04-03-2014, 06:52 AM
TANIA McGRAW’S ROAST SALMON with Basil from Torridon, Wester Ross.
This is the story of Tania McGraw, who for many years worked at the tiny Post Office and General Stores in the equally tiny village of Torridon; alone and isolated on the lochside, across the water from Skye. Duncan, her father, ran the Post Office, handling everything from the one or two letters per month to the complex business of licensing the only two cars and his own Morris Minor van (conversion), which could be seen careering around Loch Torridon on Saturdays. I never knew what became of Mrs. McGraw, but those in the know were those in the snug of the Ben Damph Hotel, and they were not saying.
Of course, this was in 1971, and people of a certain age, living in certain places, didn’t talk about certain things. Tania was probably one of those things; at any rate, a hush fell in the snug whenever her name was mentioned. When the uncomfortable silence became too much to bear, the English Laird and owner of the Ben Damph Hotel-come-castle would ask pointedly, from his perch behind the bar, if anyone would care for a wee dram on the house. This had the immediate effect of animating the locals who, as one man, proffered their empty glasses with solemn ayes of acceptance: as did I, and so had many a good soaking in the Ben Damph Hotel snug as tourists ultimately got around to asking after Tania at the Post Office. For many years I looked back and in my mind’s eye would see a barely perceptible commonality of expression, a characteristic raising of an eye brow, a flicker of similarity between the Laird and Tania….and wonder was it just the trickery of years?
Tania was about sixteen tears old when she first “appeared” in the little sliding window as the Postie, at the back of Duncan’s store. Up until then she did not seem to be in existence. It was debatable on first meeting her whether Duncan was her father or her partner….a modern word which then may just as easily have meant a helper in the store. Mrs. McGraw was never seen but no one actually thought that she had any need to exist until we discovered that Tania was indeed considered to be, no, identified as, Tania McGraw, daughter of Duncan. Again, it was one of those things not up for discussion. She was pretty, quiet, pleasant but sad and she fitted in well with the dour terrain and misty mornings. She was the girl in the Postie who knew where the soup lived, and where to find the gas cylinders, and how much to charge for the little pullet eggs which were often addled, but more often if Duncan were to serve you.
We camped there, you see. Every year for about ten years. In the pine woods above Torridon House, we would build a bivouac and try to live off the land….and the limited supplies of Duncan’s General Dealers and Post Office. Tania became a kind of constant in a land of change. The weather was bad, then good, then bad again. The landscape vanished into mist, reappearing for an hour or a day then down would come the curtains. The midges bit irritatingly for a week until you decided to leave then they simply emigrated on your departure day…. but always there was Tania.
Tania, living behind the sliding glass screen, with her paraffin stove flickering dragon and paisley patterns across the ceiling on cold dull days. Tania, yearly unchanging yet with hindsight, changing for certain. For nine years Tania smiled short smiles and pointed to there and just there and over a wee bit and just below the washing powder as we sassenachs lived off the land and the provisions of Duncan’s Store….until one year, 1979, she vanished like Scotch mist.
Who could ask “Where’s Tania?” She may have died of boredom, become overcome with paraffin fumes, been caught naughty and now exiled with unplanned child. Anything could have happened. So we said not a word as the increasingly lugubrious Duncan taciturnly produced gas cylinders, dried milk powder, wooden loaves and addled pullet eggs. We even ate a hedgehog one night (but that’s another story) because Duncan shut up shop and was rumoured to have rowed to Skye from Kyle of Lochalsh, delivering sheepskin rugs. We only wanted tins of beans. That afternoon we had huddled forlornly at the store door, peering into the deep and dark Cave of Plenty, a little less certain than we had previously been at this self sufficiency business.
It was Mrs. Kennie, she who served scones from her house in Lower Diabaig, who gave us the devastating news as she cycled shakily by. “He’s no there” she called helpfully, “He’s away te’Skye.” We shouted after her enquiring as to his expected return but it appeared that the cycle could not be stopped once started and we only heard “deliver…shee…rugs”… before Mrs. Kennie’s shrill reply was lost to the waves on the shingle shore.
