Wigtown Book Festival and 'Recipes from a Hebridean Island'

 

Pic: Wigtown Book Festival, left Coinneach MacLeod, right Gareth Cole - author of 'Cafe Canna Recipes from a Hebridean Island'.

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend some of the presentations by authors at Wigtown Book Festival. Wigtown in beautiful Galloway is Scotland's book town with many new, second hand and antiquarian book sellers, including the largest book shop in the country. The town holds a prestigious and growing literary festival in Autumn, featuring notable authors from many genres who give talks and presentations about their books and their lives at the various venues including the festival marquee, around Wigtown's picturesque square. 

This year The Wigtown Book Festival included a Food Book Festival within a festival, and whilst I was only there for a couple of days I enjoyed listening to Pen Vogler, acclaimed food historian, who writes about food and society in Britain and how it changes, in her books; 'Scoff' and the just published 'Stuffed'. Also Sanjana Modha talking about her new book 'Sanjana Feasts'. Her recipe book of Indian vegetarian and vegan recipes is influenced by her English and East African heritage. Some of Sanjanas exciting recipes will be on this blog soon, 

Coinneach MacLeod, 'The Hebridean Baker' sells more cook books than any other author in Scotland and he with his Hebridean charm will be in a series on the BBC next year. Coinneach presented and interviewed food authors throughout most of the 'mini' book food festival this year and also held his own events.

Canna is a tiny island off Skye in the Inner Hebrides and is just a couple of miles wide and six long, eighteen people live there. Yet Canna has an award winning restaurant, serving those that arrive by boat. Cafe Canna owned by Gareth Cole features foraged food whether from land or sea, and due to supply issues, like the bar almost running dry, now brews it's own beer.

The cook book is packed with mouth watering recipes and tales of life on an isle.

But I was mostly interested in one ingredient that features on his menu and that is seaweed, and thanks to Gareth's Cafe Canna Recipes from a Hebridean Island book, I will be collecting Kelp, Sea Dulce, Pepper Dulce, and Sea Lettuce, and cooking up a storm..

During Gareth's presentation he made a seaweed dish turning Kelp into a sort of spaghetti then using soy and sesame to make a salad, finished with fried Sea Dulce. Coinneach tried it and exclaimed how great it was.

This presentation was fascinating to this cook as seaweed is abundant oh and free. Seaweed if collected with care and cooked properly is apparently versatile, tasty and packed with nutrients, so I wonder why I don't have a single cook book that has any recipe for it. Okay you may drown collecting seaweed, but not at low tide. But unlike the unwary who cook foraged fungi at their peril, no variety of seaweed will poison you. So I am looking forward to making some of the Cafe Canna's seaweed recipes when next at the Isle of Whithorn.

Please find out some more:-

Cafe Canna website Click Here

Cafe Canna Recipes from a Hebridean Island book is available at Amazon Click Here

Coinneach MacLeod, 'The Hebridean Baker' website Click Here

Thank you Wigtown Book Festival.