I am based in Auldearn, at a country house hotel called Boath House. It’s an eight bedroom Georgian mansion set in 20 acres of woodland with its own lake, and I’ve been here now about 12 years - since the day it opened as a hotel

The restaurant at Boath House is a very small intimate restaurant, we do a maximum of about 28 covers, one sitting and a set 6 course daily changing menu.

Obviously everything is prepared daily. Everything is sourced as local as possible. I like to forage a lot as well so we go out and pick a lot from the woodlands and hedgerows. We have a very good kitchen garden and we’ve just recently acquired some chickens so we have a lot of eggs at the moment as well. I just love it round here because the area is so rich with produce as well.

My ideal starter would be for this time of year slow cooked salmon with beetroot jelly and quails eggs. We use Wester Ross salmon and we serve with a beetroot jelly set with seaweed, quails eggs and a little micro herb salad from the garden.

Main course at this time of year would have to be roe deer saddle on a bed of crushed peas. The roe deer saddle we quickly pan-fry as well so it’s very nice and pink and finish it we’ll give it a little dusting of liquorice which brings out the flavour of the deer really well with a nice livery texture. The deer comes from just down the road here from Grantown. We put a little slow roasted onions with the dish which is also from the garden and then we would just scatter around the dish.

The dessert for me would have to be rhubarb with a spiced bread parfait. We juice some of the rhubarb then we put in a little bit of  Crabbies Ginger Wine just to give it a touch of ginger to it. Then we serve that with spiced bread parfait - a ginger cake which we then slice up and dry out in the oven, grind that down then make a parfait and fold that in. We vac-pack the rhubarb and slow cook for about 20 minutes so it’s still very nice and crunchy but cooked through. To finish we serve with all the off-cuts of the rhubarb we make that into a sorbet and toss that across the rhubarb.

I ended up here in Edinburgh over two and a half years ago, I came from Turnberry Hotel in Ayrshire where I was executive sous chef, I worked there for two and a half years. Prior to that I was in London for nine years all chefing.

Something that I would think is perfect at this time of year is a nice grilled Scottish Langoustine Nicoise with a very light salad. Three langoustines taken out of the shell, lightly grilled off and with very fine potato, fine bean, black olive salad, and with something a little bit unusual wasabi mayonnaise, just to add a different flavour in there. All our Scottish langoustines come from the West Coast of Scotland -  at this time of year they’re lovely and fresh.

Main course would be a loin of Scottish venison, lovely cauliflower cream puree, a little shallot tartin and some fresh spinach with a nice cassis and blackcurrant sauce.

For dessert I would probably do something simple, something very tasty  - an Eton Mess would be nice, simple to do, anybody could make this at home. Whipped cream with crushed meringue, fresh strawberries sliced up, a little bit of strawberry puree and a scoop of vanilla ice-cream, that’s just fantastic, perfect end to any meal.

The Edinburgh Sheraton is a very nice dining experience in a relaxed atmosphere, very informal, very attentive, helpful service.

The restaurant here in Edinburgh features a lot of dishes involving regional local ingredients around Scotland. We look to create a menu that’s enjoyable to eat. Quite a lot of our dishes are classical French preparation and a lot of seasonal products

We are in the middle of summer so, I’d like a nice cold easy-to-eat starter and one that we’ve currently got is crab from Loch Fyne, - very popular. We take the white crab meat from live crabs which are cooked that day. They are mixed with a small amount of fresh dill and some pepper from the Basque region of Spain, this gives a slight spiciness to it. The dish is very simply dressed with some locally grown red radishes served with a salad on the top, that’s your starter.

Main course, well I guess it’s a piece of Buccleuch beef. Scotland is renowned for the quality of its beef. Buccleuch beef, served roasted and with a selection of wild mushrooms. We’re right in the middle of the season for Scottish girolles, beautiful little golden mushrooms, served sautéed with the beef and finished with a little touch of Szechwan pepper. The beef is hung and matured for over 28 days. We’ve got the best part of the fillet all trimmed down so you’ve got the prime piece of the meat there. It’s a good selection of seasonal Scottish products on your plate.

I guess the dessert would be a soufflé. A classic but one that’s very popular, a Grande Marnier soufflé, so we’ve got orange flavour throughout, and served with a nice orange sauce, it’s classical to look at, classical to eat.

Anyone looking to take up cooking as a career should consider college as the first option. It does get you in there and gives you the basic understanding of health and hygiene which is essential to know when you go into a professional kitchen. I would suggest that you should look at somewhere local to start. Research the restaurant or hotel that you want to apply to. Make sure that they are buying in fresh ingredients and find out a bit about the chef. That’s the first step. Once you’ve found yourself a job, work in as many of the sections as you can, the veg garnish and the meat and fish. And then aim your standards as high as you can. Go to the best restaurants, the best hotels, learn from the best chefs, work with  the best ingredients.

We’ve got a great selection of restaurants and hotels in Scotland to work in as well as to broaden your horizons. And it is now such a global product that it could take you to many different parts of the world.

Other options, well cookery schools are very good ways to learn. They give you a more acute and accelerated style of learning. But you can’t really replace the presence of being in a professional kitchen with the atmosphere and the place that you work at.

It’s a long process to learn to be a chef, don’t be in a rush to achieve the level of a head chef, take your time and learn from the best.

