My pilgrimage to Scotland was the trip of a
lifetime. I wanted to make the most of my time there and I really tried to pack
a lot into two weeks. Needless to say, plenty of advanced planning was
essential. I spent countless hours online, reading reviews of B&B’s and
restaurants, researching all the different distillery tours, mapping out my
routes, estimating drive times and coordinating with ferry schedules. But once
we were there, my efforts were well rewarded. I’m still amazed by how much we
were able to see and do in 13 days. At the same time, I think I struck a good
balance between always having something interesting to do, and never feeling
overloaded with activities or rushed to stay on a schedule.
I was mostly able to stick to my goal of putting up daily blog posts, foregoing sleep for
writing time. I think whisky adrenaline and copious amounts of black tea
allowed me to get by on 5 hours of sleep a night for much of the vacation. Of
course, I could only blog about so much each day, and I skipped over a lot that
I would have loved to write about, so a few follow-up posts are in order.
I made the decision to immerse myself fully in the culture,
and the culinary arena was a big part of that. I tried to experience as many savory
items as I could, starting with local oysters on the ½ shell, on both Mull and Islay. Then it was on to porridge and black pudding with
breakfast, and Cullen Skink for lunch (the name sounds more dreadful than it
ought to, it’s just smoked haddock chowder). However, all of that is irrelevant
if you can’t bring yourself to eat Haggis. Considered the national dish of Scotland,
it consists of sheep heart, liver and lungs, minced with onion, oatmeal and
suet. This was traditionally cooked in a sheep’s stomach, but most modern
Haggis is prepared in a sausage casing. It took me a few days to work myself up
to trying it, but when I finally did (stuffed into deep fried mushrooms) I was
actually quite fond of it. I also had Haggis in a turnover with tatties and
neeps (potato and turnip), but my favorite preparation was the Haggis panini
with pickled cabbage served at the Ardbeg distillery’s Old Kiln Café.
Normally, I would consider it a great sacrilege to do
anything with single malt Scotch other than put it in a glass and drink it.
But, on my first night in Scotland,
I was treated to an appetizer of salmon which had been cured in Oban single
malt before being hot smoked.
Delicious. After that, I was happy to sample any whisky
infused menu item that came my way. In fact, the next night I found myself
having a chocolate pot for dessert which was laced with Tobermory single malt –
quite delightful. At the Bunnahabhain distillery’s retail shop, I came across a
box of Bunnahabhain fudge. The single malt was only 1% of the total
ingredients, but it was just enough to add an enchanting dimension to the
fudge. As soon as I tasted the first piece, I knew that the box wouldn’t last
long enough for any of it to come back to the States. As good as this all was,
the pinnacle of whisky foods was Laphroaig marmalade. The home-made specialty
of the Cala Sith Guest House, it incorporates a healthy does of Laphroaig 10 yr
single malt. Sticky sweet and wondrously smoky, you knew you could only be on
Islay the moment you tasted it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was hungover
on Day 6, but after the extended tasting tours at
Lagavulin and Ardbeg the day before, I was definitely a little rough around the
edges. Having Laphroaig marmalade on my toast first thing in the morning that
day was certainly a shock to the system.
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