The Paisley festival was proud to welcome back a returning favourite: Coinneach MacLeod, also known as The Hebridean Baker – which also happens to be the title of his Scottish cookbook – to host a fascinating discussion on Scotland’s contemporary culinary landscape.
Armed with a bottle of Harris gin, offered up as a prize for one lucky customer at the festivals book nook, MacLeod welcomed to the stage Malaysian Scottish chef and owner of Glasgow restaurant GaGa, Julie Lin, introducing her cookbook Sama Sama. Pam Brunton, award-winning owner of Inver restaurant on Loch Fyne, shared her new book Between Two Waters — an exploration of the many forces that shape what we eat, from capitalism and colonialism to personal and cultural heritage. The group was joined by Edinburgh-based writer and journalist Katie Goh, whose book Foreign Fruit traces the cultural and historical journey of the orange, using it as a springboard to explore issues of migration, cultural identity, and social history.
The focus of the event hopped smoothly from more serious discussions of colonialism and trade to the history of the haggis and light-hearted dinner party invitations offered between the guests onstage, who genially bounced off one another.
Julie Lin, smiling at her mother sitting front row in the audience, recalls the recipes from her childhood such as ‘Big Fat Noodles’, a recipe featured in Sama Sama. It was her mother’s adaptation of Scottish, Malaysian and Chinese cooking for their adopted Scottish family of neighbours and friends that inspired Lin’s own approach to food.
Giving tips for hosting a dinner party, Lin suggested we do away with the three-course format altogether – ‘Leave that for the restaurants’, Lin advises. Drawing from the Chinese ‘family style’ way of eating, Lin advocates for creating a selection of complimentary small plates shared in the centre of the table, a great playlist and a relaxed atmosphere – removing the messy clean up, stressful course timings and actually allowing the dinner host to enjoy their guests company!
Lin’s celebration of Scotland as a cultural melting pot was echoed by Northern Irish guest, Katie Goh. She described the sense of community she felt moving to Scotland and finding a multicultural community, realising that she was not alone in her experience of feeling torn across multiple cultures. She notes how studying the historical trajectory of the orange for her book Foreign Fruit, tracing its journey from China along the silk road into Europe, prompted a personal investigation into the parallel migratory route of her own family history.
Through exploring the history of what Goh describes as a ‘hybrid fruit’, she used this to analyse the way in which food parallels the blending of cultural influences in Scotland’s landscape and her own life.
Pam Brunton brought to this discussion her own difficulty in defining what is Scottish cooking using a humorous anecdote of a conversation with a local at Inver restaurant in which she struggled for an answer – settling on ‘fish and chips?’ and ‘lasagne?’. She concluded that whatever we consider to be inherently Scottish is usually the product of migration and importation if you go back far enough in history – even the famous haggis.
Brunton noted the tension that nationalism raises surrounding a celebration of national cuisine and culture and questions at what point this celebration shifts to become exclusionary – where does ‘the hybrid’ fit in this image of ‘authenticity’?
Sustainability also emerged as key to the ethos of Brunton and MacLeod, who called for a consumption of more venison, which MacLeod noted should be more widely and cheaply available, and Brunton warned the audience against eating salmon which she stated is neither appropriately caught nor farmed.
The event concluded with a series of restaurant recommendations by the esteemed panel of guests – Gloriosa and the Real Wan in Glasgow emerging as favourites along with Uig Sands restaurant on the Isle of Lewis. The uplifting atmosphere of the event reflected the authors’ positive attitude to the diverse culinary and cultural landscape of contemporary Scotland.
Bridget Stanger
