There is not a lot going on in Scourie. A pub and a petrol station, a few caravans parked on a bluff overlooking the bay, that sort of thing. It is an exposed, one-horse village and, given the barren vastness that is Sutherland, little in the way of a livelihood is to be gained here. This village in north-west Scotland is the centre of operations for a business called Loch Duart Salmon but there is no evidence of it. To find it, slip out the back road (there isn’t really a front road), take a right down to Badcall Bay and there is an old stone building on a pier, a few palettes, three cars, two tugs, a handful of fishing boats. This would appear to be the nerve centre of the operation.
However, bounce across the bay in a launch – on the basic side, a sort of metal box with an engine attached: forget seats or other mod cons – and you meet the real inhabitants. Suspended from a flotilla that might have seen service at the Normandy landings are 14 huge nets. They contain salmon. You know that because before you clamber on to one of the flotilla’s walkways you see them leaping and dancing across the surface.
Once on the gangway, we watch a “swim through” as a net is hauled up, in order to clean it, and to force the fish to amble through to the next pen. Every six weeks the salmon have this enforced move and after three years the fish are “harvested” – a polite bop on the back of the head – and the flotilla is dragged out of the bay. The site is then left fallow for a year until the sea bed is clean and the farm can be re-sited back in the bay.
Duart is run by environmentalists. They appear to like their fish and they are especially proud that they were the first fish farm to get the RSPCA’s “Freedom Food” accreditation and that they worked with that organisation to help set the standard. Whatever one understands of the environmental issues in fish farming – and Loch Duart’s ebullient leader, Nick Joy, claims to address them all – it is a simple and undeniable truth that a happy animal – or fish – will make for better eating.
One environmental issue is quite clear: this area of Scotland is a magnificent wilderness and nothing these well-intentioned – obsessive, really – entrepreneurs are doing is going to change it. This is an almost lunar landscape where what isn’t rock is likely to be bog, and where even the sheep are few and far between. The sight of another car is cause for curiosity and a car stuck behind a camper van is a tailback.
I daresay that, very occasionally, the truck carrying the Loch Duart salmon down to Inverness, some three hours away, causes the odd frustration to the classic car freaks who cruise around these roads that remind one of the 1950s. But that seems a small price to pay.
Rowley Leigh is the chef at Le Café Anglais
rowley.leigh@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/leigh
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Raw salmon with ginger dressing
The simple prescription of soy and wasabi is as good a way of appreciating the flavour of good salmon as any but this more aromatic and less fiery version works equally well. An alternative is simply to serve the salmon with half a lime, a few chilli flakes and a very good olive oil on a thin piece of dry toast. In any case, sometimes it seems a shame to cook it.
Ingredients
2 shallots
1 rhizome of ginger
3 cloves garlic
2 tbs lemon juice
3 tbs dark Japanese soy sauce
3 tbs sunflower oil
350g skinless salmon fillet, cut from the centre
1 dsp chopped chives
Method
Peel and chop the shallots, ginger and garlic very finely – the proportion should be 3:2:1. Macerate in the lemon juice and then mix in the soy sauce and sunflower oil. Cut the salmon into thin slices – the thickness of a pound coin – vertically and at right angles to the fillet, to produce moustache-shaped slices.
Arrange three or four on each very cold plate with a slight gap in between each slice. Stir the dressing well and spoon it in between the gaps of the fish. Sprinkle the chives on the dressing and serve immediately.
