I'm still smiling after a fantastic holiday week in the northeast of Scotland. It's not the most popular holiday destination in Scotland but we love it. The weather is better than over here in the west, although you often get a cold breeze from the north along with the bright sunshine. We lived on seafood and coconut icecream, walked along the windswept and seafoam-spattered coast and swam (well, I did) in the perishingly-cold North Sea.
The foodie experiences were numerous, so I won't try to shoehorn them all into this blog post, but one was particularly interesting and new to us. I was determined to try seafood that I hadn't come across before, so when I saw 'Rock Turbot' in the local factory fish-shop I was intrigued and had to buy some. The 'Rock ____' euphemism is often used where the actual name of the fish doesn't sound too appealing, so I knew it was nothing to do with Turbot which, in any case, would cost around four times the price.
I pan-fried the firm-fleshed fillets with some garlic and seasoning then took them out of the pan. I added some dry cider and reduced it right down to a tasty sauce before putting the fish back into it for a couple of minutes. It was the best mystery fish we had ever tasted.
On returning home I did some research and found out that 'Rock Turbot' is another name for the Northern Wolffish. This was a coincidence as we had seen Wolffish in the marine aquarium in Macduff a couple of days after eating our 'Rock Turbot'.
I went sea-swimming shortly after getting back home. It was a great way, for me at least, to ease into a post-holiday mindset. Yes, of course it was cold, but not as cold as those North Sea waves crashing over my head. Hardly surprising, I suppose, that the other forty-odd people in the sea had been wearing full wetsuits.
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