So no beans. Rarely could one link the mighty Heinz Corporation with the death of a hedgehog in the Scottish Highlands. Prandially post hedgehog, we were far too drunk to drive to the Ben Damph Hotel…..not a legal constraint, you understand, we were simply too drunk to drive. The next morning we were weak and hungry, there is little meat on a Scottish hedgehog, they lead frugal lives. We HAD to go early to Duncan’s store, hoping he had returned and that he would remember where the baked beans were. (Men often went to Skye and lost their memory, never to return to the mainland. It happened to a friend of mine whose name escapes me for the moment.)
Duncan’s rowing boat was not hauled up on the shingle and his car-van was not in the roofing-felt and upturned-hull he used for a garage. The store was shut tight. In the window was a little notice printed on lined foolscap, courtesy of John Bull and his printing set. It had not been there the afternoon before. It read:
THIS STORe IS CLOSeD. THIS STORe WILL Be OPeN AGAIN UNDeR NeW MANAGeMeNT ON SATURDAY SePTeMBeR THe 14TH.OR MAYBe LATeR. DUNCAN MCGRAW THANKS YOU FOR YOUR BUSINeSS OveR THe PAST THIRTY LONG AND TROUBLeSOMe YeARS AND WOULD LIKe TO TAKe THIS OPPORTUNITY TO WISH THAT BASTARD LAIRD SO CALLeD AT THe BeN DAMPH HOTeL SO CALLeD EVERY ILL WHICH THE GOOD LORD IN HIS INFINITe WISDOM CAN INFLICT UPON A MORTAL SOUL, SO I DO, AND AM NO AFeART TO SAY SO.
DUNCAN McGRAW
If YOU NeeD THE POST OFFICe THe NeAReST IS AT GAIRLOCH, AND GUID LUCK Te Ye.
I remember it was a Friday, so breakfast was not far away. We would eat on Saturday, for sure. Oh, we considered another hedgehog, but once youv’e eaten one the urge for another leaves you. In the meantime, we felt that the Ben Damph Hotel, being situated as it was, in a forest, could supply our basic bodily needs without totally destroying the self-sufficiency ethos, still held banner-high in our hypo-glycaemic thoughts. So to the snug we went and there at the bar was ………Tania. Smiling and lovely and happy and poised and…..and… handing out bowls of olives, and little flaky tartlets sparingly topped with creamy wild mushrooms, anchovies with sun-dried tomato salsa and doll’s house sized chimneys of salmon-with-crab-mousse. On the bar were flat soup plates, sea-weed green with rocket and glistening with virgin olive oil, spiced venison sausage with horseradish cream dip, garlic butter dredged over fat Torridon Bay prawns…. and did I say she looked lovely? She looked LOVELY.
We turned on our heels and fell into the MEN’s room where for reasons still unfathomable we washed, abluted, washed again. We borrowed a comb from a grossly overweight and greasy-haired but much bemused biker, which supplied us all with the necessary conditioner to make us look well coiffured. We explained ourselves to each other in terms of the necessity to be presentable in the snug, which was now quite obviously on the up. Tania was much mentioned though other adjectives than lovely were freely mooted.
That evening we lived off the land in the lounge bar (for so it now was) of the Ben Damph Hotel. There in the warmth of a pine log fire, with the smoke from a dozen Castellas hanging in the air we became one with nature. We ate from bowls with our fingers and drank the amber eau de vie. We watched Tania the Lovely as she clicked glass to optic, we watched her as she moved easily between the tables of bikers, boy racers, boy scouts and for all we knew, Bishops. The air became atmosphere and the atmosphere became all. We knew that tomorrow night we would be here again. Some of us felt that we would never leave.
It was past 2 a.m. when we finally departed, each having given up all privately held hopes that everyone else in the place would go home, leaving just Tania. Oh, some progress was made: as we hung onto the door frame that night we asked her if she remembered us. She recognised two of us from previous years. She remembered selling us digestive biscuits with our beans because the bread had not been delivered that week, and was not surprised to learn that I, too, remembered. The toasting of digestive biscuits over a naked gas flame has long been a main topic in my “Survival Tips and Hints”, along with “Digestive Biscuits as an Emergency Fuel”. When she laughed the stars came out and the moon rose suddenly over Bana Mhoraire. I was filled with an overwhelming desire to vomit…so we left hurriedly and I threw up out of the car window as we sped off back to our camp at twenty mph in first gear.
