Award-winning food author Ghillie Basan runs Whisky Food Safaris, cookery workshops from her remote Cairngorm home. Her latest book, Food Whisky Life, tells her amazing life story.
What’s the closest thing you have to a signature dish:
Hot Hummus (Sicak Humus – Turkish spelling) as I think I was the first to write about it in the English language in 1985, and I have been writing about it ever since.
Describe your style of cuisine in ten words:
Fresh, simple, Mediterranean, healthy, full of flavour, food to share.
Most memorable meal you’ve ever eaten:
My mother’s unforgettable Rabbit in White Wine dish, which we ate amongst baboons after crawling through caves knee-deep in bat dung in Kenya.
Worst/weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten:
The worst was at a well-known, award-winning Highland establishment, but the weirdest were plump termites fried in butter and garlic. They were delicious.
Worst thing you’ve ever cooked:
Bulls’ testicles. They had gone green and rancid by the time I cooked them and by the end looked like pieces of rubber. Our dog wouldn’t even eat them!
What’s the dish that you’re most proud of having cooked:
A perfect Tavuk Gogsu Kazandibi – a really delicious Ottoman milk pudding with fine threads of chicken breast weaved through it. It is really tricky to get right.
Favourite ingredient:
Garlic, I couldn’t live without it.
Your go-to recipe book:
I don’t really use cookery books, but I love the original The River Café Cookbook.
What other country’s cuisine really excites and intrigues you?
Although I haven’t travelled there yet, I’m intrigued by the food of Peru, which is evolving in a very exciting way.
Most you’ve ever paid for a meal:
Unless I’m travelling, I rarely eat out, so I would have to say that the most I ever paid was not the staggering amount, but it would be the price charged for a shockingly bad meal – at that Highland establishment.
Your favourite Scottish chef:
My friend in the Cairngorms, Kirsten Gilmour of KJ’s Bothy Bakery in Grantown on Spey– although she is a Skiwi – a Scottish Kiwi. I rely on her excellent bread for many of my events.
Favourite chef outside Scotland:
I spend a lot of time with unknown chefs in villages and they are the true culinary stars in their environment. But I am going to Australia to promote my latest book and there is one chef I plan to hunt down as he is so inspiring, exciting and sustainable – Josh Niland.
Who taught you to cook or ignited your passion for food as a youngster:
A mixture of my mother, our cook in Africa, and the village women. All were big influences in my early life.
Most important lesson a young chef can learn:
To taste and adjust as they cook and feel the rhythm of the food.
Culinary mentor – the most important person in your development as a professional chef:
Every woman in every village I have spent time in and learned from. I have never had a professional chef mentor.
Best thing about the industry:
It brings pleasure to people and puts smiles on their faces. It can be a platform for change for the good.
Worst thing about the industry:
Pretentiousness, self-importance, overuse of unhealthy shortcuts.
What’s the biggest sin a chef can commit:
Produce bad food, and lie about its source.
What do you eat when you’re at home:
I spend a lot of time here at my home in Glenlivet in the Cairngorms, it’s a beautiful untamed place so I eat anything and everything, it just depends on the season, the company, or the event.
Celebrity guest or your perfect dinner party – who would you most like to cook for:
I would just like to chat to David Attenborough. I don’t think he would mind what I cooked, so I would keep it simple and sourced from the wild.
Tell me a something about you that virtually no-one knows:
I could live off Gorgonzola Dolce with a glass of red wine!
What’s your favourite wine?
A robust, full-bodied red – usually New World.
Your spirit of choice?
A complex, oily single malt whisky.
Do you play music in the kitchen and, if so, what’s your go-to track or artist:
Santana.
Read more Reviews here.
Subscribe to read the latest issue of Scottish Field.
TAGS