Recipes: Iced honey and whisky creams | Honey and grain mustard sauce | Honey sweet and sour monkfish

While at the Highland Show at the end of June I spent some time with Scarletts, the great honey producers from Meigle in Perthshire.

They told me how their honey production in the five-week run-up to the show had ceased, due to the endless rain washing away pollen, essential for their bees in order to make the honey. Honey production has, mercifully, picked up since then, but it made me realise how fragile the honey world is, and how we should value it much more than we do.

Iced honey and whisky creams

The ramekins of iced whisky and honey creams can be brought straight to the table from the freezer – the spirit content prevents them from freezing like marble, so they can be spooned straight away. These are delicious eaten as they are, accompanied by vanilla biscuits, but they are also very good with any fruit compote on the side. They do contain alcohol from the whisky, so you need to be sure that all who will eat them can take alcohol in its raw state.

Serves 6

½ pint/285ml double cream

4 large egg yolks

4 tablespoons of honey – dip the spoon into a jug of newly boiled water in between spooning the honey; that way the honey slips from the spoon with ease

4 tablespoons of whisky – I leave the choice of which whisky up to you

Spoon the honey into a saucepan and heat it over moderate heat, until the honey is very hot.

Whisk the yolks in a large bowl, and pour the very hot honey in a thin, steady stream as you whisk. Continue to whisk until the yolks and honey mixture is very thick, much greater in volume, pale in colour, and cool.

Whip the double cream, adding the whisky. Whip until the whisky cream is thick but not too stiff.

When the yolk mixture is almost cool, fold together the two mixtures. I find a flat whisk the best gadget to do this thoroughly. Pour into ramekins, and put the ramekins on to a tray, and freeze. When frozen, cover each ramekin with kitchen wrap and put them back into the freezer.

Garnish, if you like, with a twist of lemon peel before serving.

Honey and grain mustard sauce

Serves 6

2 onions, skinned, halved and finely diced

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 pint/570ml stock – I use a good stock substitute such as Marigold stock powder

1 tablespoon of grain mustard of your choice – beware too vinegary a mustard

1 tablespoon of honey

2 tablespoons of finely chopped parsley, to be added a minute or two before serving the sauce, in order to preserve both its colour and its taste

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan and fry the finely diced onions over a moderate heat for several minutes, stirring from time to time, until the onions are very soft, transparent, and just beginning to turn colour at their edges. Then add the stock, and let the stock simmer gently until reduced to half in amount. Stir in the mustard and the honey and simmer for 3-4 minutes. Just before serving, stir the finely chopped parsley through the sauce, then serve the sauce with hot ham, grilled pork chops, roast duck – with anything, meat or game, or offal such as braised ox tongue.

Honey sweet and sour monkfish

You can substitute any firm-fleshed fish for the monkfish if you prefer.

Serves 6

2lb/900g monkfish, trimmed of its outer membrane, and the fish cut into chunks approx 1in/2.5cm in size

3 tablespoons of olive oil

2in/5cm of root ginger, outer skin cut off and the ginger diced finely

2 fat cloves of garlic, skinned and diced finely

½ teaspoon of dried chilli

2 lemongrass stalks, chopped very finely (you may find it easier to pulverise them in a food processor – easy if you have one of the small bowl and blade attachments)

3 tablespoons nam pla – fish sauce

finely grated rind of 2 limes and their juice

2 tablespoons of honey – dip the spoon into very hot water before spooning, to help the honey slip easily from the spoon

A large handful of coriander, chopped

1 teaspoon of salt

In a bowl, mix together the honey, fish sauce, grated lime rinds and juice, salt and chopped coriander.

Heat the olive oil in a wide sauté pan over moderate heat, and add the finely diced garlic, ginger and finely diced lemongrass, and the pieces of monkfish. Stir and fry gently together until the fish turns opaque – about 4-5 minutes. Then add the contents of the bowl, and mix all very well together. Cook over the same moderate heat for about 5 minutes before serving from the pan. This is good with boiled basmati rice, and with a green mixed-leaf salad.