Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary
cooking up a storm at the edge of the world
Celebrating 180 years with P&O Ferries. The Shetland Islands are a remote island archipelago in the North Sea, 200 miles, as the crow flies, from the Scottish city of Aberdeen. Between 1971 and 2002 P&O Ferries (known then as P&O Scottish Ferries) ran a lifeline service between Aberdeen and Lerwick in the Shetland Islands. This …
In collaboration with Tasty, Easy Lamb. Saturday nights are pizza night in our house. We sit around our oversized coffee table in the living room and, as a family, we eat pizza and watch a film together (it’s Avatar this week!). I like to jazz things up a bit with my pizza recipes, like this …
In collaboration with Tasty, Easy Lamb. When I was a little girl my mother used to make the best meat pies ever with leftover Sunday roast. The cold roast was cut into pieces and fed into an electric meat grinder along with an onion and a carrot and bound together with leftover gravy (always of …
A barbecue recipe in collaboration with Simply Beef & Lamb. Last Autumn my husband took the notion that he’d like to go trout fishing next summer. So, for Christmas, I bought him a starter loch trout rod kit from our local fishing tackle shop. Come March I bought him a fishing license so he’s now …
In collaboration with Tasty, Easy Lamb. Every now and again the sun comes out in Shetland and it’s all systems go to make the most out of it while it lasts. I confess I don’t live on this wild and remote island archipelago for its Mediterranean-style weather. Most of the time it’s windy and overcast, …
In collaboration with Tasty, Easy Lamb. When we think of lamb we usually think of roast Sunday dinner with mint sauce, or perhaps a Donner kebab on a Saturday night. Regular readers might be aware that lamb recipes are appearing on my blog with more frequency. This is because we have teamed up with Tasty, …
In collaboration with Tasty, Easy Lamb. I do love cooking, but there are busy days when, after dealing with work, family, housework and exercising, I just can’t face spending ages standing in front of the cooker preparing a meal. This recipe and variations of it are my go-to recipe for such occasions. The ultimate comfort …
In collaboration with Tasty, Easy Lamb. Brazil is a fusion of many different cultures. During the colonial period the original indigenous people met and mixed with migrants from Lebanon, Italy, Spain, Poland, Germany and Ukraine, to mention a few, and components of their food culture were adopted into the cuisine we know now in the …
Issue 22 of our bite-sized review series. Over the last month, we’ve been taste-testing all sorts of fab foodie products sent to us by brands to try out, not to mention all the wonderful things I ate while travelling through England, Scotland, Shetland and Paris (but that’s another story or two!). This latest issue of …
In collaboration with Love Food Hate Waste. I have a confession to make: I have never meal planned before. Ever. In fact, I’ve previously scoffed at the idea because, well, I like to think I’m a bit too spontaneous for such organization and attention to detail. What if, three days after I’ve planned and shopped …
In collaboration with Siemens Home Appliances. We live in a futuristic world. The advent of refrigeration, worldwide transport links and ever increasing advances in agriculture and technology have changed the way we, as consumers, shop for, prepare and eat our food. Siemens, one of the world’s leading innovative technology brands in the household appliance market, …
A deliciously spiced apple cake recipe slightly adapted from a recipe found in Signe Johansen’s Scandinavian cookery book Scandilicious. Prep Time: 15 minutes Cooking Time: 35 minutes Difficulty: Easy Dreaming of apple cake I dreamt about apple cake last night. True story. This is likely because I had set aside today, Sunday, to deal with …
Part two of two of my long bank holiday weekend bike ride to the most northerly tip of Britain. I had a very comfortable sleep in Windhouse Lodge, the gatehouse to Shetland’s most haunted house, built in 1707. There were no signs of any ghosts, unfortunately! If you haven’t read Part 1 of this series …
Elevate your grilling game with our homemade five-spice BBQ sauce. It’s the perfect blend of sweet, savoury, and spicy. Prep Time: 10 minutes Cooking Time: 5 minutes Difficulty: Easy Regular readers will know that I am currently training for an epic 250 mile mountain bike cycle through the highlands of Scotland this summer (note – …
Fried sage and white truffle-infused olive oil transform this soup into something really special. I’m not a big fan of dried sage. There’s something stale and unpalatable about the herb, I feel, so I tend not to cook with it. That was until fresh sage leaves began appearing in my veg box and I discovered …
aka Cocoa Zucchini Bread depending on what side of the pond you’re on! It’s veg box season! Each week we get a gorgeous surprise selection of whatever happens to be ready to pick. I’m not fussy with what I get; I’ll work with whatever is in season, but I have to confess that courgettes are …
A delicious comfort-food vegan shepherdess pie. There is a definite hint of Autumn in the air. The days are getting cooler and the Shetland landscape is turning from leafy green into shades of burnt umber, russet and gold while the peat hills are covered in glorious flowering purple heather. Colder days require comfort food.
Spinach has been regularly making an appearance in my Turriefield Veg Box. Baby leaf spinach gets eaten raw in salads and sandwiches or occasionally juiced, while the tougher older leaves get cooked. One of my favourite recipes is gently sautéing the spinach and serving with spiced puy lentils and a poached egg (pictured below right …
I live on a very windy island in the middle of the North Sea. It’s often overcast and the temperature, although it doesn’t get particularly cold in the winter, it doesn’t get particularly warm in the summer either. When the mercury starts creeping over 15 degrees Celsius layers start getting peeled off and we all …
Friday evening I had the great culinary pleasure of a sneak preview of the Shetland Food Fair, the newly relaunched foodie event of the year in Shetland!
