Uhoh. My chocolate
soufflé’s burnt. Fossilized, I should say. Such are the hazards of lodge
cooking I suppose. Although I’ve not known a hiccup like this before (no,
really). The thermostat went on the oven and what could I do????? It served as
a doorstop all the next day.
But I’m puzzled. What’s
going on? I’ve long been told I look young for my age, though I thought that
was evening itself out – I’m 31 but on the whole thought to look 25ish. Not too
bad. Now suddenly: “Naaaarr! Yur fifteeyan unnart a day oover.”(Norfolk accent)
and no, it’s not just Norfolk. The party up here in Perthshire were mesmerized
by what I’ve fitted in to what they imagined would be a short career so far.
Not so short actually. It’s been 10 years since I left university (no, let’s be
honest - ‘college’ – agricultural at that) and the ‘face down in a bucket of
cider’ Neanderthals that went with it. Sorry, that’s harsh, they weren’t (all)…
Well! What can I
say? It must be the all the fresh country air, liberty and lightheartedness. Though
I tell you, being shut in a kitchen bellowing smoke from the “120°C? My arse!” oven will do nothing for youthful skin.
My eyes are as red and tortured as a 120 year old’s just now.
Thank god for
emergency cheese and biscuits – all Scottish, of course, Strathdon Blue and
caboc from the (cringe cringe) House of Bruar and homemade oatcakes (some I
made earlier).
So: For the next
couple of weeks I’ll be more on the east side of Scotland, rather than the
archipelago of the west where I spent August. Just now I’m in Glen Isla, Perthshire,
where there’s a fishing party.
It’s a funny
landscape. At least it is for someone who didn’t know what to expect and thinks
of the highlands or islands when daydreaming Scotland. It’s hugely fertile and
therefore agrarian but with preserved pockets of wildness. Glen Isla is I
pretty mix of both. Primitive with pasture. I seek out and roam in the former.
It’s bracing and wild. The wind not so much whistles as hollers over the
heather and through the nobly fishbone larches and native pine. There are a few
left over blaeberries, literally hanging-on, and a lonely harebell soundless
but vigorously ringing in the wind. A feisty red squirrel clicks in a rage and
flicks his tale at me. There are darting flocks of thrush family and many
little coal tits and the high pitch, high up peeps of Goldcrests. I found a
shaggy cauliflower fungus, sadly a little too old to be edible. There’s
something so unspeakably ancient about scots pine forests, especially in this
moody weather. Mary Webbs describes it perfectly:
“The floor of this
place was deep with the leaves of many centuries, which had gathered with the
thickening years till they muffled the footsteps. When Amber thought how the
contemporaries of Harold Hardrada had probably walked in this very wood, under
the trees which now were jagged stumps, and considered their fragile joys,
their tiny grief’s, so huge to them, she shivered, feeling antiquity to be
fearful – almost cynical.… For the forest tree keeps in her heart secrets of
days long gone – days when the little bruit of man was drowned by the infinite
grave forest murmur; when the trees spoke aloud the things that they now only
whisper.”
‘The House in
Dormer Forest’, Mary Webb, 1920.
I was slightly
relieved when the rumbling roar below me turned out not to be a tyrannosaur but
the infinitely more comforting sight of a Volvo estate complete with rod
brackets, followed nose to bumper by a zooming gamekeeper aboard a filthy quad
bike.
The storm’s about
to break but that’s ok. I’m back in my little ‘car-base’ with BBC Gaelic and a
jolly Celtic jig. I’m heading back to a homely kitchen, refreshed and ready to
prepare a feast…
It was a great
shame that a heavily pregnant hen salmon had to be landed and not returned to her
watery home yesterday. No way will I allow the poor beauty’s roe to be wasted.
I feel a duty to use every last little orange jewel, so I Google how to make
caviar. Easy. And such a lovely looking jar of nibble potential. There’s a
sweet deli in Beauly and in it they sell locally made crème fraiche. Along with
some homemade Scotch pancakes all were eaten with laud and homage to the noble
salmon.