The longest day of the year in the UK is often thought to have a fixed date i.e. 20 June but according to this article , it can vary between 20th and 22nd June. The longest day in Scotland this year – in Shetland, the most northerly point – was 18 hours, 55 minutes and 30 seconds long. So here in Dunbar, it would be shorter than that. In Orkney – see here – a solstice ceremony takes place at the Comet Stone which is a 1.75m standing stone, at 7pm and its organisers state “We welcome the sun at its zenith, at the height of its powers. We also acknowledge the cycle of the sun’s descent to its nadir as the days will now start to become shorter”. It’s traditional around here that if you meet someone the next day, your greeting will be “Aye, the nights are fair drawin’ in!” as a joke.
On the longest day in Dunbar, we had the best sunset of the year. The photos below – not the clearest I have ever taken – go from 10pm to 10.45pm on the day of the 20th June, which I had assumed was the longest day. At 10pm – photo below- the sky and the sea had become pinkish/purple, with an orange glow on the horizon and it was difficult to pinpoint the exact colour scheme as it was constantly changing, as were the shapes of the clouds, which appeared to be wandering aimlessly across the sky. The sea itself was multi-coloured and again, it changed by the minute, with streaks of almost white, then pink, then purple appearing and disappearing in different parts of the water. It was mesmerising to look at.
The next two photos were taken almost simultaneously. The first photo shows how the sky darkened by 10.45 and the pink sky was fading rapidly. Five minutes later, it has gone altogether, so this brief but dramatic skyline was still a delight to witness in the warmth of the late evening.
The final photo is the same as the one above, except that I pressed the Auto Correct button on Picture Manager. While this brightens up the scene and highlights the pink sea lapping the rocks, it was not what I saw from the back of our house that evening. However, I did like the cloud shapes, with the two dolphin like on the right appearing to be heading straight for some mythical creature in front of them. Had it not been for the approaching cloud mass, it would have stayed lighter for much longer, as it did the following night.
There is no such thing as a definitive fish stew and there are a myriad of recipes out in cyberspace for the cook/chef to follow or adapt. I came across this Turkish recipe a few months ago while looking for recipes with haddock and red peppers – capsicum in Australia and other parts of the world. The recipe contains capers, of which neither of us are particularly fond, so I omitted these and further adapted the recipe, which is reasonably simple. It involves chopping up red onion, red pepper and fresh tomatoes and in this version of mine, leek, along with mandolin potatoes. I had often wondered why the slicer on the side of my grater was referred to as a mandolin and I found out that it is: either the action of slicing the potatoes (or other vegetables) in a strumming fashion like playing a mandolin or it is named after the inventor of the Guillotin’s girlfriend. Given that slicer like kitchen tools have been existence for thousand of years, that latter may be unlikely. To confuse things further, the term mandoline is also used.
Back to the recipe. I placed two haddock fillets on the base of a greased Pyrex dish. The online recipe does not advocate pre-cooking the vegetables, but I sweated the red onion, leek and pepper/capsicum in olive oil and added chopped herbs from the garden. As the photo below shows, this is a colourful dish at this stage and the next stage, and it takes on the appearance of an abstract painting.
I then added the sliced tomatoes on top as in the photo below. The abstract becomes still life as the tomato slices lie like sunbathers on a beach. So this dish is a visual treat before it becomes a culinary one.
I then added the mandolin potatoes, salt and pepper added and brushed with olive oil. I originally wrote mandolined but it appears that the word is either a noun or an adjective, and not a verb. My primary 7 teacher Miss Murray would have delighted in teaching my class such interpretations. I am sure that we went up to secondary school with a much better knowledge of grammar than those in other schools. The sliced potatoes take away the sun from the tomatoes, but it will come out again later. The photo below shows the potato topping after it came out of the oven, with the slices browned at the edges and the topmost layer of potatoes were very crisp.
I am aware that when I read similar recipe descriptions, I am often asking myself at this stage (or before) “Yes, yes but what does it look like on the plate?”. The photo below shows the served dish with steamed fine green beans added. The fish was moist and very tasty and the vegetables did not overwhelm the taste of the haddock. The myriad of colours on the plate add to your appreciation of the dish.
This recipe is essentially for a fish stew, so you can adapt it to suit your own tastes e.g. you could add fennel seeds as in another fish stew I make. I may not make exactly the same dish again.
James Herring's c10 Day Blog 