Seasonal recipes from Emily Scott’s Cornish kitchen
Cornwall is the setting for restaurateur Emily Scott’s new book Time & Tide, a celebration of thoughtful, sustainable cooking in one of the UK’s best larders
Once the natural way of things, eating seasonal, local produce is something we must try and weave into our every day since we’ve become less attuned to nature’s flux. And while the movement has undergone recent critique – reduced to a hackneyed PR shtick for the privileged – Emily Scott’s approach in Time & Tide, her second cookbook, is pure and practical – at once an ode to seasonal, local cooking as an advertisement to move to Cornwall.
Simply having a strong sense of place and cooking with the seasons, making time to come together and indulging in some good old-fashioned kitchen therapy is the philosophy that grounds Scott in her Cornish kitchen.
So, whether you’re taking the time to speak to your local grocer, fishmonger, cheese shop, bakery or butcher, cook a meal for the ones you love, show the high street some love, or preserve those summer berries into a winter jam – Time & Tide will be by your side to guide you through the ebb and flow of life.
Cornish crab cakes
Golden-brown and full of one of Cornwall’s absolute hero ingredients, these beautiful crab cakes make for the perfect canapé or starter
Cornish crab cakes
Serves 4
Preparation time 40 minutes
Cooking time 10 minutes
In a country where we import almost half of all the food we consume, it’s often easy to forget the bounty our soils and seas provide. And if there’s one place to wax lyrical about British produce, it’s Cornwall, a cornucopia of good cheeses, thick creams, beer, fish, seafood, and, of course, crab. Cheaper than lobster with a rich, salty flavour, crab is a decadent addition to any recipe, including these crab cakes.
“Perfect rounds of delicious crab gently pan-fried until golden brown, these fish cakes are slightly lighter as they are potatoless,” says Scott. “Accompany with a green salad and some citrus mayo,” the recipe for which is in the book, too. If you want to adapt the recipe from an easy midweek dinner to one for entertaining, make your crab cakes bite-sized and top with the mayo and a small sprig of watercress for some serious classy canapés.
Ingredients
500g mixed white crab meat, picked
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
4 spring onions, very thinly sliced
1 tablespoon chopped chives
2 tablespoons crème fraîche
4 tablespoons plain flour, plus extra for dusting
2 medium free-range eggs, lightly beaten
100g fresh white breadcrumbs
25g unsalted butter
4 tablespoons sunflower oil
Cornish sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
Put the crab meat in a mixing bowl along with the lemon zest and juice, spring onions, chives, and some salt and pepper. Mix together, adding the crème fraîche to help bind the mixture.
Dust your hands with flour and divide the mixture into 8 round shapes, each about 2cm thick. Place on a plate and chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
Put the flour on a plate and season well, pour the beaten eggs into a shallow dish, then scatter the breadcrumbs on a separate plate.
Take a chilled crab cake and dip it into the flour, coating it on both sides, then dip it into the egg and finally the breadcrumbs. Set aside and repeat with the rest of the crab cakes.
Heat the butter and oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. To test if the oil is hot enough, place a breadcrumb or two into the oil; if it immediately turns golden brown, the oil is ready (do not leave unattended).
Add the crab cakes to the pan (in batches) and fry for 3-4 minutes until crisp and golden brown underneath. Turn them over and cook for another 2-3 minutes until golden brown. Remove with a slotted spoon to a plate lined with paper towels and keep warm while you cook the rest.
Serve with a green salad and dollops of citrus mayo, sprinkled with a little sea salt and with lemon wedges on the side.
Cornish bouillabaisse
This hearty but delicate southern French stew gets a West Country makeover with the delicious addition of gurnard and English shellfish
Cornish bouillabaisse
Serves 4
Preparation time 15 minutes
Cooking time 25 minutes
Few meals will cocoon you in savoury rapture quite like a bouillabaisse. It’s a rust-coloured, saffron-punctuated stew full of piscine deliciousness that’s the best way to suck every inch of flavour out of a bundle of seafood.
