A bounty of wee drams

I don't drink much. Because of that, it isn't hard to get me tipsy. And I don't know all that much about booze, or wine, or beer.

But I'm sure that for many foodies, it's important to explore not only the cuisine, but the accompanying beverages that the culture has on offer. For one thing, we're sometimes on vacation when we travel, and drinking adds to the festivities. When we're traveling on business, drinking adds a celebration to a normally onerous workweek.

A person can't really visit Scotland's Highlands without noticing the many small distilleries of single-malt Scotch. Though spirits are no doubt less popular now than decades ago, these whiskies still hold an exalted stature with most of us, even me.

In some ways, the small, local distilleries are like the micro-breweries that multiply as fast as yeast. But note that these distilleries are often the only business in tiny towns against a backdrop of sheep-dotted moors, in wet, chilly summers and colder, darker winters. So I wonder if it's less like fashionable micro-brew and more like moonshine, a tough-life survival strategy.

If you were so inclined, you could design a whole vacation around touring various distilleries, and many people do. Some of the tours charge about what you'd pay for the dram they give you at the end of the tour. Some tours are free, as they're sure to sell some souvenirs -- a bottle or two of the premium aged stuff, or drunken truffles or cake, or a tee shirt or keychain.

I didn't know squat

One of the adventures available to the self-catering traveler is to buy seafood right from the fisherman. We were in Jura, and happened upon a fishing boat as he was unloading his catch. I'd thought that he'd caught langoustines, but he told me that they were actually a crustacean called squat lobsters.

The fisherman was yanking them in half, tossing the recognizable head and claws back into the sea, and keeping the rolled-up tails in a large bucket. Like all things British (think "tatties and neeps"), they're often called squatties by the locals, although I generally don't like to get too friendly with my food.

We tossed the tails in a pot of boiling water (much more fun than listening to live lobsters click and scream), and waited for the water to boil again. Peeling and deveining them was an easy operation, because you can tug on the tail gently and the vein comes out as well.

Squat lobsters are often passed off as langoustines, but they're actually more closely related to hermit crabs.

Rushing through a cuisine? Opt for a two-fer

It's always fun to see a regional dish interpreted by a local chef. So I enjoyed seeing "bubble and squeak" (a stew traditionally made of Sunday roast leftovers) in Shetland, made with lamb instead of beef, and fish and chips made with haggis instead of haddock.

International foods are widely interpreted into Scottish Gaelic as well. In Oban, we visited an Italian restaurant with an all-seafood menu, and more fish in the kitchen than live in the entire Adriatic Sea. And my starter (don't call it an appetizer) at a waterfront bistro nearby was Indian pakora, made with haggis.

Truth to tell, pakora is mostly spices and fried batter, so the haggis taste was relegated to the background. But all of this chef experimentation makes for lots of variety on menus. Though I've been in this same area for about five or six weeks, the cuisine continues to surprise and enchant me.

Scalloped scallops

When you travel, you're often surprised by the look of familiar food. In western Scotland, you often find diver scallops on the menu. They're tender and sometimes surprisingly large. But the most striking attribute for me is the "wee orange bit" (as described by my server), which as near as I can tell, is the muscle that connects the animal to its shell.

At home, that muscle is a tough membrane that we remove before cooking them. On these Scottish scallops, it's a delicate balloon that folds up in your mouth. Of course, it's one of those foods that makes you figure that the first guy to take a bite when he discovered it must have been pretty hungry.

In defense of pub grub

The pub is to the UK what the diner is in America, a place for home-cooked food without pretension. But the UK pub scene is undergoing a bit of a transformation with the emergence of what they call "gastropubs." Now no pub appears to be so presumptuous as yet to call itself a gastropub, but we've already visited lots of places that go well beyond shepherd's pie and bangers and mash. There are often salads, even.

Here's an example, from Tobermory on the island of Mull. Because so much of Scotland is on the sea, fish and shellfish are often prominent in the local cuisine. This salad cost in the range of a lunch salad in the US, and it's just covered with crabmeat. In the center is a puddle of prawn (shrimp) salad, and guarding the whole dish are a pair of stern-looking langoustines. Pub grub, indeed.

Delighted in Inverness

It's still too soon to draw conclusions about the whole of mainland Scotland, or for that matter, the whole of Inverness. But so far, lunch has been an absolute pleasure.

Many places in town offer a 2-course lunch most days, and the sweet spot for price is from £5.95 (about $9.00) to £10 ($15 for two courses.) When we travel, it's common for us to have a big lunch: we're already out, it's often half the price of dinner, and you never get starved for dinner, so you can be a little healthier about it. These two-course lunches let the restaurant show off great dishes using local ingredients, and they allow me to taste twice as much of the local cuisine than I might have otherwise. The photo is of my first course at Cafe1 (on the high side at £9.50), billed as "chicken, leek and mushroom terrine, wrapped in Parma ham with a saffron dressing." Our first lunch, at the Mustard Seed for £5.95, was equally satisfying.

I could get used to this.

A Word about Haggis

It's Scotland, so haggis is on the list of experiences to have. For some time, I erroneously believed that haggis was just for tourists, but that is entirely untrue. Haggis is as common to cuisine in these parts as sausage is anywhere else.

I've tried it twice now, and I think that both times it was in its very usual appearance. The first was in a "mixed grill" in Orkney, with egg, sausage, bacon, black pudding, mushrooms, and tomato. The haggis there was offered in a slice next to the slice of black pudding.

This was also my first taste of black pudding, also called blood pudding, which is equally an equally accurate description of its appearance and content. The haggis had a similar taste to Philadelphia's scrapple, except it was somehow drier, probably due to its grainy consistency. It's made from similar ingredients and simmered for hours in a sheep's stomach (yum!), and it contains oatmeal (which explains its graininess.)

Today I tried haggis again, this time in one of its more native surroundings. It was served in a pile on a plate, and accompanied by a mixture of potato and turnip called "clapshot." Clapshot is an Orkney dish, so it originated not very far from this northern mainland town Wick.

Though I'm presumably in a place where English is the native language, mashed potatoes are never called "mashed potatoes"; they're almost always called "tatties." Turnips are never called "turnips", even though everybody knows that's what they're called to everyone but them. In polite company, such as the supermarket, they're called "Swedes". On menus, they're "neeps". So you'll often see a dish served with "tatties and neeps", which sounds like it's on the menu at Hooters.

Here's the luncheonette version of haggis with a mountain of clapshot and a sprinkling of peas. I couldn't finish it because of its huge size. But I'd order it again. Just not tomorrow.

And for more on the luncheonette that served this, one of the lunches available was macaroni and cheese. Alongside it you have your choice: baked potato or chips (fries). At least my peas are green.