Scottish recipes for Burns Night with Winter in the Highlands

Anyone who spends the dark months of the year longing for lighter evenings and moaning on about the dreich weather might take some comfort from Winter in the Highlands. It’s a book that revels in the creaking cold of winter’s depths, that finds a romanticism in a bleak landscape and comfort in the feasts of the season, with author Flora Shedden marking her Scottish roots with recipes for St Andrew’s Day, Hogmanay and Burns Night.

The book is split into months (November to January), with recipes using seasonal ingredients for each. November holds rib-sticking recipes for sausage meatballs with mustard mash, triangular leek and bacon pies (hand-sized, for handing out at Bonfire Night) and chanterelle and Gruyère bread pudding, made with foraged mushrooms, to take advantage of the longer Scottish foraging season. All this is washed down with a nip of homemade damson brandy.

Christmas has a traditional offering, with a Marsala and shallot gravy to serve with herby turkey and poached parsnips with pecan and thyme crumble, followed by an apple and almond Christmas pudding created on Stir-up Sunday, and a Christmas cake, to be fed with brandy six times before decorating. Hogmanay also has its own chapter, with a feast for a crowd in the shape of venison wellington with leek dauphinoise followed by sherry and raisin ice-cream.

The January chapter is a gentle start to the new year, with bergamot jelly served with warming Earl Grey and fig scones alongside recipes for an apple and celeriac salad when the need for freshness hits. The chapter on Burns night – which is on 25 January, if anyone needs to practice their Address to a Haggis – asks that you source your own from a decent butcher (unless you’ve already been out hunting for one on the moors), and offers up side dishes of neep boulangère and kale and pearl barley followed by rhubarb cranachan made with the bright pink forced variety, as well as honey and almond shortbread bars. A perfect antidote to the January blues.

Winter in the Highlands by Flora Shedden (£26, Quadrille)

Photography by Kimberley Grant