Cooking with Friends in Orkney

​Naked Scampi:  The Real Thing - Unadulterated

A few nights ago we had the pleasure of spending an entertaining evening in the company of Stan Groundwater (founder of Pure Orkney). This was an entirely pleasurable event and not a business meeting so we had a very relaxed opportunity to chat together and cook for the family at the same time.

Like many seasoned business travellers Stan is something of a connoisseur and as an Orcadian has a ponchon for fresh seafood. So it was an opportunity to prepare scampi once again without breadcrumbs, flour and all the nasty additives that normally accompany the British pub food standard version of scampi. We started with fresh langoustine from Kirkwall Bay Shellfish which resulted in forty-five minutes squeezing the shells between finger and thumb to extract the prized delicacy.​

​We sipped a glass of Loire Valley red wine whilst roasting tomatoes and onions and then sautéed them with Torresella Chardonnay. We added crushed capers, herbs, seasoning and a few other ingredients. 

Meanwhile we concluded that the fresh-faced French red needed to breathe somewhat so we temporarily abandoned it in favour of a readily drinkable Rioja.
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Next we added olives, courgettes, celery, carrot, flash-cooked squid tentacles, simmered everything for two more minutes and then added the delicate langoustine tails in their shell-less form. The tails miraculously transformed into naked scampi within a minute or two. Here is an ‘in the pan’ close-up of the result.

​When we served our little gentleman’s kitchen escapade to the family with fresh pasta and broccoli, It looked like this:-

Pure Orkney
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Kirkwall Bay Shellfish