Langoustines, Gin and More Chocolate in Fife - Part Two

After our feast of chocolate at the Pittenweem Chocolate Company, it was er...time for lunch!  We headed just along the coast to St Monans, one of the quieter East Neuk villages, well it used to be quieter but it seems to be emerging from it's sleepy image and starting to challenge the tourist packed Crail, Anstruther and Pittenweem.  The focus of our visit and lunch was the East Pier Smokehouse.


I had been to the East Pier Smokehouse about four years ago when my Mum and I bought some smoked langoustines, at that time there was only the shop and it was pretty basic, however things have changed and the East Pier Smokehouse now boasts it's own restaurant as well as selling seafood to take away.


I think you will agree that the views from the restaurant are absolutely stunning and Claire from Foodie Quine and I were treated to an absolute feast, starting with a rich and creamy courgette and goats cheese soup and a box of smoked langoustines, the meat in Scottish seafood is really sweet which  is down to the cold water around our shores!  We also tried the smoked salmon and cranberry Quiche with a turmeric pastry, which was the special of the day, very good indeed.


This was followed by the arrival of a range of the dishes that are served at the East Pier Smokehouse, lobster, crab cakes, salad and smoked salmon all served in cardboard boxes, it's a bit like going for a picnic on the deck of a ship!  All of the seafood was totally delicious and next time I'm in Fife, I'll be making a reservation for an evening meal.


We were quite taken aback when owner, James Robb, opened the door of he smokehouse and we saw just how small it was and really just a cupboard in the wall, but the smell of the cold smoked salmon was incredibly enticing.  It's well worth a visit to the East Pier Smokehouse, but get there early for lunch as you can't book.

Claire and I were now completely stuffed, as we jumped back into our luxury mini-bus, complete with water bottle holders, and were ably driven by Andy through St Andrews and on to the Eden Mill distillery and brewery at Guardbridge.



The Eden Mill is Scotland's only distillery and brewery on a single site, based on the site of a former Haig distillery, it produces award-winning beer and gin as well as small batch single malt whisky.


We started with a taste of a new Chilli Ginger Porter which Eden Mill expect to have on sale for Christmas.  I'll certainly be looking for a few bottles of this brew in my stocking, it was smooth, not bitter at all, but with a lovely warm kick.


We then had a tour of the brewery and distillery with Kathryn Baker, where we learned about the gin basket which holds the botanicals during distilling, and saw the private casks of whisky, one signed by a former First Minister of Scotland. We then moved on to our task for the day; Gin and Chocolate matching, it was a hard job, but someone  had to do it!


Eden Mill have five different types of gin and the chocolates we tasted with the matched gin came from Iain Burnett, The Highland Chocolatier who uses a unique single origin cocoa from the volcanic Island of Sao Tome. This intense cocoa is carefully selected for its exceptional range of fruity aromatic and spicy characteristics and painstakingly matched with unblended fresh Scottish cream from a particular herd of cows in Perthshire.

Original Eden Gin - the interaction between Seabucktorn berries, lemon balm, and bitter citrus results in a light yet complex spirit.  The Eden Gin is classic, crisp, refershing heavily citrus flavoured gin (and my favourite)
This was paired with White Lime and hint of Chilli Velvet Truffle  "Fresh notes of the Lime and sharp citrus of the gin are well matched, with the subtle heat of the cayenne highlighting a similar dryness in the Eden."  Gorgeous combination, the chocolate seemed to bring out the gin flavour and vice versa, suddenly I'm convinced that matching chocolate and gin is a good idea.

Hop Gin - A logical progression from brewing into distilling, using Galaxy hops to craft this first gin, This unique creation has a zesty freshness, and slight bitterness on the finish.  The unusual colouring is as result of he hops, and persists once tonic is added. I quite liked the Hop Gin, although it is an acquired taste and I think would be good with something like ginger ale.  This gin was paired with a Blonde White Langue de Chat "the simplicity of the creamy Madagascan vanilla which let's all the fruity flavours of he gin take centre stage"  I didn't think the white chocolate added much to the gin and felt that the gin overpowered the chocolate.

