Cristine Eastin

A Wee Scottish Cookbook is available just in time to serve up something Scottish for your holiday meals with friends and family.

Feast on twenty recipes inspired by the Highland romance novel Love Inherited. This companion cookbook spans the meals of a Highlander’s day from breakfast to a drink by the fire. But more than serving up food, the author folds in tidbits to place dishes in context of the story and the Scottish culture. Beginning with humble porridge, there are soups to warm the tummy, a hearty stew, main dish pies, and chicken drenched in liqueur. Vegetables, bread, oatcakes, delectable desserts, and a centuries old whisky concoction round out the twenty recipes. In A Wee Scottish Cookbook, ingredients are given in US and UK measurements for cooks on both sides of the pond.

Eating my way around Scotland has been a delicious adventure. So when I wrote the first book in the series A Highland Romance, the characters had to eat some of my favorite foods. As a result, readers got hungry and asked for recipes.

Here, then, in this little companion cookbook, are twenty recipes inspired by my novel Love Inherited.

Food is a thick slice of the Scottish culture in Love Inherited, and when China MacLeish, an American turned reluctant heiress, finds herself dropped into the seaside village of Fionnloch and into Sylvie Blair’s kitchen, culture shock at being offered blood sausage for breakfast almost causes her to dribble coffee down her sweater front. But Sylvie serves up love to heal a wounded heart with every dish she cooks and every cup of tea she pours.

I love Scotland and I love writing about Scotland. My desire is that readers step into the tartan world of marrow-chilling mists and purple-clad hills, of no-nonsense Highlanders who offer a smile and a dram—that they smell the aroma of venison stew simmering on the old Aga cooker, savor shortbread that crumbles over the tongue—and imagine they are there.

Join me on this tasting tour of the Highlands of Scotland.

And consider giving the print edition of A Wee Scottish Cookbook as a gift this holiday season. It’s a lovely bit of Scotland that might inspire a visit to the Highlands.