September at The Rhynd

emily4052
Nov 4
4 min read

THE RHYND'S CYCLE SUPPER SERIES

“Innovation is about bad ideas, or ideas that look like bad ideas,” said American businessman and investor Ben Horowitz. To be fair, this is the man that also said, “if you’re going to eat sh*t, don’t nibble.” It’s maybe best taken with a pinch of salt.

Still, a recent idea – and it remains to be seen whether it is a good or a bad one – was to try and do a series of Chef’s Table dinners with ingredients solely from Fife.

There are plenty of ‘farm to fork’ experiences out there, but while it’s great to hero local produce, you still reach for chocolate, sugar and spices from the cupboard. As an aside, they have managed to grow a cacao tree in the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens, but the very small crop produced inedible chocolate. Is it possible, then, to do a Chef’s Table dinner with no ingredients from outside Fife? Yes, it is, but the enormous challenge is to create a fine-dining experience. That’s what we plan to do this winter and so was born our ‘cycle supper’ series that starts on 17th October.

Head chef Jack Baldwin and I are setting off on 14th October, on bicycles, to pick up every raw ingredient we need from source. We all fear this will fall into Horowitz’s ‘bad ideas’ column, mainly because I swore never to get on a bicycle 10 years ago, and Jack thinks that when people refer to ‘the gym’ here at The Rhynd, they’re talking about the clay ground instructor called Jim.

We are lucky in that we can provide vegetables, herbs, pork, pigeon and venison from here on the farm, and we have also produced our own rapeseed oil and milled our own flour. While the wheat is not of milling quality, Jack has made some focaccia with it and it was delicious. We’re heading to East Neuk to get salt, and then picking up cheese, honey, beef, lobster, whisky, gin and champagne cider on the way back. It’ll be about 66 miles of cycling/crying.

And what of milk, cream and butter? Our original plan was to visit a dairy to pick up the milk and cream, and to then make butter from the latter. However, it is illegal to sell raw milk in Scotland as it is apparently extremely dangerous to consume… It makes Novichok look like an appetising canapé. It’s only taken us 10,000 years to work that one out. We will, sadly, have to cheat on the milk, cream and butter, and pick those up from the Balgove shop. They are still, of course, from Fife.

There’s a full list of ingredients below, which will give you some idea of the enormity of the undertaking. Do book in for one of the Chef’s Table dinners this winter (all dates can be found here), as they will be quite an experience.

ROYAL HIGHLAND EDUCATIONAL TRUST

We are absolutely delighted to be hosting the Royal Highland Educational Trust (RHET) here in January. It is a registered charity working with dedicated volunteers and teachers to provide every child in Scotland the opportunity to learn about food, farming and the working countryside.

Through their farm visits and learning resources, they connect over 70,000 children and young people each year with farmers, creating a wider understanding of the environmental, economic, and social realities of rural Scotland.

We firmly believe that farming and food should be taught in schools as what can be more important than what you consume and where it comes from? The RHET has done an amazing job and we’re thrilled to be a part of it.

ELSEWHERE AT THE RHYND

We are gearing up to host the St Andrews Challenge clay shoot in November, which consists of 200 competitors from universities across the UK. It’s a big undertaking, but the past few have run well, and everyone has headed onto the Welly Ball happy.

We cooked for Balgove’s 15th anniversary dinner, for 85 people, last week and it was an honour to be asked. This was just two days after head chef Jack cooked for a dinner at the St Andrews Botanic Gardens. It’s fantastic to be asked to do these things as they’re a marker of how far we have come in a short space of time.

CYCLE SUPPER SERIES INGREDIENTS

Salt - East Neuk Salt Company

Cheddar cheese - St. Andrews Farmhouse Cheese

Whisky - Kingsbarns Distillery

Lobster - St Andrews Harbour

Beef - Balgove Larder

Gin and liquers - Tayport Distillery

Champagne cider - Naughton Cider Company

Honey - TBC

Milk Mills - (via Balgove)

Butter McQueen's - (via Balgove)

Pak Choi tricolour - The Rhynd