Love Gin - Bringing together an outstanding blend of local botanicals, Love Gin is also infused with rose petals and whole hibiscus flowers to give it a subtle pink colour.  Rhubarb root and raspberry leaf ensure a delicate sweet finish. This is one of the most popular of the Eden Mill gins, it is very smooth without the 'edge' that I associate with gin.  Paired with a White Raspberry and heather honey Velvet Truffle "an excellent match of both sweet fruit and Madagascan vanilla in the white chocolate play along with the summer fruits and even the honey doesn't dissipate the sweetness of this gin"  The chocolate was lush, but I found the overall effect of the sweeter gin and the sweet chocolate just a bit much for my palate, the honey seemed to dominate the after-taste.

Oak Gin - matured in oak-aged beer casks, this gin carries hints of vanilla and toasted caramel.  With a warmth and spice reminiscent of whisky, this gin can easily be enjoyed neat. Paired with Ginger Velvet Truffle "the warm ginger is reminiscent of the warm spices of the gin and its gentle oak woodiness is as subtle as the oak notes which follow at the end of the dark Sao Tome chocolate."  This combination certainly delivered on the warm flavours.

Golf Gin - flavoured with hickory (reminiscent of the hickory shafted golf clubs made by the St Andrews Golf Company) this gin is described as a modern classic with notes of sweet lemongrass with a burst of mild pepperiness, strong hints of lime, coriander and aromatic spice.
We had two different chocolates to try with the Golf Gin, Garden Mint Velvet Truffle, what a chocolate, it tasted just like fresh mint, I've never experienced anything like this in a chocolate and I would definitely recommend it.  Tasted with the Golf Gin the story is that "this fresh light herb is the perfect segue to the aromatic gin in a ply of pepper and menthol", personally, much though I loved the chocolate, I felt that the strong mint flavour overwhelmed the gin.
The second chocolate was a Lemongrass and hint of Lime Velvet Praline "a strong and heavy introduction to the grass and spices of the Golf"  oh yes, now this was more like it.  Again the freshness of the lemongrass was outstanding but, for me, a better compliment to the gin, of course lemon and lime are very much a traditional match for gin.


The truffles had the most incredible intense flavours, a fresh and fruity explosion in your mouth,  they went remarkably well with the different gins they had been matched to, something I wouldn't have imagined.


The Visitor Centre is well laid out with plenty of space for large groups and these amazing stained glass windows. You can drop in, but if you'd like to have a tour and tasting it's worth booking ahead.

BREWERY TOUR - £7.50 per person (£5 for students/concessions) - 7 days a week - 11am, 1pm, 3pm & 5pm
GIN EXPERIENCE - £10 per person (£7.50 for students/concessions) - 7 days a week - 12pm, 2pm & 4pm
Subject to availability

Chillies and Chocolate in Fife - Part One

Coming in Part Three - Courses for Cooks

Disclaimer: I was the guest of Welcome to Fife and I'd like to thank them and the host organisations  who made this a truly memorable trip.

Labels: crab, East Pier Smokehouse, Eden Mill, Foodie Quine, Gin, Langoustine, lobster, quiche, Seafood, smoked salmon, St Andrews, St Monans, The Highland Chocolatier, Velvet Truffles, Welcome to Fife

posted by Janice @ 19:38 12 Comments

A Salmon and Nettle Tart - Dish of the Month

As Nigel Slater says: "there is something deeply satisfying about taking a huge, golden tart to the table, a tart we have made ourselves. A tart we can give to others knowing it will give as much pleasure to them as making it did to us"  There is something even more satisfying in making a tart that includes foraged ingredients such as wild garlic and nettles, free food!


