Cooking From Landscape: Rethinking Scottish Food

September 5, 2025·42 min·3 clips

A neighbor watching from across the loch asks chef Pam Brunton: 'What kind of food is it you do?'

Scotland is first tasted at breakfast. The programme opens with Derek Cooper in August 1981, north of the border and ready for porridge, salty oatmeal, bacon, and the rest of the larder. Family roots give the journey its first shape. His links to the Hebrides and the Isle of Skye lead into beef, lamb, potatoes, raspberries, haddock, smokies, salmon, kippers, venison, and grouse. But abundance does not stay still. The episode moves from that older confidence into a Scotland where prized wild foods feel more fragile, and sometimes more argued over. Salmon carries the clearest warning. Atlantic salmon, once treated as wild and precious, is now described as nearing extinction in many European rivers. Farmed salmon does not settle the matter. The West Coast industry brought protein, but it also brought concerns about pollution, chemicals, parasites, and biodiversity. Pam looks for another route. That search takes her to Loch Fyne, where Alastair Barge's family moved from sheep farming into aquaculture more than half a century ago. The place matters. Due west from Glasgow, with the Atlantic beyond the hills, the halibut nursery belongs to a modern Scottish landscape. The fish grow slowly on land. Eggs become larvae, juveniles, and then adults in containers and circular pools over seven to eight years. It is less romance, more craft and patience. Alastair describes the young halibut's odd shift from pelagic fish to flatfish, while chefs prize its firm texture. By the end, Scottish food sounds less like a fixed catalogue and more like a live conversation, shaped by communities, connection, and the choices people make about what to protect and what to change.

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