I have been at The Old Course Hotel for just a couple of months. I came back up from London after spending over 4 years at Cameron House on the West Coast of Scotland.

This time of the year, during summer, I would suggest beef carpaccio which is a whole fillet of beautiful Scottish beef gently sealed off just on the outside for about 30 seconds right round so you get a dark edge. I then roll it in a layer of Szechwan pepper very finely ground, just a very thin layer, to give it a little bit of a different hit. Once it’s rolled, we wrap it tight in cling-film to get a perfect round shape. Then we pop it in the freezer for a couple of hours to firm up. As it is carpaccio you slice it very thin. It’s easier to slice once its been in the freezer and it should be a paper thickness. Serve that with a beautiful light salad, lots of herbs including wild garlic leaves which we were using earlier in the season and some nice rocket leaves to give it a nice peppery flavour. Served with a little bit of dressing, lemon juice, some olive oil …nice, simple and light, the beef carpaccio is then sliced and goes round the edge of the plate slightly overlapping. We brush that with some of the dressing, there’s a touch of pepper in there just to give it a bit of spice. And then the nice herbs with garlic leaves in the centre of the plate. I keep one or two of the garlic leaves separate and I deep fry those so that they get a nice crisp texture and just use that to garnish it on top. Nice, wild flavours in there, and with a peppery marinade it is nice and fresh, and brings out the flavour of the beef.

We have lots of beautiful fish around the coasts of Scotland and in the rivers. I like to use Sea Bass this time of the year. Nice wild bass, I like to use a 2-3 kilo fish, so you get some nice meaty fillets which cook nice and moist. Scaled and nicely filleted, we then score lightly on top, add a touch of lemon zest rubbed underneath the skin with a bit of olive oil, just gives it a bit of freshness but not overpowering the delicate flavour of the fish. And I cook that on a beach stone.

When I go walking my dog with my daughter on the beach, we see the beautiful big beach stones there, we occasionally collect a nice big one and then put it in the oven for five or six hours, so its really roasting hot on about 200 degrees. Lightly season the sea bass with a little sea salt and some pepper and then rub some olive oil, just a tiny bit on both sides of it and then cook it on the stove, skin side down first just sealing it off  so that the skin is nice and crisp and then just turn it over cooking it skin side up. It takes 6-7 minutes in the oven to cook it - nice and moist and opaque in the middle. I like to serve that with celeriac, something which is grown a lot in Scotland. I’m doing the celeriac 3 ways, making a third of it into puree, a third sliced very thinly on the mandolin and made into celeriac crisps and then another third cooked into a fine julienne. I’m just cooking it in some boiling salted water for about 30 seconds, refreshing it, draining it mixing with some mayonnaise and some chives to make a remoulade.

We present this on the plate, divide into 3 equal parts and then just sit the sea bass on the celeriac puree, and just to finish that you’ve got 3 nice flavours there, the celeriac and the fish, I use something which is a bit different, lamb juices. Make a stock from lamb and finish it off with some lamb fat, which we put into a pan and render down. Add that to the lamb stock at the last minute so it gives a split effect and lightly drizzle some round the dish. The flavour from the lamb juices go well with the sea bass and celeriac. The combination is beautiful, nice, fresh, not to heavy.

For dessert we’ve got some beautiful rhubarb which grows on the fairways on the 17th hole by the pond. This will be very prominent next year with Open being here. We use the rhubarb and some elderflowers also growing there, and we make a rhubarb and elderflower compote. And, just a little twist on the traditional Eton mess dessert, we use some meringues which we crush down. We then add some cream into which we put some elderflower puree and then make layers of the elderflower puree, cream, meringue in a glass. You get about nine, ten layers in the glass, of the beautiful ruby red from the rhubarb, the white of the cream. I like the meringues to have a touch of colour on them, so you get 3 contrasting colours which we layer up and serve like a knickerbocker glory in a big tall glass, with a tall spoon. It’s a beautiful combination of those fruit and flowers grown on site, working well with the sweetness of the meringue and the fresh double Scottish cream that we use.

We have three restaurants at The Old Course Hotel. We have the traditional Jigger Inn which was the original railway station when the hotel was built as a transport hotel back in the late 60’s. There we serve good quality Scottish produce, simply done, in line of what you expect at a good quality pub food. It has a nice informal atmosphere with some great local ales and is a great place for families and especially for golfers who love that after they’ve played 18 holes on the Old Course. We also have Sands Restaurant which is our seafood and grill, very prominent in Scottish produce -  beautiful lobsters, beautiful steaks. We are a member of the Scottish Beef Club. Our beef is recognised as top quality Scottish beef from a local farmer. Our beef is hung for a minimum of 21 days. Our lobsters come from a man who gives us a call when he’s out fishing, to see how many lobsters we want. We get them within 5-6 hours later in the kitchen. They’re beautiful and fresh. We also get lots of crab, langoustine … there’s a beautiful seafood platter on our menu, one of our signature dishes.

On the forth floor of the Hotel we have our 3 rosette fine-dining. The fourth floor is now becoming quite exclusive with our whisky taster room and our deck over looking the golfers playing on the 17th tee. In the fine dining Road Hole restaurant, we serve the more classical, quality food in a more formal environment, with views overlooking the beach and the golf course of the Old Course Hotel.