CULINARY COUP D’ÉTAT
Slowly but surely Scotland’s artisan food producers are turning the tide, bringing the finest, locally-sourced produce to the fore
Guy Grieve hails Scotland’s small artisan food producers
We often hear it said that this country is going through a ‘ food revolution’, and it is true that we are taking baby steps towards catching up with our neighbours in France, Spain and Italy who have long appreciated the importance of good quality, locally-sourced food.
I once spent a glorious eight weeks hunting and gathering food throughout rural Spain with chef Thomasina Miers shortly after she had won Masterchef. It was an education to see how good, healthy food, which is genuinely locally-sourced, was being consumed by ordinary people, every day – and not in expensive eateries that cost an arm and a leg to visit.
We saw manchego cheese stored in caves and eaten with freshly-baked bread by people seated on plastic chairs beside dusty roads, with dogs and cats running around their feet. We found old dudes skilfully hooking octopus from under the rocks in Galicia then returning home and handing it over to their wives to prepare.
There was a father-and-son team, breath-holding to pick razor shells. And then, as a glorious climax, a pig was slaughtered, butchered and processed by an entire village who shared out the meat and prepared it for cooking, whilst drinking copious quantities of Calvados apple brandy.
Part of the reason for the supremely good cuisine of these European countries is poverty – people had to be inventive to come up with good food as they didn’t have a great deal of money. To this we owe pasta and pizza, both invented as a way of padding out meals with little meat content.
We now of course know that the Mediterranean diet is amongst the healthiest due to its heavy reliance on vegetables and olive oil – all locally produced – and its relatively low meat content. It is also, of course, the most delicious. Happily, there has been an increase in artisan food producers in our country, although we still have a lot of catching up to do.
Though you can live like a true Caledonian gourmet, feasting on regional cheeses, meats and fish, to a large extent you need to have the time and the money to pay for it. Scotland’s cities have good delis, bakeries and fishmongers, but in rural areas good produce is still thin on the ground.
Most of our seafood is shipped off to Europe where it is properly appreciated, not having the market for it here. In the remoter corners of Scotland, bar a few exceptions, for the most part there has been no food revolution and our high streets are dominated by the ubiquitous supermarkets and Indian and Chinese takeaways.
While this may be the larger picture, there are hopeful stories of small producers popping up here and there, which make a massive difference in our small communities. In the tiny village of Dervaig in the north of Mull, a skilled cook called Louise Paterson has turned a small barn behind her cottage into an artisan bakery.
Along with the most fantastic bread – and I mean real bread, chewy and dense with a proper crust – she is also producing pastries, pies, cakes and other life-changing (and sadly waist-changing) delicacies that will make a huge difference to the quality of life of local people, as well as attracting more visitors to the area.
Louise is no half-baked chef. She trained at Leiths School of Food and Wine and has cooked in every circumstance you could imagine. Happily for Dervaig, she has decided to turn her skills to becoming an expert baker and the community is seriously benefitting as a result.
Mull is lucky to have an unusually large number of artisan food producers, some of which (Isle of Mull Cheese and Island Bakery Organics, to name but two) have stepped out of the ‘artisan’ category to become serious businesses and important employers.
Throughout our countryside, there are people farming, fishing, gathering and making incredible food, which is not just interesting and superb tasting, but also adds great value and depth to our lives, connecting us directly to the country, sea and people around us.
Louise told me that she would like to expand her business into a derelict building next door, but faces obstacles from the local council. This is a big problem in this country – an overzealous food safety culture which seems to fear everything that doesn’t come in a vacuum pack from a large-scale producer.
This is something we can learn from our European neighbours – fear around food is vastly exaggerated. Brexit, in theory, will give us an opportunity to rethink some of our food regulations. However, the fear is that they will become more, rather than less, stringent, hampering small, artisan producers as a result.
Businesses like Louise’s need to be given huge support, both for their economic and social value. Like a good village pub, they can form the fabric of small communities.
‘There are hopeful stories
of small producers popping up here and there’