Gun Makers w Shooting Ground w Sporting Agency w Events w Country Outfitters 01494 883227 | www.ejchurchill.com | info@ejchurchill.com I T I S T H E C O M B I N AT I O N O F FO O D A N D P EO P L E T H AT C R E AT E S T H E AT M O S P H E R E O F C O N V I V I A L I T Y feasting at Skibo is ‘all about the hospitality’. A true Scottish “cuisiner”, Mackay considers evolving with the times an important part of furthering the tradition of fine dining at the castle, but his real mission is to deliver to the table ‘good food, delicious in good measure and with great ingredients’. This idea of serving up simultaneously the simple and the sumptuous is taken up by Alan Grant, who has been the compère at Skibo’s famous hosted dinners for a quarter of a century. ‘It would be quite wrong of me to describe the smoked salmon as just that, as it is so beautifully done,’ he says. ‘Then we might have a fillet of beef with haggis served on the side, followed perhaps by a mille-feuille with cream and raspberries. It’s just stunning.’ According to Mackay, where possible, all ingredients will be home-grown or sourced locally, with quality and sustainability a priority. He says that while serious cooking represents nature and art, his job is to ‘cook from the heart.’ Feasts have been with us since humans began farming their own food millennia ago. In fact, archaeologists think that the earliest feasts – a word that has the same linguistic roots as ‘festival’ – were ceremonies intended to share the good fortune of surplus harvest with others. While today the ‘harvest festival’ might seem old-fashioned, there is a thoroughly modern phenomenon appearing on the “farm-to-fork” menus of fashionable brasseries and bistros, which cater to the desire of today’s foodies to know more about the origin of their food. The same sentiment is echoed in Skibo’s garden-to-plate feasting philosophy, which brings the spirit of sharing even closer to home. ª – 3 1 – T H E C A R N E G I E C L U B