But I did return. A few years had passed; I booked in to the restaurant and borrowed a tie from the now old Laird. Tania was in charge of the kitchens and created the menu. As she served drinks we talked at the bar. The early cigars were lit and I asked her, as it was quiet, if she would join me for dinner. She agreed, and recommended the Salmon.
During the meal she talked freely and without affectation. She wasn’t a qualified chef but she had been to college in Aberdeen. It was the Laird who encouraged her to leave the store and get some education. He had paid for her course and offered her a job if she did well. She did well. She was sorry she had to leave her father especially since her mother had left him when Tania was twelve. Duncan, she said sadly, blamed the Laird for taking her away from the family business but she always wanted to do something with her life and cooking had been an escape route. She could remember trying to get Duncan to bring more interesting ingredients into the shop, but he wouldn’t hear of it.
One year, she grew a Sweet Basil plant in her bedroom window. After breathing the sickly paraffin fumes all day, she relished the fresh piquancy of the soft green leaves, often sleeping with the plant right beside her head, so that its perfume drifted through her dreams of better days to come. Even now, though, her cooking reflected a pent-up desire to get everything in the world into a single dish. She confessed that she found it difficult to avoid over complicating her creations after years of trying out all possible combinations of beans, ketchup, spam, sausages in brine and tinned new potatoes.
I found her menu wonderful. Local produce had always been exceptional in this area. There were succulent and oversized prawns from the bay, herrings, mackerel and pollock from the coastal waters, woodcock and snipe from the Glen and grouse, deer and rabbit from the high tops and forests of Beinn Eighe…..but of all this bounty, it was the Salmon, the silvery currency of the poacher, the true wild spirit that permeates this land, that Tania most prized.
And that was what Tania and I had that night. The recipe was obviously quite special to her and she continued to grow her own Sweet Basil. Her name for this recipe, as it appeared on the menu that evening, I believe says it all.
TANIA’S ROAST SALMON WITH BASIL, FROM WESTER ROSS
For two people, you will need:
2-Five to six ounce fillets of Wild Salmon, skin on.
6-Vine ripened sweet cherry tomatoes, halved.
8-10 Good sized capers, washed and drained,
1-large sweet lemon, unwaxed. Half the lemon and cut one half into small rind-on chunks. Put other half to one side.
8-10 good black olives, hulled and halved.
1-Large clove garlic very, very finely sliced across.
1-medium courgette, trimmed ends, quartered lengthwise then diced into coarse chunks.
4-tablesp. extra virgin olive oil
1/2 teasp. Balsamic vinegar mixed with the juice from the half lemon and half the olive oil above (2 tblsp.).
Salt for seasoning.
Pepper, ground for seasoning.
¼ teasp. Sugar for seasoning.
Whole large bunch of tender leaf Sweet Basil. Leaves only, torn to shreds.
Put the olive oil, lemon juice, balsamic mixture into a shallow ovenproof dish. Place in a pre-heated very hot oven (190 deg.C.) for five minutes until the lemon juice and Balsamic vinegar sizzle.
Whilst heating the oil in the oven put the lemon chunks, tomatoes, olives, courgettes, capers and the remaining olive oil into a bowl and mix carefully Add a pinch of ground black pepper, a pinch of salt and the sugar. Gently mix in. ( Note that this mixture can be prepared several hours before and that the salmon fillets can be marinated in it. Remove the fillets before proceeding if this technique adopted). Add all these ingredients to the hot oil in the dish and replace in the oven. Allow to cook for 3-4 minutes at high heat, uncovered. Do not allow any ingredients to burn.