For a dish that seems so impressive, it’s surprisingly thrifty and tastes best when you keep it as local and sustainable as possible. “Talk to your fishmonger about what is best to use,” says Scott. “Once upon a time, it seemed only good enough to use as bait in lobster and crab pots, but gurnard has made a comeback over the last few years. A white, firm-fleshed fish, it works so well in stews and is a great fish to batter for your Friday fish supper. I will always champion the gurnard.”
Alongside the fish, this recipe calls for mussels and prawns, but use whatever fish and shellfish you like to dress it up and down. It’s rustic, simple and quick to make, the only rule is that you make more aioli than is strictly necessary from page 162 of the book. It’s an obligatory flourish to celebrate this wonderful dish.
Ingredients
4 tbsp good olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
2 leeks, finely sliced
1 fennel bulb, finely sliced (discard tough outer layers and reserve the fronds)
4 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tablespoon tomato purée
1 pinch of saffron, steeped in a splash of warm water
Handful of basil leaves, plus extra to garnish
Zest and juice of 1 orange
100ml Pernod or Noilly Prat vermouth
500ml fish stock
2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes
1kg live mussels, cleaned (discard any that are still open)
4 gurnard fillets (skin-on and filleted – ask your fishmonger), cut in half (cod or monkfish would be good replacements)
250g shell-on prawns
Cornish sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan that has a lid over a medium heat, add the leeks, fennel and garlic, and sauté until softened, then add the tomato purée and stir gently for 2–3 minutes. Add the steeped saffron, basil, orange zest and juice, Pernod or vermouth, fish stock and chopped tomatoes, and simmer for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the mussels to the sauce, cover the pan with the lid and cook for 5–6 minutes until they have opened. Remove the mussels with a slotted spoon (discard any unopened ones at this point) and set aside in a bowl. Transfer the sauce to a food processor or blender and blitz until smooth, then pour the sauce back into a large clean pan and simmer uncovered for 8-10 minutes until reduced.
Meanwhile, remove most of the mussels from their shells, reserving a few in their shells for garnish (3 per person). Season the sauce with some sea salt and black pepper, then place the gurnard fillets, skin-side up, into the sauce along with the prawns and cook for 3-4 minutes until the fish is cooked through and the prawns have turned pink. Finally, add the cooked mussels and mussels in their shells back to the pan to warm through.
Divide the bouillabaisse between four warm bowls and finish off with a few extra basil leaves, the reserved fennel fronds and a drizzle of olive oil.
Serve with sourdough croutons and saffron aioli.
Helford Blue, spring onion, leek, crème fraîche and thyme tart
Beautiful British flavours complement each other perfectly in this winning tart – ideal hot or cold and at any time of the day
Helford Blue, spring onion, leek, crème fraîche and thyme tart
Preparation time 2.5 hours
Cooking time 30 minutes
Having a good tart recipe under your belt is a valuable thing. It’s something you can make time and time again for picnics, dinner parties and lunches to the point where the process becomes muscle memory. And, conveniently, this beautiful, seasonal tart might just be the prime candidate for this position.
It’s a known fact that alliums and cheese go way back (yes, even pre-pasty), so it’s no surprise that the marriage of creamy mascarpone and Helford Blue cheese with caramelised sweet leeks and spring onions is a winning combination. “Soft, pale and delicious Helford Blue is one of my favourites”, says Scott, “I always have it on my cheese board, and its creamy texture works beautifully with the alliums here.”
If you fancy switching it up, swap out the leeks for caramelised red onions and the blue cheese for goats’ cheese to make the perfect picnic centrepiece.