When I went to the freezer, I discovered I only had one salmon fillet left, so used a couple of haddock fillets to bulk out the tart, you would never have been able to tell.  I topped it with some of the Wild Garlic butter I made and froze last month.
I baked the fish in the oven for about 15 minutes and then left it to cool.
I'd read in The Foragers Kitchen that you could substitute young nettle tops for spinach, so I donned my rubber gloves and headed round into the back garden to collect some nettles.  Living on a farm means that the fields and hedgerows tend to invade the garden and while this is not great for gardening, it is rather handy for foraging!

Labels: Dish of the Month, flan, foraging, Nettles, Nigel Slater, quiche, salmon, tart

posted by Janice @ 11:57 7 Comments

Turkey, Bacon and Brie Tart

It's always a pleasure to make new dishes from food left over from other meals.  Christmas is the greatest opportunity to be creative with leftovers and I am drawn to the tart, flan or quiche as a vehicle to use up those bits and pieces of delicious food.

Turkey, Bacon and Brie Tart

Serves 6 

1 quantity of shortcrust pastry, baked blind in a flan tin.
1 small onion, finely chopped
100g streaky bacon, chopped
Approx. 200-300g cold cooked turkey
250ml double cream
3 large eggs
100g ripe Brie
25g Parmesan, grated
zest of half a lemon
salt & freshly ground pepper

Heat the oven to 170C

1. Gently saute the onion in a little butter, add the bacon pieces and cook until golden, leave to cool.
2. Spread the onion and bacon in the base of the flan, chop the turkey into generously sized pieces and scatter over the onion and bacon.
3. Break off pieces of Brie and distribute evenly across the flan base.
4. Whisk the eggs, add the cream, lemon zest, seasoning and grated Parmesan, pour into the flan case.
5. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the filling is golden brown and just set in the centre.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool for about 10 minutes before serving.

This is a very rich tart and only needs a green vegetable or salad to make a meal. 

What did you do with your leftovers?

Labels: bacon, Brie, cream, flan, leftovers, quiche, shortcrust pastry, tart, Turkey

posted by Janice @ 08:00 8 Comments

Roasted Butternut Squash and Tomato Tart - Herbs on Saturday

I'm not quite sure what I did before I discovered Butternut Squash.  It has to be the most versatile of vegetables, that sweet, firm flesh goes so well with so many different flavours.  I combined the squash with tomatoes, bacon and basil in this tart with a single small courgette from my garden which needed to be used up.  As I am trying to cut back on calories, I used 0% Greek yogurt in the custard mix and it worked really well.  I had very positive comments from the family about this tart.  Vegetarians can just leave out the bacon with very little detriment to the texture and flavour.

Roasted Butternut Squash and Tomato Tart

1 quantity of shortcrust pastry  baked blind

1 Butternut Squash
8 small vine tomatoes, halved
1 courgette, sliced
8 rashers of streaky bacon
1 tbsp olive oil
200g 0% fat Greek Yogurt
3 large free range eggs
salt & freshly ground pepper
8 fresh basil leaves

1. Peel squash and deseed.  Cut into even sized pieces and put into a roasting tin.
2. Cut tomatoes in half and slice the courgette, place in roasting tin with squash.
3. Pour over the oil and mix through the vegetables, sprinkle with 1/2 tsp salt
4. Roast in an oven 200C for 30 minutes until the butternut squash is soft and slightly caramelised round the edges.
5.  Chop the streaky bacon into pieces and spread over the vegetables, roast for a further 10 minutes until crisp.


6. Place the vegetables and bacon into the pastry case.
7. In a bowl, whisk the eggs and stir in the 0% Greek yogurt, season with salt and pepper.
8. Pour the mixture over the vegetables.
9. Tear up the basil leaves and spread them evenly across the tart, push them down into the egg mixture.

10. Bake at 180C for 30 - 35 minutes until the egg mixture is set.

 I'm entering this tart for Herbs on Saturday run by Karen at Lavender and Lovage.