Take out the dish with an ovenproof glove and place the salmon fillets into the mixture, skin up. Push down slightly to allow the fillets to immerse in the mixture, then scatter over the sliced garlic and baste with the hot oil. Cover with foil and place back in the oven. Turn down to 170 deg.C. Cook for 4-5 minutes maximum then remove and take off foil. Brush off any garlic on the fillets then blacken salmon skin with a blowtorch if required. Baste with the hot oil then re-cover with foil and place back in the oven. Reduce heat to 150deg.C. and cook for a further 5 minutes. Remove from oven and check salmon is cooked. If not, give 1-2 minutes more with loose foil. Just before serving scatter the Basil leaves liberally over the fillets, toss and mix in.
Note! The salmon should be JUST cooked through. Do not overcook. Wild salmon stays moister than farmed! The basil will not take kindly to prolonged heating so check the fillets are cooked before tossing on the basil. It seems like a fussy procedure but if the basil is still “raw” this dish sings!
Serve with green string beans and Parisienne potatoes with a sprig of parsley.
Note. Sadly, the Ben Damph hotel is now a group owned “Country House”. I have been back, but not since it changed hands. Tania had gone but the old lounge bar with its incredibly inappropriate wall-paper of bamboo stems and brightly coloured parrots still remained. A “No Smoking” sign hung upon the wall, perforated by years of accurately thrown darts. The sign had been set alight to at one corner and was charred and yellowed. As I walked in, a gloomy spectre stirred in the dark recesses of the Public Bar, a silhouette visible through a huge hatch where a Guinness Toucan mirror used to be. A voice, not unknown to me, advised with obvious disdain “ Did you noht read the sign? No ye didnae…read the sign, mon!” I pulled open the heavy door to the world outside and sure enough, there was a sign. It read:
THIS BAR IS CLOSeD FOR THe WINTeR. IT WILL BE ReOPeNeD IN SPRING OR THeReABOUTS. WILL PATRONS PLeASe USE THE PUBLIC BAR. NO DOGS AT ALL. NO WALKING BOOTS. NO FOOD TO Be TAKeN INTO THe BAR AReA. NO CHILDReN UNDER TeN YeARS AND MUST BE WeLL BeHAVeD AT ALL TIMeS.
BY ORDeR OF THE TeMPORARY MANAGeMeNT.
I did not go in and I still regret not ever having taking one wee dram with Duncan…..but there again, I did eat his daughter’s salmon.
Christmas 1983
This is the story of Tania McGraw, who for many years worked at the tiny Post Office and General Stores in the equally tiny village of Torridon; alone and isolated on the lochside, across the water from Skye. Duncan, her father, ran the Post Office, handling everything from the one or two letters per month to the complex business of licensing the only two cars and his own Morris Minor van (conversion), which could be seen careering around Loch Torridon on Saturdays. I never knew what became of Mrs. McGraw, but those in the know were those in the snug of the Ben Damph Hotel, and they were not saying.
Of course, this was in 1971, and people of a certain age, living in certain places, didn’t talk about certain things. Tania was probably one of those things; at any rate, a hush fell in the snug whenever her name was mentioned. When the uncomfortable silence became too much to bear, the English Laird and owner of the Ben Damph Hotel-come-castle would ask pointedly, from his perch behind the bar, if anyone would care for a wee dram on the house. This had the immediate effect of animating the locals who, as one man, proffered their empty glasses with solemn ayes of acceptance: as did I, and so had many a good soaking in the Ben Damph Hotel snug as tourists ultimately got around to asking after Tania at the Post Office. For many years I looked back and in my mind’s eye would see a barely perceptible commonality of expression, a characteristic raising of an eye brow, a flicker of similarity between the Laird and Tania….and wonder was it just the trickery of years?
Tania was about sixteen tears old when she first “appeared” in the little sliding window as the Postie, at the back of Duncan’s store. Up until then she did not seem to be in existence. It was debatable on first meeting her whether Duncan was her father or her partner….a modern word which then may just as easily have meant a helper in the store. Mrs. McGraw was never seen but no one actually thought that she had any need to exist until we discovered that Tania was indeed considered to be, no, identified as, Tania McGraw, daughter of Duncan. Again, it was one of those things not up for discussion. She was pretty, quiet, pleasant but sad and she fitted in well with the dour terrain and misty mornings. She was the girl in the Postie who knew where the soup lived, and where to find the gas cylinders, and how much to charge for the little pullet eggs which were often addled, but more often if Duncan were to serve you.
