COOKING UP A STORM
How Great British Menu chef Amy Elles moved to the East Neuk of Fife to start a thriving harbourside café
Like a pebble washing onto the beach, it took Amy Elles a while to arrive at her forever home, the picturesque fishing village of Elie on the Fife coast. But now, the welltravelled chef and her husband Jack can’t imagine living anywhere else. ‘Our garden gate leads straight out onto the beach,’ says a contented Amy, whose children, Harry, 8, Leo, 4, and Isabella, 3, are learning to swim, paddleboard and kayak in these bracing waters. From their house she can see over to the Harbour Café, the small business she runs with Jack which has earned rave reviews from food critics and visitors alike for its simple, delicious seafood menu, served up within the spectacular setting of the Firth of Forth.
After gaining a wealth of restaurant experience – at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck, Moro and spells cooking at hotels in Piedmont and Galicia – Amy and Jack moved up to Scotland a decade ago to settle down. ‘We started out in Edinburgh, but I didn’t want to live in another city so we soon moved out to a chocolate box cottage in Caputh, Perthshire, which was just an amazing place to live, with its hills and streams.’ Eager to start their own business, the couple set up a street food enterprise, The Laughing Stock, serving customers at the Edinburgh Festival, the Hay Festival, and Udderbelly on London’s
Southbank. Spurred on by its success, in 2014 they launched Stocks, a more formal events catering business.
A GOOD MOVE
While things were going well in both their work and family lives, everything clicked into place with their move to Elie four years ago. It’s one of the string of small fishing villages along the unspoilt Fife coast that include St Monans, Pittenweem and Anstruther. ‘I was sitting with Mum in a lovely local pub, The Ship Inn, and I told her that I could feel my roots going down, it was a dream move to Elie,’ says Amy of the picturesque fishing village that has both a tight-knit community and an abundance of smallscale food producers nearby, heaven for a chef like Amy.
A year later the franchise for a small ‘hole in the wall’ café at the sailing club came up for renewal and Amy pounced. ‘I thought, ”This is it! This is what I want”,’ she remembers. The first season she continued the ‘hole in the wall’ service, offering ice creams, teas and coffees and gauged the response of customers. Then, with the support of the Elie Harbour Trust, Jack designed and built a new timber café, embracing the beautiful views over the Firth of Forth and Bass Rock – home to one of the largest gannet colonies in the world. It was a labour of love for Jack, who constructed everything, including the chunky dining tables and the ingenious windows that can be fully opened on warm, sunny days. ‘We wanted to create somewhere that we’d choose to go for lunch on a day off or while we were away on holiday – it had to be pretty relaxed and almost part of the landscape,’ says Amy, whose profile has grown since competing twice in BBC Two’s popular food show, Great British Menu.
The kitchen at the Harbour Café is small, with just two cooks able
to work at once, so Amy keeps the menu simple and seasonal – grilled lobster, dressed crab, cold rare roast Balcaskie beef, wild garlic-infused mayo, chanterelles on sourdough toast, garden salads, and cakes including her favourite Tarta de Santiago, an almond and lemon zest number inspired by her days in Santiago de Compostela. She sources all her ingredients locally, such as organic salad leaves and vegetables from East Neuk Market Garden. ‘All of our produce comes from within around two miles of the café and I think you can taste that.’ Fish and shellfish comes straight off the small boats at Elie Harbour. ‘We only buy shellfish caught in creels, or fish that have been caught using a 10m line. Eating seafood seems very natural here.’
WEATHERING THE CORONA STORM
The café has always offered takeaway lunch boxes for the beach, but during the pandemic the Harbour Café at Home delivery box service kept the business afloat. ‘We had to think on our feet and the boxes were born out of survival – I’m proud to have been able to support our staff and our suppliers and it’s something we’re going to carry on with,’ says Amy. She’s excited about reopening the café to the public this summer – for lunch as usual and for dinner for the first time ever – and she and Jack have installed a new Bertha charcoal BBQ to celebrate. There are also cooking classes planned and primary school visits booked in to show the local youngsters how to peel a prawn. ‘Sharing knowledge about food is really good fun,’ says Amy, full of high quality beans.
• To book a table, go to theharbourcafe.co.uk.
‘All of our produce comes from within around two miles of the café and I think you can taste that’
You will need:
•400gm dried spaghetti (De Cecco) •50ml butter
•1 chilli (de-seeded)
•2 cloves garlic
•1 shallot
•5 large ripe tomatoes – de-seeded
and diced
•150ml white wine
•Salt & black pepper
•2 cooked Scottish lobsters (600g),
meat removed
•Sliced spring onion or basil leaves
for garnish
Method (SERVES 4)
1. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and cook the pasta according to the instructions on the packet.
2. While the pasta is cooking, finely dice the shallot, chilli and garlic. Then melt the butter in a large pan and add the onions, chilli, garlic and a little salt, cook them until soft (being careful not to let them get any colour).
