Читать книгу Kitchen Memories - Lucy Boyd - Страница 53

Whisky, pig’s head and langoustine are the words that come to mind from this trip. My old friend Fergus Henderson met me at Glasgow airport with his driver, sent by our lovely hosts to pick him up as the guest of honour at their annual Eat Bute festival on the Isle of Bute. I hadn’t seen Fergus for a long time, so it was a complete delight to find him waiting for me in his bright blue suit as I came out of arrivals.

We have shared a love of good simple cooking since our childhood days when Fergus and Annabelle, his sister, would invite us to stay in their parents’ house in Wiltshire. Elizabeth, Fergus’s mother, is an amazing cook. I was always keen to be offered some of Annabelle’s packed lunch at school (I particularly remember a delicious meatloaf), but it was their garden full of radishes and crunchy lettuce, new potatoes, leeks and carrots that has really stuck in my memory. It was the way of the house to cook the freshly picked ingredients simply, with just a little butter and then some dill for the carrots, or the potatoes just scrubbed of their dirt and put in a pan and cooked with a knob of butter; the softest lettuces were given a mustard dressing, and the cucumber was deseeded, salted and coated with a Dijon emulsion; then radishes, pepper hot and crunchy with salt, boiled ham with curly parsley sauce, some celery poached in stock – everything super fresh, bold, very English and courageous.

Brian, Fergus and Annabelle’s father, is one of the most stylish men I have ever met – hugely generous, wonderful company and with a great appetite for life. It was Brian who took me to Harry’s Bar in Venice when I was seventeen to experience my first Negroni, when he came out to visit Fergus, studying in Florence at the time (eating tripe from the stall in the old money market in his lunch breaks). Brian and Elizabeth taught us the enjoyment you could get from a meal and its many different stages. It was civilised without being formal – delicious wines and beautiful ingredients cooked simply, Marc de Borgogne to finish, often music and dancing to end the night – heady days …

On the ferry over to the Isle of Bute, Fergus went off and bought a couple of drams of whisky to warm us up while we sat on the deck, our weekend getting closer in the distance across the water. It was a joyful journey, sharing a whisky on the ferry over to a beautiful Scottish island with my old friend.

A festive dinner in honour of Fergus was held that evening, with various courses cooked by Skye Gyngell, Jeremy Lee and Rory O’Connell. Then, the following day at the festival, Fergus was giving a demonstration on cooking a whole pig’s head (which he does with such charm and simple instruction), and everyone was diving in at the end to tear off a piece. Huge plates of local poached langoustines were had for lunch afterwards with chilled wine, and then dinner and energetic reels to finish off the night.