Ingredients
For the shortcrust pastry:
250g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
100g unsalted butter
A pinch of Cornish sea salt
2 medium free-range egg yolks
2-3 tablespoons milk
For the filling:
50g unsalted butter
225g leeks, trimmed, washed and sliced (discard any tough outer layers)
4 spring onions, trimmed and sliced
2 tablespoons thyme leaves, plus extra to garnish
100g crème fraîche
100ml double cream
2 medium free-range eggs, plus 1 egg yolk
150g Helford Blue cheese (or similar)
Cornish sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
To make the pastry, combine the flour, butter, sea salt and egg yolks in a food processor and pulse. Once combined, let it down with a little milk until it all comes together as a dough. Cover with cling film and leave it to rest in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.
On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the pastry to 1 cm thick and use it to line a 22 cm fluted loose-bottomed tart tin. Chill for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200°C. Blind bake the pastry case for 20-25 minutes, then trim off any excess pastry.
For the filling, melt the butter in a frying pan over a medium heat, add the leeks, spring onions and thyme, and gently cook for 8–10 minutes until softened. Whisk the crème fraîche, cream, eggs and egg yolk together in a bowl and season with salt and pepper.
Arrange the leek and spring onion mixture over the base of the tart, crumble the Helford blue on top, then pour over the cream mixture.
Bake the tart for 25-30 minutes until golden and form in the centre. Leave to rest for 10 minutes before slicing and serve with extra thyme leaves on top.
Clotted cream and lemon drizzle bundt cake
With a distinctive look that’s only bettered by its sumptuous flavour and feather-light texture, this is a cake that’ll go straight into your repertoire
Clotted cream & lemon drizzle bundt cake
Serves 10
Preparation time 10 minutes
Cooking time 75 minutes
For those unaware, bundt comes from a German word meaning ‘a cake for gathering’, and that is exactly what this recipe is for. Automatically impressive by its swirling, symmetrical structure, this clotted cream and lemon drizzle bundt cake is the perfect celebration centrepiece while being simple and quick to make.
“It is a perfect cake for any time of the year,” says Scott. “Lemons are a winter fruit but always bring yellow sunshine to my kitchen. They are an ingredient I would just not want to be without.”
She uses the Nordic Ware swirl bundt tin to bake it in, making this cake a real showstopper, but, feel free to scour the shops and internet for your own weird and wonderful bundt tin.
Ingredients
For the sponge:
Vegetable oil, for greasing
450g caster sugar
4 medium free-range eggs
Finely grated zest and juice of 4 lemons
500g clotted cream (Scott uses Rodda’s), plus extra to serve
2 tbsp milk
400g self-raising flour
For the lemon drizzle:
Zest and juice of 4 lemons
4 tablespoons granulated sugar
To decorate:
Edible flowers (use primrose when in season)
Rosemary sprigs
Extra granulated sugar
To serve:
Dollops of Rodda’s clotted cream or a drizzle of pouring cream
Method
For the sponge, preheat the oven to 180°C. Lightly oil a swirled bundt tin, 25cm wide by 9cm tall. Beat the caster sugar and eggs in a large bowl until light, fluffy and doubled in size. Set aside.
Grate the zest and squeeze the juice of the lemons into a separate bowl, then add the clotted cream and stir together.
Gently beat the lemony clotted cream into the sugar and eggs, then add the milk and mix in. Sift in the flour, then gently fold it into the mixture until well combined.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and level the top. Bake for 45-60 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, before turning out onto a wire rack.
After a further 10 minutes, carefully transfer the bundt to your serving plate. For the lemon drizzle, mix together the lemon zest, juice and granulated sugar in a small pan. Heat gently until the sugar dissolves, then allow to cool. While the cake is still warm, make little holes in it with a skewer or cocktail stick, then pour the lemon drizzle syrup evenly over the cake.
Sprinkle it with more granulated sugar, flowers and herbs to decorate. Cut into slices and serve with extra cream.
Get the book
Time and Tide by Emily Scott is published by Hardie Grant Books (£22.25); available to buy here
