Husband and wife, Chris and Rachel Rowley and Chris’s brother Andrew, own and run Ballintaggart Farm at Grandtully in Perthshire, established 2016. Ballintaggart is a cook school with Saturday masterclasses and bespoke workshops, two luxury bedrooms offering B&B, monthly communal dining feasts, a private event space and external catering business.
Feasting
Sharing food is fundamental to all we do here as a business and as a family. We passionately believe that food should be a social occasion, an opportunity to gather people together and share conversations and dishes around the table.
We are enjoying our final communal dining feast nights here at Ballintaggart Farm and we loved sharing a family dinner to mark St Andrew’s Day too – any excuse! We never have to make a special effort to serve up a Scottish menu as we have such great food right on our doorstep in Perthshire so we tucked into locally-caught beetroot-cured salmon to start, organic rib of beef with home grown leeks and sweet potatoes and classic chocolate brownies with tablet ice cream to finish, washed down with local whisky.
Stirring
In past years, I’ve never been organised enough to celebrate stir up Sunday on November 26, to make a Christmas pudding or two with our children, Eva, Anna and Nathaniel. However, having a young family has made it even more important to cherish and share festive traditions so, this year, I made sure to fit it in, using the recipe and top tips of a dear friend who now lives many miles away, stirring from east to west, to remember the Wise Men that visited Jesus in the Nativity Story and then, each making a wish!
Songs to cook to
Around the Sun by REM
An amazing album, filled with memories and emotions and great for this darker, somehow moodier time of year – always with the hope of embracing a slower pace!
@ballintaggartfarm (Instagram)
