The book this week is one that many of you will have in your collection. ‘Wild Harvest with Nick Nairn’ is a book that I may think about from time to time, but rarely get out. So, this week I took it from the shelf and flicked through it. I was transported back to my twenties in the mid ‘90s. This is the type of food I still like to cook.

It's a good book—I think this was Nick’s first cookbook—he went on to write more. It is important to me for a few reasons. After cooking on The Royal Scotsman, I was asked to be the chef at Braeval where Nick cooked and these were some of the dishes I was cooking there in 1997, although it feels like yesterday! It was a good time to be cooking in Scotland and Nick was at the forefront of that. He was young, energetic, self-taught and cooked really good food. He was using pigeon and other wild foods that many would steer away from. He had ambition and went on to be a good businessman with Nairns in Glasgow, where I also worked, and several other businesses including cook schools.

All this was a long time ago, but the food still feels fresh to me, and it would not look out of place on a menu at Cafe right now. Nick is a good old friend, and we don’t catch up enough. There's a group of chefs from that time who worked with Nick, who went on to do great things. Nick’s then wife Fiona, really made me feel at home, and used to tell me I looked so much like him, although I am not so sure. The recipes are easy to follow with classic Nick dishes like his carrot, honey and ginger soup, a dish I still make, the Braeval tablet, and his superb saddle of lamb with tomato and basil sauce.

I really enjoyed working at Braeval, it was two years of learning my own style, playing with food, trying to make my own mark, and in beautiful surroundings. It was almost the perfect restaurant, well, almost...