagers. A ‘gathering’! For them, half a dozen gratins of lasagna with homemade cottage-loaf garlic bread stuffed with more emerald green parsley. For pudding; a stacker box of blackcurrant ripple ice-cream with 'white asparagus’ meringue wands and stewed silky blackcurrants.

Job: 16th to 26th July. Isle of Jura, Scotland.

And so back to Jura. With my writing I’ve now gone full circle! (Scroll down and down to get to the Jura post for this time last year). Once again the sea is our supermarket and a tug-type boat is the trolley. The menu has been roughly planned ahead as a defense to any supply disaster that island life might chuck at us, but the ocean is to have the final say. Turns out it has quite a lot to yell at us. Mackerel mostly. Mackerel and mussels (huge mussels. Pearl bearing ones; we found four, like tiny little Tic-tacs). And lobsterettes. Crabs. Many, many BIG crabs. Mackerel. Scallops. Sea trout. More mackerel.  A total sea feast every day.

With fish so fresh it’s a crime to do anything other than sample it virginally. At first. But as the days and gluts roll on I need a little help with fishy preserving tactics. Once again HFW to the rescue. That man must be knighted. Sir Hugh. When you’re maxed out with ‘macs’ you need to make River Cottage’s ‘gravadmax’.  Then there’s ‘rollmacs’ and hot-smoked mackerel. Then potted hot-smoked mackerel with bog myrtle. Crispy fried mackerel for breakfast with a wedge of lemon. Crab with samphire, crab with caviar on blinis, crab in a bisque. So one moment our supper’s shoaling in the Sound of Jura, then up and out! - it’s snatched away and carried over the sandy shore into the Lodge kitchen. This little fishy was probably not much more than half a mile away half an hour ago.  Now it’s swimming in our memories; of the wide-eyed girl who caught her first fish beside a patiently guiding ghillie, of the cook who cut her finger filleting it, of the other ghillie who suspiciously sniffed the dillweed cure and sneezed and sneezed, and of all those who loved eating it. Snippets of happy memories all because of that one very well respected fish. Caught, cooked, eaten. Respected. Very basic. Very important. Very satisfying. It really is astonishingly satisfying, and a real testament to a truly independent living while being totally dependent on the forces of nature. Another big nod to nature. In fact, an Elizabethan-style bow with an extra flurry of the feathered cap.

But since, allegedly, you are what you eat and none of us want to sprout fins or claws, there’s room on the menu for other Island issue. We demolished a roast rib of beef again from a farmer over on Islay. I said this last time, but it really must be the tastiest beef I’ve come across, so far. And the Vikings didn’t call Jura Deer Island for nothing. There are rather a lot of spectacular stags ganging around like strung-out striplings just now. The heaving chest freezer contains a good deal of them. I watch a few of them out of the kitchen window while they strut grandly down to the shore and I stir the venison bolognaise for a la’stag’ne. Yet another instance of how healthily close to food we have to be living on a small island like this. It’s a delicate thing that has somehow been removed been by the mainstream of the mainland in a hugely worryingly and unnatural way. 

I gave those massive wild, massively wild beasts a chance to get back at me later in the week. One afternoon I was snorkeling dreamily around the shallows of the bay when I became conscious of loud splashing and clouding of the water. A thunder shower, I thought. Sitting up, mask up, I found I shared the sea with four stags. They thrashed dementedly through the water, darting their impressively daggered headpieces into the salty sea as they cantered, muscles rippling, tossing off water in  testosterone frenzy. I might have been speared like a flat fish! What a way to go though - snorkeling  with stags. They were being mullered by midges and cleg flies and, in no position to benefit from the likes of ‘Skin So Soft’, this was their visibly dramatic way of dealing with the tiresome tiny creatures.

Very early on the last morning, being the only soul left in the lodge, I looked out to the bay for a last peep and saw my first wild otter. It adroitly wove like a magic loom shuttle through the silvery ripples of the lapping tide.

 “I wasn't really hungry but I've eaten one of those in about thirty seconds. I don't even like meringue.” MH talking about my raspberry ripple meringues.

Job: 7th to 12th July. Deeside, Scotland.

Well I’ve navigated the lumps and bumps of Great Britain today! Ireland, Wales, England and Scotland all in a daytime. Phew. The fast ferry (Dublin to Holyhead) helped. Boy it's quick! It was like being in a huge car, driving over the sea. Powering. We overtook Manx Shearwaters. But now I'm here on beautiful Deeside where there's a fishing party and a week's work ahead.

It's too hot for happy fishing but there are no complaints. All is very well indeed. The magnificent surroundings are singing out to the sun and these fertile lands on the east side of Scotland are churning out strawberries. And I'm churning out summery puds.. From frozen strawberry cheesecakes (below) to sky rise pavlovas...

On an afternoon out I went to see Crathes Castle. It's famed for it's lovely garden and for it's colourful ceiling paintings, c. 1599. Some of them make me grin. The Scots seem to love their helpful but rather odd sayings. After a visit earlier in the year to Inchcombe abbey, I laughingly remembered and wrote about the mad phrases etched into it's stone walls (scroll down and down to the Firth of Forth post. May 2013 I think). A few of the sensible sentences offered to readers at Crathes include; 'Interfering in someone else's argument is as foolish as yanking a dog's ear', 'Confidence in someone unfaithful in time of trouble is like a bad tooth or a lame foot', and 'It's better to dwell in the corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman and in a wide house'. (!) The traffic police north of the border are continuing the fine tradition. Whereas in England the messages on the VMS's (variable message signs) are mundane or out of date warnings, the Scots issue a different message on every one along the way like "Belt up in the back" (which i suppose could be taken two ways..) or "Please be a thoughtful driver" or "Heavy rain ahead" or "Don't hog the middle lane", just to be helpful and make dazed drivers smile. 

My hunt for Pearl Bordered fritillaries (butterflies with a breeding spot near Loch Aboyne) was fruitless. But, within a little glass display case, in a craft shop near Crathes, I found my most coveted gold-smithery to date. Each piece is conjured in a workshop in Grandtully, by Aberfeldy. The craftsmanship of each piece is spell-binding and breath-taking. The owl bracelets below have painstakingly engraved feathers floating all over the inside. One day I will own a Malcolm Appleby gold bracelet...

http://www.malcolmappleby.co.uk

http://www.scottish-gallery.co.uk/artist/malcolm_appleby