Summer Isles Smokin’
Seeking a taste of some of Scotland’s finest smoked salmon
“Hey, you can’t come in here! Wait outside. I’ll see if Keith’s available.”
It’s 4pm on a mid-winter Friday in the Summer Isles. The sky is black, the wind is fierce and I’m already composing an angry mental letter to the wise guy responsible for naming this remote coastal community in Scotland’s rugged north western corner. Apparently he specialises in irony.
I am here, in the tiny town of Achiltibuie, on the back of a four-day food tour to speak to Keith Dunbar, a man who has – for the past 20-odd years – devoted his working days to perfecting the art of smoking the region’s finest fish, cheeses and meats. His headquarters is a shipping crate-style office tucked behind a modest smokehouse on an exposed bluff.
Searching for an entrance I wrongly head in to the sectioned-off quarantine area, whereupon a slightly vicious secretary makes me fast aware of my breach in etiquette. Her greeting is as inhospitable as the weather. Casting a black eye in my direction, she aggressively directs me to wait in a particularly wind-whipped corridor while she enters the warmth of the office to catch Keith’s attention.
As beginnings go, it’s not particularly auspicious.
Though still far from challenging reigning champions France and Italy as a foodie destination, Scotland is slowly emerging in to the culinary limelight after years of battling the shortbread, haggis and fried food cliché. And while you may be hard pressed to resist following the whisky and castle tourist trail, heading further a field in to less chartered terrain brings a different set of rewards.
Though, up until now, I’ve never considered frostbite one of them.
Glancing enviously through the smokehouse viewing window at the fillets of orange pink salmon drying in the fragrant oak smoke (produced from smouldering oak shavings snared from a cooperage making whisky casks), I imagine my frozen body enjoying that same deep, drying warmth. I’m so deep in to my smoked Sarina fantasy that it takes a couple of “excuse me”s before I’m drawn from the warm reverie.
“Sorry about the delay,” bellows a now apologetic secretary over the howling wind, apparently slightly thawed after submitting me to my deep freeze. “Keith was on an important call. But he can see you now.”
My early-December visit has meant a tour of the smokehouse is, unfortunately, not on the cards: much of Scotland’s remote North West closes to tourists over the winter months, and the Smokehouse is no exception. But my curiosity is indulged as Keith lets loose with a few trade secrets from the confines of his paper-stacked office.
“We’ve been doing this for a long time, so a lot of the marinades and things we use while smoking our products have come through experimentation,” explains Keith. “For example, most people dry-salt their salmon, but we use a brine of molasses, garlic, peppercorns and some juniper berries so that they have a much sweeter after-taste. It’s just a better way of enhancing the natural flavour of the fish.”
Not surprisingly, Keith is keen to distance his operation from other larger, industrialised plants. Everything at the Achiltibuie smokehouse is done by hand – after soaking in marinade overnight, the sides of salmon are transferred to the kilns where they are cured in a stream of fragrant oak smoke for 24 hours. Following a four-day chill break (in which the fish is left to evenly soak the smoke and salt flavours), the fillets are then hand-sliced and packed for sale.
With the clock ticking toward 5pm and the weekend waiting, Keith smoothly wraps up our little chat. A canny Scot (well, actually a long-time transplanted Englishman), there is to be no tasty parting gift. He does, however, point me in the direction of the nearby and highly-acclaimed Summer Isles Hotel – a faithful buyer since the smokehouse’s 1977 inception.
Sadly, it too has a kitchen that closes up as the weather closes in, though the friendly bar lady (a transplanted Australian), helpfully points us in the right direction for a Friday evening feed. “It’s the Fuaran Bar, about three kilometres back the way you came,” she directs.
Twenty minutes later we’re settling in for a wine and a chat in the Fuaran’s cosy bar. It’s a small place – housed in what was once a modest cottage – but the welcome is friendly and the wine list basic-but-good. But it’s the food that proves to be the real attraction.
Though harnessing a captive audience (the Fuaran is the only restaurant servicing the area’s sparsely scattered population over winter), the family-run pub clearly isn’t satisfied with seeking mediocrity. Instead, the menu offers a high-level of homely meals given substance by spectacular local ingredients. Like slices of Keith’s smoked salmon served alongside locally made oat cakes, or hand-dived scallops sourced from the bay’s wild waters and sautéed with just a little garlic and cream.
Prawns, too, are fantastic, though we’re disappointed to learn that the demand for exports has made it nigh impossible for locals to buy fresh seafood off the dock. Instead, the bulk of the area’s harvest is shipped to Spain and Japan, leaving holiday-makers and residents with little option but to traverse the winding, 45-minute drive to nearby Ullapool for – frozen – seafood supplies. Either that, or indulge in the Fuaran’s fresh-off-the-boat selection. (Though a little bird does whisper that a quietly-made, friendly request to the local fishing fleet is not always knocked back.)
Driving out of town the next day – on the route to further food finds on Skye, Scotland’s gourmet isle – we make one last stop. The supermarket. For a little vacuum-packed Achiltibuie smoked salmon. All souvenirs should taste this good.
Addresses:
Summer Isles Foods, Achiltibuie, Ross-shire. Phone +44 (0) 1 854 622 353. www.summerislesfoods.com. Open for tours Easter to October. Call ahead.
Summer Isles Hotel, Achiltibuie, Ross-shire. Phone +44 (0) 1 854 622 282. www.summerisleshotel.co.uk. Restaurant and hotel closed mid-Cotober to April. The bar is open all year-round
Fuaran Bar, Altandhu, Achiltibuie, Ross-Shire. Phone +44 (0) 1 854 622 339. Open all year round. Call ahead for serving times and bookings.