As the world stays at home and keeps safe, passions old and new are coming to the fore.

While we have taken the decision to temporarily close our places - and we miss you all dearly - that needn’t be a barrier to our great passion: sharing.

This small collection of recipes is our little gift to you while we wait this out. Over the coming months, we hope to share a series of suppers from our kitchens - three courses of comfort devised by our chefs which you can make at home.

Eating at Killiehuntly Farmhouse is all about communion with others. We call it ‘family style’ - hearty, local ingredients cooked simply but beautifully. This slow supper tries to capture that ethos - a collection of seasonal treasures prepared without pretence but with a lot of love and care.

Start:

Wild Garlic Soup

• 50g butter

• 150g peeled and chopped potatoes

• 110g peeled and chopped onion

• salt and freshly ground pepper

• 900ml vegetable stock

• 300ml milk

• 150g chopped wild garlic leaves

• Wild garlic flowers

Melt the butter in heavy bottomed saucepan, add the potatoes and onions. Sprinkle with salt and freshly ground pepper. Cover and sweat on a gentle heat for 10 minutes.
 
When the vegetables are almost soft but not coloured add the stock and milk, bring to the boil and cook until the potatoes and onions are fully cooked.

Add the wild garlic and boil with the lid off for one or two minutes with the lid off until the wild garlic is cooked. Do not overcook or the soup will lose its fresh green colour. Puree the soup in a liquidiser or food processor. Taste and season.  Serve sprinkled with a few wild garlic flowers.

Then:

Braised Beef

• 4 rashers smoked, streaky bacon

• 750g braising steak or beef shin

• 50g plain flour

• 1 onion, roughly chopped

• 1 carrot, peeled and roughly chopped

• 2 ribs celery, roughly chopped

• 1 bottle red wine

• 2 sprigs fresh thyme

• 25g butter

• 200g peeled shallots

• 200g button mushrooms

• 200ml Beef stock

Cut the bacon into 1cm width strips, and fry in a heavy-bottomed pan. Place over a medium heat and cook until golden on both sides, drain onto kitchen paper.

Season the flour with half a teaspoon of salt and coat the beef through the flour. Add one tablespoon of vegetable oil to the pan and, still over a medium-high heat. Brown the meat in batches: don’t put too much meat in the pan at one time, or the beef will stew rather than brown. Set each browned batch to one side.

Add a glass of the red wine to the pan and use a wooden spoon to scrape up all the dark bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. Return the bacon and beef to the pan, and add the onion, carrot and celery, along with the thyme and the rest of the bottle of wine & beef stock. Bring to a simmer then lower the heat & put the lid on the pan, and cook for three and a half hours.

Melt the butter in a shallow frying pan, and, as it begins to foam, add the mushrooms and shallots, Once they have browned, spoon out and add to the stew & cook for a further 30 mins.

Finally:

Rhubarb Crumble

• 10 sticks of rhubarb

• 8 tbsp caster sugar

• 1 tsp ground ginger

• 110g butter, softened

• 110g demerara sugar

• 200g plain flour

• 100g chopped peeled hazelnuts

• Cream/Crème Fraiche

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Cut the rhubarb into 3” long sticks and place on an oven tray and sprinkle with four tablespoons of water and the caster sugar. Roast for ten minutes. Sprinkle over the ginger and mix well. 

Fill an ovenproof dish about ½” deep with the rhubarb. Rub the butter into the flour and sugar & hazelnuts to make the crumble topping. Sprinkle over the rhubarb and bake for 35–45 minutes, or until the crumble topping is crisp and golden-brown and the rhubarb filling has softened and is bubbling.

For the kombucha

To start off, you will need to procure a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast). These are pretty widely available online. This will feed on the sugar and the tea.

You can make kombucha from any organic tea, and we positively encourage a curious spirit of experimentation. Do make sure it is organic, as your SCOBY will be quite sensitive to additives and could…well…die.

At Lundies House, we love a simple green tea kombucha. We are forever making batches with little variations, but our basic recipe involves brewing eight green teabags in 700ml of boiled water with eight tablespoons of sugar. Mix until the sugar dissolves, and leave it to brew for 20 minutes.

Take the teabags out and fill with a further litre of cool water to bring it down to room temperature. In a large jar, add the mixture with your SCOBY and seal with a muslin cloth and string. Store in a dark cupboard.

After three to five days, you can strain your mixture and keep it in the fridge, ready for drinking. Be sure and keep a little liquid in your big jar to keep your SCOBY moist (the SCOBY will keep for a few weeks).

It’s that simple! After a while you can experiment with second fermentations. Lundies House general manager Marta tells us that chamomile kombucha with honey in the second fermentation is delicious. Fresh fruit juice (excluding citrus) will also make a delicious, slightly fizzy drink.

For the cocktail

Simply add ingredients to a heavy tumbler with ice and stir gently with a sprig of rosemary for a few seconds.