St Andrews Links Blog

Links chef at European Seafood Exposition

This year, St Andrews Links’ very own Executive Chef, Ian MacDonald, attended the European Seafood Exposition and he certainly had his work cut out.

The European Seafood Exposition and Seafood Processing Europe takes place 23-25 April in Brussels, Belgium. The annual exposition is the meeting place for upwards of 25,000 seafood lovers including buyers, seafood exhibitors, journalists and other seafood-industry professionals. The trade show is by far the largest of its kind worldwide with seafood from over 70 countries on display at this year’s event.

Ian is a member of the Federation of Chefs Scotland and prior to setting off for Brussels the team prepared around 3500 portions of Cullen Skink, which is a thick, Scottish soup made with smoked haddock, potatoes and onions. The Cullen Skink was then vacuum packed, frozen and shipped out to Belgium.

The team put in an extraordinary amount of hard graft, working solidly from 6am until 7pm. Ian and the other chefs were based in the Seafood Scotland Pavilion, one of seven pavilions and certainly one of the most popular. Each day they were expected to cater for 250 guests using a range of products including poached and smoked salmon, hake, haddock, mussels, langoustines and much more!

The feedback from the guests was that the quality of ingredients was superb and the dishes tasted fantastic. The fact that the Cullen Skink had actually been produced in the Links Clubhouse kitchen went down an absolute treat!

Read our blog next time for a full recipe and cooking instructions on how to make some world famous St Andrews Links Cullen Skink of your own.

Cullen Skink is available on the menu at The Castle Course Clubhouse. Visit our website to find out more.

 

Words by Fergus Murphy, St Andrews Links F&B Dept.