3. When soft, add the wine and bubble until reduced by half. When it has reduced enough, add the tomatoes and cook for a couple of minutes. 4. Then add in the lobster meat and gently heat through (be careful not to cook for too long or the lobster will overcook – a couple of minutes is enough to warm it through.)
5. Season with salt and freshly ground black to taste.
6. When the pasta is cooked, drain it (but make sure you keep a little bit of the cooking water) and add to the sauce. Mix well and serve garnished with basil or sliced spring onions and a drizzle of very good quality extra virgin olive oil.
You will need:
•1 leek
•1 medium white onion
•2 sticks celery
•1 carrot
•1 romesco pepper
•2 cloves garlic, crushed.
•3 medium waxy potatoes
•1 small bunch flat leaf parsley
•½ tsp mustard seeds
•½ tsp toasted cumin
•25g butter
•8 mini raw chorizo picante
•4 medium day boat squid (cleaned and scored) •Water to cover
•20 baby plum tomatoes
•Splash olive oil
• Salt
Method (SERVES 4)
1. Slice the leeks into 1cm rounds, slice the onions, chop the celery into 1cm pieces, peel and thinly slice the carrot, peel and dice the potatoes to a similar size to chorizos, deseed the pepper and chop to a similar size to chorizo also.
2. Melt butter with oil in a sauté pan, and add mustard seeds. When they pop, add the vegetables and cumin and sweat until beginning to soften.
3. Then add the potatoes and chorizo, and cook for a few minutes.
4. Add cold water to just cover the vegetables and chorizo, and cook until the potatoes are soft (about 15 mins)
5. Add the tomatoes and cook for 5 mins.
6. Then add the prepped squid and cook for 2 mins.
7. Check the seasoning and garnish with chopped parsley to serve.
Crab cakes
•350gm cold mashed potato
•1 dressed crab (or whole crab)
•1 large leek – washed and diced into
small pieces
•3 cloves garlic, crushed
•1 red chilli – diced small, seeds removed •Small grated nutmeg
•50gm butter
•3 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley
•100gm GF breadcrumbs
•50gm cornflour
•2 eggs
•Salt & pepper
•Oil for frying
Saffron Aioli
•Pinch saffron
•2 egg yolks
•4 cloves garlic – crushed
•1 tsp Dijon mustard
•1 tsp sherry vinegar
•200ml rapeseed oil
•100ml extra virgin olive oil (Spanish) •0.5 tsp salt
Method (SERVES 4)
1. To make the saffron aioli; first soak the saffron strands in a little boiling water for about 15mins.
2. Then put the saffron and water, garlic, egg yolks, mustard, vinegar and salt in a large bowl. Mix the two oils together in a jug and, using a whisk, slowly incorporate the oil drip by drip into the egg mixture. As it begins to thicken you can add the oil a little faster. When all the oil has been used, check for seasoning, adding a little more vinegar or salt if needs be. Then set aside until ready to use – the flavour is better if you can leave it for 24hrs but this isn’t essential.
3. If using the whole crab, first cook for 15-20 mins, then allow to cool and remove all the meat, keeping the white and brown meat separate.
4. Next, sweat the leeks, garlic and chill in the butter with the nutmeg until soft – about 5 mins, do not allow them to colour. Remove from the pan and allow to cool a little. 5. Place the mashed potato in a bowl and, once cool, add the leek mixture, both crab meats and the chopped parsley. Season with salt and pepper and mix well.
6. Shape the crab cakes into round patties (roughly 60g each) and chill in the fridge for 30 mins or so to firm up.
7. Next, slowly heat up 5cm of rapeseed oil in a tall-sided pan for frying to 180 degrees.
8. Meanwhile sort the cornflour, eggs and breadcrumbs into three bowls. Then pass the cakes first into the flour, then the eggs and finally the breadcrumbs. Place them on a tray until you are ready to fry them.
9. When the oil has reached 180˚, fry the crab cakes in batches of 2 or 3 for about 2 mins (or until they turn a nice golden brown). Drain on kitchen paper and keep warm in a low oven.
10. Serve the crab cakes with a good dollop of the saffron aioli and some seasonal green salad.
You will need:
•3 eggs
•1 egg yolk
•150g ground almonds
•150g sugar
•Rind of 1 orange or lemon (optional)
Method (MAKES 8 SLICES)
1. Preheat oven to 180˚C and line a 20cm round tin with baking paper.
2. Separate the eggs into two bowls.
3. In the first bowl, whisk the egg yolks with 130g sugar until pale and then add in the almonds and lemon/orange rind (if using) and mix together. 4. In the second bowl, whisk the egg whites to soft peaks and then add the rest of the sugar and whisk until shiny, as for meringues. Then quickly fold the egg white mixture into the original mixture, ensuring they are well combined.
5. Pour the mixture into the tin and bake on a low shelf in the oven for 35 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
6. Remove from the oven and cool in the tin.
7. Dust with a thick layer of icing sugar to serve, traditionally it is decorated with a cross symbol from Santiago (but you can experiment with any design you like.)