Labels: 0% Greek Yogurt, butternut squash, Herbs on Saturday, Lavender and Lovage, quiche, roasted tomatoes, tart

posted by Janice @ 08:51 19 Comments

Roasted Courgette, Tomato, Feta and Basil Tart

There was a bit of joking on Twitter the other night about how we should make one recipe that covered all the blog challenges, then we could have the rest of the month off!  I haven't managed to cover quite all the blog challenges with this post but it ticked off quite a few.

My courgette/zucchini plant has sucked up all the rain and produced some huge fruits, so although I had planned to make the Pea, bean and bacon tart from the July issue of BBC Good Food, I decided to adapt it to use the courgettes, hmmm maybe I could use some tomatoes too, oh and that half block of Feta cheese, so no need for the bacon and I'll make my own pasty instead of using frozen shortcrust like in the recipe...not much of the recipe left to be honest!

Roasted Courgette Tomato, Feta and Basil Tart

1 quantity of butter shortcrust pastry blind baked in a flan case (click through to the link for full recipe)

For the roasted vegetables
2 large or three medium courgettes/zucchini
8 small tomatoes, halved
3 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt

Heat the oven to 200C, slice or dice the courgettes into even sized chunks, halve the tomatoes.  Place the vegetables in a roasting dish and coat with the oil.  Sprinkle with salt and roast in the oven for 20-30 minutes until starting to blacken round the edges. Remove from oven and drain the juices into a bowl.

For the filling
100g Feta cheese, cubed
300ml double cream
4 large eggs
juices from the roasted vegetables
6-8 basil leaves
freshly ground pepper




Place the roasted vegetables into the baked tart case, top with the cubed feta and torn basil leaves.  Season with freshly ground pepper.
Beat the cream and eggs together and stir in the saved juices from the roasted vegetables. Pour over the vegetables and cheese and bake at 160C for 35 minutes until set and golden.

Roasting the veg means that the pastry doesn't go soggy and it makes a nice firm filling, very tasty indeed.

I'm entering this tart for One Ingredient, the July ingredient is 'The Tomato' and it is being hosted this month by Jacqueline at How to Cook Good Food who shares this challenge with Working London Mummy


 And..Veggie/Fruit a Month which is featuring the Zucchini for July and is being hosted this month by Cook's Joy



It is also Simple and in Season another challenge run by Jacqueline at How to Cook Good Food in patnership with Ren at Fabulicious Food



Okay, so far three challenges busted with one dish, now to the salad I served with the tart

Giant Couscous, Butternut and Walnut Salad

I've been reading about Giant Couscous, so when I saw a bag at the farm shop last week, I popped it in my basket.  Also in GoodFood July issue was this recipe which was perfect to try out the giant couscous.  This time I stuck to the recipe!


I hope the recipe will go onto the website soon and I can link back, but it is basically roasted dice of butternut squash which have been sprinkled with chilli powder (I roasted them in a separate dish but at the same time as the courgettes and tomatoes).  You cook the couscous for five minutes, then mix through the roasted squash and the oil it has been roasted in and add walnut pieces, the seeds and juice of half a pomegranate and juice of half a lemon with a handful of chopped mint.

What a lovely salad it was, the squash pieces were quite hot as I probably used more chilli than I should and used chilli flakes rather than powder!  However, as the couscous is bland if you ate it altogether, the heat was about right.  I loved the fresh juiciness of the pomegranate seeds, the green bite of the mint and earthy crunch of the walnuts.   I would definitely make this again.

And this recipe is for Bookmarked Recipes one of the challenges run by Jac at Tinned Tomatoes from an idea by Ruth from Ruth's Kitchen Experiments founder of the challenge.

Labels: basil, Bookmarked Recipes, butternut squash, courgettes, feta cheese, flan, Giant couscous, One Ingredient, pomegranate, quiche, roasted vegetables, salad, Simple and in Season, tart, tomatoes, vegetarian

posted by Janice @ 20:19 11 Comments

Butternut Squash, Feta Cheese and Roasted Pepper Quiche

Last Sunday my friend came over for lunch.  I thought that some kind of quiche or flan with salad would be ideal.  I had already bought the butternut squash, so went off in search of a recipe that would incorporate this.

