Pain (au chocolat).

We've recently been on a search to find the best pain au chocolat in the Haymarket area. The following entry documents our systematic failure and final success:

We first tried the new(ish) cafe on Dalry Road. Dolce Pasticceria is a lovely little place, despite the shop sign which looks like someone threw paint and wadded toilet paper at it. Unfortunately, their pain au chocolate matched the sign. It was terrible, so bad that we almost disqualified it from the competition. The Pasticceria offering was a "sort of" croissant, that had surreptitiously been sliced in half and spread with some form of nutella, several hours or days before. (The chocolate had formed a skin on the top side which prevented the two halves from truly sticking together.) The pastry was completely wrong. It was soft and dry with no hint of butter. The dough had formed air bubbles and a crust almost like a plain yeast bread and there were no flaky layers at all.

Kate: 0 points; P: 0 points

Our second pain au chocolat was from Somerfield. We thought it best to try the supermarket at this point because nothing could look bad after our first entry and we hoped this would prevent any prejudice over it coming from a supermarket bakery. Somerfield's entry was surprising good. The pastry was flaky and buttery, although it had turned a little gluey under the chocolate. It tasted just a supermarket pain au chocolate from France. Supermarket isn't good enough though. It's not that we want the best pastry every; we're looking for something that you might find in any local village or suburban French bakery. Surely someone in Scotland can do it?

Kate: 2.5 points; P: 3.5 points

Our third pain au chocolate came from the Bakehouse Cafe, opposite the Dalry Rd Sommerfield. Given that this cafe sports small French and Italian flags on the sign above the door, we entered with high hopes. Their entry looked rather like a small hedgehog as it had one small nub of chocolate poking out each end of a roll of pastry. The pastry was pretty lousy (check out the oily base) but the chocolate was probably the best thus far. There were big air pockets inside and the outside was hard and had gone all tough and crusty on the ends where the flour had obviously fried solid in the oven because of the excess fat. Obviously, the Auld Alliance did nothing for Edinburgh's bakers.

Kate: 2 points; P: 2.5 points

Our final pain au chocolat (for this round at least) came from Le Marche Francais which is on West Maitland Street just around the corner from the Haymarket pub. This pastry was easily the best of the Haymarket area. It was light and crispy and the chocolate was soft and melty. It also came served with a short black and a french accent which I'm sure helps for a lot of people. I'm still not convinced that this pastry (or any of those that we might find in Scotland) matches up to the local bakery in Loperhet but we'll probably be running out to Le Marche Francais on weekend mornings from now on.

Kate: 3.5 points; P: 4 points

Look out for part 2 of pain (au chocolat) when we head out to explore suburban bakeries in other areas of Edinburgh.

Abroath Smokies

My Lonely Planet guide to Scotland elects Abroath Smokies as Scotland's fourth most important Scottish attraction. That means that before you visit Edinburgh’s old town, before you tour Stirling Castle, before you sip whiskey in a Hebridean distillery or play a round of golf at St Andrews, you should consume an Abroath Smokie.

An Abroath Smokie is a haddock, traditionally smoked over a hard-wood fire. Gutted at sea, the fish are transported to the smoke-house where the first stage of the process is to head and clean the fish. The fish are then salted and packed into barrels (and left overnight). After salting, the fish are washed and their tails are tied together in pairs. The pairs of fish are slung over wooden sticks and suspended over a whiskey barrel, lined with slate to protect from the slow fire of oak and beech. Hessian sacking is placed over the fish, allowing sufficient oxygen to sustain the fire whilst retaining heat and smoke around the fish. Smoking time is usually 30 to 40 minutes.

Last Saturday, Iain R. Spink's Original Smokies from Abroath had a stall at the Edinburgh Farmers market. I usually wander over to Queens Street on a Saturday morning to check out the stalls and breath in the smell of the Roast Crackling from the Reiver Country Farm Foods Stand (although that’s another entry). Other than the Pork smell, the market is often slightly disappointing; the range of produce is sometimes quite limited, excepting an eternal plethora of sausages. This week, the market was wonderfully busy. It was obviously the on-week for most traders, including the elusive Abroath Smokies company. As soon as I turned onto Bread Street, the air had a wood-fire flavour and any thoughts of crackling and apple sauce were forgotten.

Abroath Smokies had set up a row of smoking fires along the verge of Castle Terrace. Freshly smoked fish were cooling on a park bench. The fish had been filleted once they were out of the smoke and all the bones were tossed in a large bin. On other benches and garden edging around the stand, were dozens of people picking the very last flakes from the skin of their smokies. I bought two smokies. I pulled a flake of white flesh from the tail of one (just to have tried it when hot!) then wrapped them up again to have for dinner. The fish was so delicious and so delicate that I was quite tempted to sit down in the middle of Johnston Terrace and eat them both, despite having had a huge breakfast an hour before.

I did reach into my bag for a second flake about half way up to the Old Town, where I was going to meet Hattie. My hand came out of my bag covered in clear, warm juice. The fish were leaking all over the place. I pulled out my wallet, my diary, my camera and my phone, all of which were covered in a sweet sticky liquid. (I know it was sweet because I had a good lick of my fingers!) I then retrieved the fish bag, which continued to drip all over my boots. I really needed something to sop everything up and I badly needed to wash my hands and my phone! I thought of going into the Ness shop to ask for a bag, but I figured that they wouldn’t be very obliging after I’d dribbled smokey fish juice all over their floor. I called Hattie (getting a sticky ear in the process) and asked her pick up a plastic bag and a newspaper for me to wrap the fish in. Thanks to Hattie, the Saturday Scotsman, a granite bench in Tron Square and the teeny tiny bathroom of the Southern Cross Cafe, I was soon cleaned up. (My keys and phone still smell a bit smokey though.)

P and I ate the fish cold for dinner with rocket and shaved parmesan on the side. They were just as good as they had been in the morning – sweet, smokey and salty like the sea. Delish!
I agree with the Rough Guide about the number four attraction in Scotland and would recommend that all visitors to the country try an Abroath Smokie.

Whirlwind visitors might have a hard time getting one though. Unless your Highland's tour stops in Abroath, the only other option is to visit Iain R. Spink at one of Scotland's farmers markets. It is particularly difficult to catch them at the Edinburgh Farmers market as they only come to Edinburgh on the fourth Sunday of the month, if, and only if, there are five Sundays in the month. By my calculations that is about two times in the year.

Other market locations for Original Smokies from Abroath can be found on their website.