We camped there, you see. Every year for about ten years. In the pine woods above Torridon House, we would build a bivouac and try to live off the land….and the limited supplies of Duncan’s General Dealers and Post Office. Tania became a kind of constant in a land of change. The weather was bad, then good, then bad again. The landscape vanished into mist, reappearing for an hour or a day then down would come the curtains. The midges bit irritatingly for a week until you decided to leave then they simply emigrated on your departure day…. but always there was Tania.
Tania, living behind the sliding glass screen, with her paraffin stove flickering dragon and paisley patterns across the ceiling on cold dull days. Tania, yearly unchanging yet with hindsight, changing for certain. For nine years Tania smiled short smiles and pointed to there and just there and over a wee bit and just below the washing powder as we sassenachs lived off the land and the provisions of Duncan’s Store….until one year, 1979, she vanished like Scotch mist.
Who could ask “Where’s Tania?” She may have died of boredom, become overcome with paraffin fumes, been caught naughty and now exiled with unplanned child. Anything could have happened. So we said not a word as the increasingly lugubrious Duncan taciturnly produced gas cylinders, dried milk powder, wooden loaves and addled pullet eggs. We even ate a hedgehog one night (but that’s another story) because Duncan shut up shop and was rumoured to have rowed to Skye from Kyle of Lochalsh, delivering sheepskin rugs. We only wanted tins of beans. That afternoon we had huddled forlornly at the store door, peering into the deep and dark Cave of Plenty, a little less certain than we had previously been at this self sufficiency business.
It was Mrs. Kennie, she who served scones from her house in Lower Diabaig, who gave us the devastating news as she cycled shakily by. “He’s no there” she called helpfully, “He’s away te’Skye.” We shouted after her enquiring as to his expected return but it appeared that the cycle could not be stopped once started and we only heard “deliver…shee…rugs”… before Mrs. Kennie’s shrill reply was lost to the waves on the shingle shore.
So no beans. Rarely could one link the mighty Heinz Corporation with the death of a hedgehog in the Scottish Highlands. Prandially post hedgehog, we were far too drunk to drive to the Ben Damph Hotel…..not a legal constraint, you understand, we were simply too drunk to drive. The next morning we were weak and hungry, there is little meat on a Scottish hedgehog, they lead frugal lives. We HAD to go early to Duncan’s store, hoping he had returned and that he would remember where the baked beans were. (Men often went to Skye and lost their memory, never to return to the mainland. It happened to a friend of mine whose name escapes me for the moment.)
Duncan’s rowing boat was not hauled up on the shingle and his car-van was not in the roofing-felt and upturned-hull he used for a garage. The store was shut tight. In the window was a little notice printed on lined foolscap, courtesy of John Bull and his printing set. It had not been there the afternoon before. It read:
THIS STORe IS CLOSeD. THIS STORe WILL Be OPeN AGAIN UNDeR NeW MANAGeMeNT ON SATURDAY SePTeMBeR THe 14TH.OR MAYBe LATeR. DUNCAN MCGRAW THANKS YOU FOR YOUR BUSINeSS OveR THe PAST THIRTY LONG AND TROUBLeSOMe YeARS AND WOULD LIKe TO TAKe THIS OPPORTUNITY TO WISH THAT BASTARD LAIRD SO CALLeD AT THe BeN DAMPH HOTeL SO CALLeD EVERY ILL WHICH THE GOOD LORD IN HIS INFINITe WISDOM CAN INFLICT UPON A MORTAL SOUL, SO I DO, AND AM NO AFeART TO SAY SO.
DUNCAN McGRAW
If YOU NeeD THE POST OFFICe THe NeAReST IS AT GAIRLOCH, AND GUID LUCK Te Ye.
