Recipe of the day

Sue Lawrence lives in Edinburgh and has made her name as a food writer by specialising in her native Scottish cooking. She writes a regular column for Scotland on Sunday but is more familiar down South for her stint in the mid-Nineties at the Sunday Times.

She is particularly good on baking (the subject and name of her first book) but has just published Scottish Kitchen (Headline, £20), which offers 100 modern recipes using traditional ingredients.

The book kicks off with a great chapter called Hearty Breakfasts, with such dishes as porridge with stewed rhubarb, smoked trout hash, tattie scones with bacon and black pudding with pan-fried apples.

It sticks to an occasion theme, following with wonderful tea-time treats and a lochside picnic, as well as ideas for celebrating Hogmanay. But for me the soul of the book is called You'll Have Had Your Tea?.

It's an old Glasgwegian joke, deriding the alleged hospitality of Edinburgh's genteel residents, but is full of imaginative ideas, such as smoked haddock souffles with herb oil, lobster, chips and mayo and Isle of Mull cheese, and ham bread-and-butter pudding.

My great aunt, who lived Edinburgh, used to make enough cakes, scones and sandwiches to open a tea shop, so decided to choose something sweet from Sue's book.

It was a toss-up for me between the seven-cup pudding with butterscotch and this seasonal crumble, and the crumble won. Sue uses Argentinian dulce del leche, which is sold in jars and available from most supermarkets, but I made my own following her recipe from the seven-cup pudding.

Gently heat together 75g muscovado sugar, 50g butter, 150ml double cream and a dash of vanilla extract until the sugar dissolves, then boil for three minutes. The leftovers won't hang around long, so try it over vanilla ice cream or rice pudding.

Ingredients

To Cook