Scotland


<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1500" height="1000" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/10/SRC_Headshots_KPP25-2001-Katie-Pryde-1.jpg" alt="Sarah Rankin Masterchef Feast cookbook" class="wp-image-1564" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/10/SRC_Headshots_KPP25-2001-Katie-Pryde-1.jpg 1500w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/10/SRC_Headshots_KPP25-2001-Katie-Pryde-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/10/SRC_Headshots_KPP25-2001-Katie-Pryde-1-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/10/SRC_Headshots_KPP25-2001-Katie-Pryde-1-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Photograph: Katie Pryde</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-got-you-cooking"><strong>What got you cooking?</strong></h2>



<p>I&#8217;ve been cooking all my life, really. My mum&#8217;s an incredible cook. My gran was an amazing baker. We were always around homecooked food all the time, my whole childhood. Then I had a midlife crisis in lockdown, like 90 percent of the population. I was approaching 50 and thought the world was going to end. I’ve always harboured the sort of secret desire to do <em>MasterChef</em> and thought, “I&#8217;m going to just apply for it. If I don&#8217;t get on, I&#8217;ll never tell a living soul and no one will ever know. And if I do get on, I&#8217;ll just try really hard not to be the first person sent home”. I was actually the last person sent home, so it worked out quite well for me. I knew very quickly that I wanted to change my career.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-s-your-food-philosophy"><strong>What’s your food philosophy?</strong></h2>



<p>I see being able to cook and serve a meal to people you care about as an intrinsic part of being a well-rounded human being. I think spending the time doing that is good for you, both physically and mentally as well. A huge part of what keeps me happy is preparing food for people.</p>



<p>I thought what I was doing was pretty ordinary: I don&#8217;t do bells and whistles. I don&#8217;t do molecular gastronomy. I don&#8217;t do mental stuff with sodium alginate. The way <em>MasterChef</em>’s curated, you&#8217;re with people who have really interesting food cultures. There was so much to learn from the other contestants. And people were asking me about game cookery and about seasonality.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-who-do-you-admire-nbsp-nbsp"><strong>Who do you admire?&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<p>F Marian McNeil. She collected recipes from all around Scotland in the 1920s, I think. I&#8217;ve got a first edition of her book <a href="https://birlinn.co.uk/product/the-scots-kitchen-2/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>The Scots Kitchen</em></a> and it’s been reprinted recently. It&#8217;s got all these incredible recipes, 50 percent of which I don&#8217;t understand, because it’s all in bushels and there’s no method. But the prose is just beautiful. I&#8217;d love to speak to her about her motivation for doing that and why she felt it was important. It&#8217;s a historical document, a piece of social history and it&#8217;s still relevant because we&#8217;re now properly focusing on the fact that there&#8217;s real importance to our food heritage in Scotland. It’s not just salmon and whisky.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-is-scottish-food-to-you-nbsp-nbsp"><strong>What is ‘Scottish food’ to you?&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="1500" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/09/Haggis-stuffed-Tattie-Scone-copyright-Katie-Pryde.jpg" alt="Haggis stuffed tattie scones recipe by Sarah Rankin" class="wp-image-822" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/09/Haggis-stuffed-Tattie-Scone-copyright-Katie-Pryde.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/09/Haggis-stuffed-Tattie-Scone-copyright-Katie-Pryde-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/09/Haggis-stuffed-Tattie-Scone-copyright-Katie-Pryde-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/09/Haggis-stuffed-Tattie-Scone-copyright-Katie-Pryde-768x1152.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Haggis stuffed tattie scones. Photograph: Katie Pryde</figcaption></figure>



<p>Scottish food has a reputation of being very unhealthy: dumplings, haggis and deep-fried Mars bars. But Scottish food, to me, is incredible seafood and it&#8217;s stuff that’s grown here with low food miles. It&#8217;s more about seasonality. It&#8217;s Scottish in the sense that it&#8217;s grown in our soil, but it&#8217;s not intrinsically Scottish. We’re a multicultural society with lots of people from all over the world feeding into our food culture, which is amazing. Our food doesn&#8217;t need to be the really standard, traditional Scottish stuff. We were a nation of peasants then and we were eating what we had to eat because we had nothing else. Why would you stick to that?</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-s-your-ideal-feast-nbsp-nbsp"><strong>What’s your ideal feast?&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<p>It’s not a dinner party –&nbsp; dinner parties to me feel a little bit like too much cutlery and the 1970s – mini frozen sausage rolls from the Co-op. It’s abundance. Abundance in the sense of having enough food, but also having joy and being full of joy for people and for feeding people, and that feeling of fullness in every sense.</p>



<p>So we would have Scottish oysters. Two dozen of them would do me. People think oysters are posh but in Scotland, you just went to the shoreline and harvested them yourself. The people who ate them were poor. We need to take back some of these good things that are suddenly considered to be luxury items, so I’d have loads of oysters.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-who-s-coming-to-eat-it-nbsp-nbsp"><strong>Who’s coming to eat it?&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1500" height="1000" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/10/Calum-Montgomery-Headshots-2-of-36.jpg" alt="Calum Montgomery Edinbane Lodge Isle of Skye" class="wp-image-1518" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/10/Calum-Montgomery-Headshots-2-of-36.jpg 1500w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/10/Calum-Montgomery-Headshots-2-of-36-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/10/Calum-Montgomery-Headshots-2-of-36-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/10/Calum-Montgomery-Headshots-2-of-36-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">One of Sarah&#8217;s favourite chefs is Calum Montgomery from Edinbane Lodge on the Isle of Skye</figcaption></figure>