I remember it was a Friday, so breakfast was not far away. We would eat on Saturday, for sure. Oh, we considered another hedgehog, but once youv’e eaten one the urge for another leaves you. In the meantime, we felt that the Ben Damph Hotel, being situated as it was, in a forest, could supply our basic bodily needs without totally destroying the self-sufficiency ethos, still held banner-high in our hypo-glycaemic thoughts. So to the snug we went and there at the bar was ………Tania. Smiling and lovely and happy and poised and…..and… handing out bowls of olives, and little flaky tartlets sparingly topped with creamy wild mushrooms, anchovies with sun-dried tomato salsa and doll’s house sized chimneys of salmon-with-crab-mousse. On the bar were flat soup plates, sea-weed green with rocket and glistening with virgin olive oil, spiced venison sausage with horseradish cream dip, garlic butter dredged over fat Torridon Bay prawns…. and did I say she looked lovely? She looked LOVELY.
We turned on our heels and fell into the MEN’s room where for reasons still unfathomable we washed, abluted, washed again. We borrowed a comb from a grossly overweight and greasy-haired but much bemused biker, which supplied us all with the necessary conditioner to make us look well coiffured. We explained ourselves to each other in terms of the necessity to be presentable in the snug, which was now quite obviously on the up. Tania was much mentioned though other adjectives than lovely were freely mooted.
That evening we lived off the land in the lounge bar (for so it now was) of the Ben Damph Hotel. There in the warmth of a pine log fire, with the smoke from a dozen Castellas hanging in the air we became one with nature. We ate from bowls with our fingers and drank the amber eau de vie. We watched Tania the Lovely as she clicked glass to optic, we watched her as she moved easily between the tables of bikers, boy racers, boy scouts and for all we knew, Bishops. The air became atmosphere and the atmosphere became all. We knew that tomorrow night we would be here again. Some of us felt that we would never leave.
It was past 2 a.m. when we finally departed, each having given up all privately held hopes that everyone else in the place would go home, leaving just Tania. Oh, some progress was made: as we hung onto the door frame that night we asked her if she remembered us. She recognised two of us from previous years. She remembered selling us digestive biscuits with our beans because the bread had not been delivered that week, and was not surprised to learn that I, too, remembered. The toasting of digestive biscuits over a naked gas flame has long been a main topic in my “Survival Tips and Hints”, along with “Digestive Biscuits as an Emergency Fuel”. When she laughed the stars came out and the moon rose suddenly over Bana Mhoraire. I was filled with an overwhelming desire to vomit…so we left hurriedly and I threw up out of the car window as we sped off back to our camp at twenty mph in first gear.
But I did return. A few years had passed; I booked in to the restaurant and borrowed a tie from the now old Laird. Tania was in charge of the kitchens and created the menu. As she served drinks we talked at the bar. The early cigars were lit and I asked her, as it was quiet, if she would join me for dinner. She agreed, and recommended the Salmon.
During the meal she talked freely and without affectation. She wasn’t a qualified chef but she had been to college in Aberdeen. It was the Laird who encouraged her to leave the store and get some education. He had paid for her course and offered her a job if she did well. She did well. She was sorry she had to leave her father especially since her mother had left him when Tania was twelve. Duncan, she said sadly, blamed the Laird for taking her away from the family business but she always wanted to do something with her life and cooking had been an escape route. She could remember trying to get Duncan to bring more interesting ingredients into the shop, but he wouldn’t hear of it.
One year, she grew a Sweet Basil plant in her bedroom window. After breathing the sickly paraffin fumes all day, she relished the fresh piquancy of the soft green leaves, often sleeping with the plant right beside her head, so that its perfume drifted through her dreams of better days to come. Even now, though, her cooking reflected a pent-up desire to get everything in the world into a single dish. She confessed that she found it difficult to avoid over complicating her creations after years of trying out all possible combinations of beans, ketchup, spam, sausages in brine and tinned new potatoes.
I found her menu wonderful. Local produce had always been exceptional in this area. There were succulent and oversized prawns from the bay, herrings, mackerel and pollock from the coastal waters, woodcock and snipe from the Glen and grouse, deer and rabbit from the high tops and forests of Beinn Eighe…..but of all this bounty, it was the Salmon, the silvery currency of the poacher, the true wild spirit that permeates this land, that Tania most prized.
And that was what Tania and I had that night. The recipe was obviously quite special to her and she continued to grow her own Sweet Basil. Her name for this recipe, as it appeared on the menu that evening, I believe says it all.
