St. Andrews is in the Kingdom of Fife, which is the chubby finger of land that sticks out between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Tay (as if that makes any sense to anyone not in Fife...). Fife has a farmers’ market that rotates through the various towns along the sea, and which comes to St. Andrews on the first Saturday of every month. So yesterday morning the four of us made it up and out of the house early (mostly because John was up at ten before six anyway…)for a trip to the market. It was our first visit, and though I wanted to visit earlier, I now realize that it was best for us to wait, because we’re now much more accustomed to eating like the Scottish than we were when we first arrived, and therefore found quite a bit at the market that a month ago wouldn’t have sounded so good to us!
Scotland is most famous for only two kinds of food (or three actually, if you consider whisky a food, which most people here do…). Those two foods are haggis and deep fried Mars bars, and I haven’t actually had either yet, though I did take a small bite of some haggis David ordered in our first week here. But beyond that, the Scottish actually eat a lot of meat and fish, and root vegetables like turnips (“neeps”) and potatoes (“tatties”). For meat, there’s a bit of beef, most of it from Aberdeen angus north of us, but most of it is lamb or venison. The fish most often encountered here is wild salmon, which is sometimes smoked, though you can often find smoked herring (called kippers), smoked trout, and smoked haddock, called Arbroath smokies, as well. A chippy will often sell all kinds of fresh fish, battered and deep fried, but if it isn’t fried, the fish is usually served very simply, without a heavy sauce. Scottish cheese is also well known, especially cheese from the Isle of Arran and Isle of Mull, or blue cheese from Lanark. Cheese is often served with oatcakes, and in fact lots of baked goods here are made with oats rather than wheat (apparently the cold wet weather on the north of Scotland is conducive to growing oats), while products made with corn are very rare (except the nachos at the student pubs in town!). They apparently reserve the small amount of corn they import to top their pizza and potatoes. And of course marmalade is everywhere here, as are all kinds of pickled vegetables. So, while the kids are still sticking with peanut butter for lunch, David and I have started to make very Scottish lunches for ourselves. I usually have some smoked salmon or mackerel with capers on an oatcake, some cheese, some silverskin onions and pickled beets. Definitely a very Scottish combination, and certainly one I would never have eaten a few months ago!
The farmers’ market is always easy to spot because of the smoke coming from the fishmonger. He has several huge barrels of smoking coals sitting on the pavement, and over each barrel are several thick wooden planks. Each plank supports several fish tied by their tails which are then suspended over the fire, and the whole thing is covered with thick sheets of oilskin. It makes a terribly smoky mess when someone comes along to order and he pulls back the oilskin, unties a few fish and wraps them in newspaper, and hands them over. But there’s always a line snaking through the middle of the market for them, so we joined in the line and placed our order. He always gives out a bamboo fork with every order, because half of the fish purchased is eaten right there, but we took ours home to have for dinner. And I can’t do smoked fish before coffee anyway! We also got some Arran cheese made with claret that’s so sharp it will make your nose run, and a bagful of fresh scones. John convinced us to get a few medallions of venison (though since Emma’s a vegetarian and David is not eating meat for a while as a birthday present for her, he only had to convince me, and I was easy to sway!), and we bought a dozen eggs too. Since the eggs at the grocery store are frightfully expensive (sometimes over three pounds for a dozen, which is about the equivalent of $5), these looked much better, and there was a line for them as well. John spent some of his allowance on fudge and Emma spent all of hers on strawberry candy, so I didn’t feel bad at all in buying a slice of lavender soap for our bathroom from a woman selling huge wheels of handmade soaps and bouquets of dried herbs. So, we had quite a bagful after just an hour, and were happy to take it all home and start cooking (even if the smokies picked up a bit of the lavender from the soap in the bag, which was a wee bit too bad!)
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