Scotland

We’ve just got back from a week in Scotland where we visited both Aberfeldy and Edinburgh. The main purpose of our trip was to relax and eat some good food, both of which we achieved.

One of our favourite places was the Courtyard, a bar/restaurant near to where we were staying in Aberfeldy. The menu was small and varied, relying heavily on local produce. We had lunch there last Sunday and shared a starter of smoked trout salad, this was serve with confit potaoes and dill creme fraiche (there was also the dreaded balsamic vinegar but it worked well with this dish so I’ll save he ranting for another time):

I then had pollack for the first time, we saw this appear often on menus while we were away. I really enjoyed it, the texture is similar to that of cod: firm and meaty. It was served with basil mash and a mussel brothe (a cream sauce with mussels). It was really tasty, possibly the best thing I ate.

Stephen chose oven baked ballotine of local pheasant stuffed with wild mushroom mousse, with barley risotto and game jus – we both enjoyed this, the addition of the barley gave the risotto an interesting texture.

We didn’t drink any whisky here but we would have been spoilt for choice if we’d wanted to:

While in Aberfeldy we stayed in a cottage and took the opportunity to cook “at home”, we’d both been looking forward to doing this but in reality it’s quite difficult because we didn’t have access to our store-cupboard of oils and spices. We resolved this by eating a steak pie which we bought from the local butcher, it was tasty but we didn’t have any gravy sadly (or mashed potatoes as we were trying not to totally over-indulge).

While in Edinburgh we read a review of Creelers, at this point we hadn’t eaten a lot of seafood so it seemed appropriate to eat there. We went at lunchtime and were the only visitors which seemed odd as the town was busy and the food brilliant. I had scallops which were served with a leeky, cream sauce similar to the sauce that the pollack came with but with smoked haddock instead of mussels.

Stephen chose halibut which was beautifully cooked and served with almond mash – the second time we’d been served this.

We weren’t brave enough to take photographs of all the food we ate but some other highlights included enormous langoustines and lots of great smoked salmon, real tablet (better than our attempt but we weren’t far off), oven-bottom rolls and deep fried haggis!