His recipes are hardy, traditional and heavy on the booze and they've made the self-styled Hebridean Baker, Coinneach MacLeod, an international culinary sensation.
Propelling the proud Isle of Lewis cook's rise to fame are his popular TikTok videos that combine recipes, the Gaelic language and traditional Hebridean music and stories.
In his debut cookbook The Hebridean Baker Recipes and Wee Stories from the Scottish Islands, he shares his love of the windswept Outer Hebrides and its culture, stories about his West Highland Terrier, and the family recipes including Granny Annag's Christmas Cake and Aunt Bellag's Duff.
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His Aunt’s duff is the Hebridean version of a clootie dumpling, he tells Nine to Noon.
“It's a boiled fruitcake, which I know doesn't make it sound that special, but for us that is the Hebrides on a plate.”
A Scottish favourite haggis even has a Hebridean variant, he says.
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“I hope you've got a strong stomach when I explain what this is. But simply, what we do is we take the livers of cod and we mix those with beautiful pinhead oats and some onions and various things, then we scoop out the fish's head, we place the mixture into the head and then we boil it in a pan. It is delicious.”
The Outer Hebrides where he lives is closer to the southwest of Iceland than the southwest of England, he says.
“So, we've always looked north. And actually, the word in Icelandic or old Icelandic for the Hebrides was Suðreyar, which means the southern islands.
“So it's funny how people see us in a different ways, to the rest of Britain we’re seen as North but to them we’re south.”
The inhabitants of the Hebrides descend from Vikings, he says.
“They kind of popped down to see us in about the ninth century and decided after a little while that they quite liked it here.
“So, we happily stayed part of the Norse Nordic kingdom for 400 years.”
He doesn’t feel life on the islands is a remote experience, he says.
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“I tell a story about the first First Minister of Scotland, Donald Dewar, when he came to visit the Hebrides, the Isle of Lewis. And he was walking past a croft and there was an old lady working on her land.
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“And he started chatting to her. And he said to her, ‘don't you feel remote?’ And she replied, ‘remote from where?’ Because I think there's always an assumption that you need to be close to your capital city or a big city. And we don't feel like that in the islands.
“We feel we're exactly where we should be.”
Beautiful as the islands are, life is tough, MacLeod says.
“It's a hard place to make a living. Very few people have one job. My brother, for example, is a crofter, he digs the graves, he is a butcher. So, you know, you really have to muck in to make life work on the islands, but it's worth it.”
The idea for the Hebridean Baker came from a visit to his Aunt, he says.
“I was visiting my Aunt Bellag and we were sitting by her lovely stove, while the big duff was bubbling away on the stove.
“And she just started telling these wonderful stories about when she was a teenager and the village closed off the road for the evening, and there'd be somebody with an accordion and they’d all dance, sing songs and tell stories.
“And I thought to myself, I want to make sure that people find out about the Hebrides and so I think the baking is a conduit to promoting the islands for me, because it seemed a great way of talking about the Hebrides through recipes and baking.”
He has embraced TikTok and has garnered a massive audience for his videos – although he suspects his dog might be the real draw card.
“I mean 15 and a half million people have watched my videos, when you're from a village of 30 people in the outer Hebrides, that's quite intimidating.
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“I think 90 percent of people suffer through my recipes just to see the Westie. He definitely is the breakout star of this whole thing, folk absolutely love him.”
What makes him proudest is showcasing his unique island community, he says.
“I've had so many people say that they've started to learn Gaelic after being introduced to the Hebrides from my book or my stories. And yeah, I will do everything possible to make sure that language continues proudly.”