In the end my recipe is a kind of combination of a couple of different recipes.  Some of the butternut squash flans were made by pureeing or squishing the squash! A bit like pumpkin pie, no texture, yuk!

My shortcrust pastry comes, as usual, from the Avoca Cookbook I have blogged it before HERE  



I am also entering this in the October 'No Croutons Required' challenge over at Tinned Tomatoes, the theme is 'squash' and I'm hoping that this counts as 'salad'.

Labels: Avoca, butternut squash, eggs, feta cheese, No Croutons Required, quiche, roasted red peppers

posted by Janice @ 22:15 11 Comments

Lovely Leftovers - Christmas Quiche

Labels: Christmas, ham, quiche, Turkey

posted by Janice @ 18:24 1 Comments

Smoked Mackerel, No tomatoes and Avoca pastry

Since watching the Great British Bake Off, I've been meaning to have another go at making shortcrust pastry.  It's not that I haven't made it before, but it seems to be a bit hit and miss when I do and recently I've been cheating and using ready made, but still feeling rather dissatisfied with the results.


We had a glut of eggs, as DH gets 6 every week from someone at his work who keeps hens, so I thought that I would make some kind of a 'quiche'.  I had some peppered smoked mackerel in the fridge and some greek yogurt.  I was sure I had a recipe somewhere for Smoked Mackerel Quiche but couldn't find it anywhere, so this is a bit of a hybrid recipe.

I did decide to look at a recipe for shortcut pastry though and the first one I found was in the Avoca Cafe CookBook and this is it:

After removing the beans and paper you could brush the partly cooked pastry with lightly beaten egg white before returning it to the oven.  This helps to form a seal and keeps the pastry crisp when you add the filling.

This flan will serve between 5-6 for a main course

Bake for 40 minutes at 170C (160C fan oven).  Let it cool slightly before serving with buttered rye bread and...



No Tomatoes Salad (serves 3)
place the salad leaves in a bowl or on a plate, add some grated carrot, chopped pear and apple and scatter over some chopped pecan nuts.  I have to say that is was much nicer than it would have been if I had had some tomatoes, which just goes to show that I am getting into a cooking rut, very much evidenced by my lack of blogging .

Labels: quiche, salad, smoked mackerel

posted by Janice @ 18:35 3 Comments

Pea, mint and goat's cheese quiche

My son's girlfriend is a vegetarian so when she visits I use this as an excuse to try out some new recipes (not that I need an excuse!). I saw this quiche recipe in Late Spring 2009 issue of BBC Easy Cook and thought it would be nice for lunch.

500g shortcrust pastry (I cheated and used frozen pastry)
300g frozen peas
3tbsp olive oil
handful of mint leaves, chopped
2 eggs
284mltub double cream
4 spring onions, finely sliced
200g mild goat's cheese, crumbled

Turn the oven to fan 180C/conventional 200C/gas 6. roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface to a round about 5cm larger than a 25cm tart tin. use our rolling pin to lift it up, then drape over the tart case, so there is an overhang of pastry on the sides. Gently push the pastry into the corners of the tin. Chill in the fridge for 20 minutes.

While the pastry is chilling, cook the peas in boiling water for 3 minutes, then drain and refresh under cold water. Use a hand blender to puree the peas with the oil then stir in the mint and season.
Lightly prick the base of the tart with a fork, line the tart case with a large circle of greaseproof paper, then fill with baking beans. Bake the tart case for 20 minutes, remove the paper and beans, then continue to cook for 5-10 minutes until it is biscuit brown.
Meanwhile beat the eggs in a large bowl. Gradually add the cream and stir in the onions. Season.
When the case is cooked spoon and spread the peas over the base, pour over the egg mix, then scatter over the goat's cheese.
Bake for 20-25 minutes, until set and golden brown, Leave to cool in the case, trim the edges of the pastry, then remove and serve in slices.

Labels: quiche, vegetarian

posted by Janice @ 20:36 6 Comments