Emily Scott shares the 'small wonders' of a Cornwall Christmas

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Our cookbook of the week is Sea & Shore: Recipes and Stories from a Kitchen in Cornwall by Emily Scott. To try a recipe from the book, check out: Goat’s cheese and caramelized red onion tartlets; Christmas glazed ham with clementines and cloves; and meringue roulade with clementine curd, cream and passion fruit.

With steely blue seas and dusky grey skies, winter in England’s rugged southwest can be bleak, says author and cook Emily Scott. Though there’s beauty in its moodiness.

“There’s an expression in Cornwall. All the fishermen are like, ‘Oh, it’s a long winter.’ And you just think, ‘Oh, god. Might as well give up now,” she laughs. “It’s a long winter but it’s a long, beautiful winter. And just as you’ve had enough of it, spring appears.”

Scott opens her debut cookbook, Sea & Shore (Hardie Grant Books, 2021), with an ode to winter and the “small wonders” of Christmas before tracing the ebb and flow of the seasons throughout the rest of the year.

Whether threading dried orange slices with string for homemade decorations or making hot artichoke dip and glazed ham with clementines and cloves inspired by her mother, the recipes in Scott’s Noël chapter are a celebration of the sense of belonging rituals can bring.

“It’s just a little part of my book that feels like I’ve turned my fairy lights on. Where you can feel wrapped up and warm,” says Scott. “Most of my recipes are simple and that’s what I wanted to create. So people actually felt they could do it or have a go.”

The holidays can be stressful, but they don’t have to be complicated. For Scott, it’s all about bringing a few elements together, enjoying the process of writing lists and going shopping, and not seeing it as a chore. “Routine can be boring, but rituals can be really good for your soul. So it’s the rituals that I think we need to focus on.”

Growing up one of four children, Christmas was always a busy time, she recalls, but her mother “had lovely traditions” that brought people together around the table. Though not a fan of Christmas commercialism, Scott enjoys decorating the tree, making gingerbread and mince pies: “those things that make you feel nostalgic and good and childlike.”

Scott’s Christmas ham — ready to satisfy a holiday hunger for leftovers at any moment, thinly sliced and stuffed into sandwiches — is based on the one her mother used to make each year. She takes joy from carrying on the tradition and nourishing her own family in the same way.

The importance of nourishing others runs throughout Sea & Shore and plays out at her beachside restaurant, Emily Scott Food, in Newquay’s Watergate Bay. She may be head chef there but would rather call herself a cook: “Being a cook is much nicer because it feels like you’re nourishing and looking after people.”

Twenty years ago, Scott moved to Cornwall after training in London and Burgundy, France. A seaside tearoom came first, then the Harbour Restaurant, at which she honed her skills for seven years.

“I was just doing what I was doing to earn a living. It was that simple. And I think the most important thing — and the hardest thing — is being consistent and quietly getting on with it,” says Scott.

In 2014, she took over the St Tudy Inn, a pub in northern Cornwall, which she sold this summer. Over the years, she has received numerous accolades for her work — including recognition by the Michelin Guide and being named best chef in England’s southwest — and in May, was invited to cook for the world leaders at the G7 Summit.

“I feel like I’ve been cooking for years,” says Scott. “We live in this world of instant gratification, and everyone wants everything. And for me, it’s naturally just unfolded. That’s frustrating in some ways because I’m impatient and very ambitious but I’m also someone that wants to step back as quickly as I want to step forward.”

Enthusiasm “moves the world,” she adds, crediting her ability to “muster enthusiasm up” — even in the most trying of circumstances — to managing teams of people in her restaurants over the years. “Life’s all about making other people feel good, and I don’t necessarily think we do that enough with each other.”

Love brought Scott to Cornwall from the southeast of England in 1999. Though the marriage ended, her affinity for the windswept county has only grown deeper. She often wondered if she should have opened a restaurant in London but is “so pleased” she chose to stay — building a career and raising her three children (Oscar, Finn and Evie) in rural Cornwall. The food scene is among the best-known in the U.K., she says, and just keeps getting better.

“It’s an amazing place to be,” adds Scott. “I think Rick Stein and Nathan Outlaw have had a lot to do with that, just building that huge passion for fish and seafood in this beautiful county that almost feels like it is its own country rather than connected to England.”

Scott sees Sea & Shore as a reflection of her life in Cornwall, and the importance of the connection between land and ocean. The idea of a book had been in her mind for a decade, but the confidence to write it came with age.

In sharing her recipes and stories, she hopes to encourage people to cook and find beauty in simplicity, which has always been her ethos. “(It’s) coming back to simple things, simple ways, simple rituals that just bring you joy. And food has always been there for me in that way. That kind of nostalgic enjoying the moments or the memories or the smells, the senses — everything about something that makes you feel good.”

As Scott writes in Sea & Shore, food isn’t just about meals; it’s about cultivating a sense of place, drawing on memories and creating new ones. “That’s what I’ve become more confident with, actually: being able to say, ‘This is what I think and feel.’ And for me, it’s all about creating those moments, and a lot of those moments are around a table.”

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