<p>F Marian McNeil and I’d like my granny. My granny was a great baker, and she made the best homemade chips. So I&#8217;d have my granny back around the table for that one, definitely. Alistair Gray, who was a Scottish artist and writer and quite bonkers (he wrote <em>Poor Things</em>). I’d have my husband there because he works in an incredibly high-powered and stressful engineering job, travelling a lot for work. When we do supper clubs at home, he’s my front of house. So it would be nice for once to have an event where he’s just sitting down and eating and not washing up. And then maybe I’d get Callum from <a href="https://www.edinbanelodge.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Edinbane Lodge</a> to come do the cooking.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-who-are-your-favourite-suppliers-nbsp"><strong>Who are your favourite suppliers?&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<p>I&#8217;m so lucky being on the border between Perthshire and Fife because you can pretty much get any kind of food grown, produced or created here.&nbsp;</p>



<p>My venison comes from <a href="https://www.instagram.com/perthshire_game/?hl=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Perthshire Game</a>. I know it&#8217;s come from two miles over the hill, that it’s a completely natural product and that it&#8217;s been despatched humanely and treated respectfully. That&#8217;s very important.&nbsp;</p>



<p>There&#8217;s <a href="https://www.instagram.com/kateandcolobsters/?hl=en-gb" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Kate &amp; Co</a>, a great girl who works off the coast of Kinghorn, on the East Fife coast who fishes for lobsters with her husband.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I&#8217;ve got friends just up the road at <a href="https://www.arngaskhomefarm.co.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Arngask Home Farm</a> who&#8217;ve got a very small, smallholding, just 10 acres, and very big pigs, Oxford and Sandy black pigs. I get my pork from them. They&#8217;ve got a little honesty horse box that&#8217;s got incredible stuff in it, so all my eggs come from there too – duck and hen.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-where-do-you-like-to-eat-out"><strong>Where do you like to eat out?</strong></h2>



<p>I never go out for dinner because I&#8217;m just working all the time. But my son is at university in Edinburgh and there&#8217;s a really fun place he likes to go to called <a href="https://umiedinburgh.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Umi</a>. We go there for Japanese food quite a lot as a family because it&#8217;s really good fun and it&#8217;s got a real buzz to it. You can get sushi and ramen and karaage and they do a really great smoked Negroni.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-where-would-you-travel-to-for-dinner"><strong>Where would you travel to for dinner?</strong></h2>



<p>If we&#8217;re traveling, we’d go to Skye. I absolutely love <a href="https://www.edinbanelodge.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Edinbane Lodge</a>. I&#8217;ve eaten there a couple of times and I honestly think it&#8217;s the best meal I&#8217;ve ever had. Similarly, <a href="https://threechimneys.co.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Three Chimneys</a> is also stunning and <a href="https://www.lochbay-restaurant.co.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Loch Bay</a>. Skye is absolutely having a moment. In fact, rather than head to a specific restaurant or anything, I&#8217;d say, head to Skye and just eat your way around.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-you-re-tired-starving-and-impatient-what-do-you-cook-for-dinner"><strong>You’re tired, starving and impatient: what do you cook for dinner?</strong></h2>



<p>My home kitchen is my prep kitchen. I do lots of private chef work, lots of private dining and cookery classes as well as pop ups and all of that. When I&#8217;m prepping the kitchen is closed to everybody else, so I have no qualms about saying, “You guys are on pizza tonight.” My kids think it’s hilarious that what I&#8217;ll put in front of them is a posh supermarket pizza. My son puts on India Fisher&#8217;s voice and says “Sarah has made…” as though he&#8217;s doing the voice over for <em>MasterChef</em>. Regardless of what it is – if I put toast and jam in front of them – that joke just never gets old.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="1315" src="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/09/Feast.jpg" alt="Feast by Sarah Rankin" class="wp-image-829" srcset="https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/09/Feast.jpg 1000w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/09/Feast-228x300.jpg 228w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/09/Feast-779x1024.jpg 779w, https://dev.muddystilettos.co.uk/scotland/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2025/09/Feast-768x1010.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /></figure>



<p><strong><em>Feast</em>: <em>Recipes that bring joy </em>by Sarah Rankin is out now, published by Birlinn, hardback £25</strong></p>



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-in-the-mood-for-more">IN THE MOOD FOR MORE?</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://scotland.muddystilettos.co.uk/eat/sarah-rankin-haggis-stuffed-tattie-scones/">Sarah Rankin’s haggis-stuffed tattie scones are made for Hogmanay</a></li>



<li><a href="https://scotland.muddystilettos.co.uk/eat/whats-cooking-clare-coghill-cafe-cuil-isle-of-skye/">What’s cooking? Clare Coghill, Café Cùil, Isle of Skye</a></li>



<li><a href="https://scotland.muddystilettos.co.uk/things-to-do/film-tv/game-of-wool/">Muddy Meets: Di Gilpin and Sheila Greenwell from Channel Four’s The Game of Wool</a></li>
</ul>


What’s cooking: Sarah Rankin, chef and cookbook author

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