TANIA’S ROAST SALMON WITH BASIL, FROM WESTER ROSS
For two people, you will need:
2-Five to six ounce fillets of Wild Salmon, skin on.
6-Vine ripened sweet cherry tomatoes, halved.
8-10 Good sized capers, washed and drained,
1-large sweet lemon, unwaxed. Half the lemon and cut one half into small rind-on chunks. Put other half to one side.
8-10 good black olives, hulled and halved.
1-Large clove garlic very, very finely sliced across.
1-medium courgette, trimmed ends, quartered lengthwise then diced into coarse chunks.
4-tablesp. extra virgin olive oil
1/2 teasp. Balsamic vinegar mixed with the juice from the half lemon and half the olive oil above (2 tblsp.).
Salt for seasoning.
Pepper, ground for seasoning.
¼ teasp. Sugar for seasoning.
Whole large bunch of tender leaf Sweet Basil. Leaves only, torn to shreds.
Put the olive oil, lemon juice, balsamic mixture into a shallow ovenproof dish. Place in a pre-heated very hot oven (190 deg.C.) for five minutes until the lemon juice and Balsamic vinegar sizzle.
Whilst heating the oil in the oven put the lemon chunks, tomatoes, olives, courgettes, capers and the remaining olive oil into a bowl and mix carefully Add a pinch of ground black pepper, a pinch of salt and the sugar. Gently mix in. ( Note that this mixture can be prepared several hours before and that the salmon fillets can be marinated in it. Remove the fillets before proceeding if this technique adopted). Add all these ingredients to the hot oil in the dish and replace in the oven. Allow to cook for 3-4 minutes at high heat, uncovered. Do not allow any ingredients to burn.
Take out the dish with an ovenproof glove and place the salmon fillets into the mixture, skin up. Push down slightly to allow the fillets to immerse in the mixture, then scatter over the sliced garlic and baste with the hot oil. Cover with foil and place back in the oven. Turn down to 170 deg.C. Cook for 4-5 minutes maximum then remove and take off foil. Brush off any garlic on the fillets then blacken salmon skin with a blowtorch if required. Baste with the hot oil then re-cover with foil and place back in the oven. Reduce heat to 150deg.C. and cook for a further 5 minutes. Remove from oven and check salmon is cooked. If not, give 1-2 minutes more with loose foil. Just before serving scatter the Basil leaves liberally over the fillets, toss and mix in.
Note! The salmon should be JUST cooked through. Do not overcook. Wild salmon stays moister than farmed! The basil will not take kindly to prolonged heating so check the fillets are cooked before tossing on the basil. It seems like a fussy procedure but if the basil is still “raw” this dish sings!
Serve with green string beans and Parisienne potatoes with a sprig of parsley.
Note. Sadly, the Ben Damph hotel is now a group owned “Country House”. I have been back, but not since it changed hands. Tania had gone but the old lounge bar with its incredibly inappropriate wall-paper of bamboo stems and brightly coloured parrots still remained. A “No Smoking” sign hung upon the wall, perforated by years of accurately thrown darts. The sign had been set alight to at one corner and was charred and yellowed. As I walked in, a gloomy spectre stirred in the dark recesses of the Public Bar, a silhouette visible through a huge hatch where a Guinness Toucan mirror used to be. A voice, not unknown to me, advised with obvious disdain “ Did you noht read the sign? No ye didnae…read the sign, mon!” I pulled open the heavy door to the world outside and sure enough, there was a sign. It read:
THIS BAR IS CLOSeD FOR THe WINTeR. IT WILL BE ReOPeNeD IN SPRING OR THeReABOUTS. WILL PATRONS PLeASe USE THE PUBLIC BAR. NO DOGS AT ALL. NO WALKING BOOTS. NO FOOD TO Be TAKeN INTO THe BAR AReA. NO CHILDReN UNDER TeN YeARS AND MUST BE WeLL BeHAVeD AT ALL TIMeS.
BY ORDeR OF THE TeMPORARY MANAGeMeNT.
I did not go in and I still regret not ever having taking one wee dram with Duncan…..but there again, I did eat his daughter’s salmon.
Christmas 1983
