Lobster from the sea, lamb from the estate, and a summer that's still going

There are moments in a career where you stop thinking about cooking and just cook. Scotland gave me two of those this year and I'm still thinking about both of them.

Balgone Estate — where the produce does the work

Balgone is a stunning estate in East Lothian. The kind of place that makes you understand why people fall in love with Scottish countryside — rolling, generous, completely unhurried. I was there for a supperclub and from the moment I arrived the ingredients started telling me what to cook.

Scottish produce at its best doesn't need much. It needs respect. The beef is extraordinary — deep, mineral, grass-fed in a way that you can actually taste. The game is rich and earthy. The vegetables from the kitchen garden had that quality you only get from things that have had time to develop properly, without being hurried along. I kept the cooking simple. Fire, good fat, seasoning, and a few finishing touches from the KAI BY MATBLAK range. The kind of cooking where you get out of the way and let the ingredients do what they were always going to do.

The room was full of people who really know their food. That always pushes you. Not in a pressured way — in the way that makes you sharper, more present. A good crowd is part of the dish.

"Scottish produce at its best doesn't need much. It needs respect."

The lobster boat — Belhaven Bay

Then Belhaven Bay happened. And I'm still not sure I have the right words for it.

I cooked on a lobster boat on the east coast of Scotland. In the wind. With lobster pulled straight from the water and into the pot within minutes. If you've never cooked with lobster that fresh — it's a different ingredient. The flesh is firm, sweet, almost translucent. It hasn't had time to lose anything. There's no compromise in it.

We filmed the whole thing. The content drops very soon and I think it's some of the best footage we've ever shot. Water, fire, the best shellfish in the country, and a cook that happened entirely in the moment with no room for overthinking. That's the kind of cooking I love most.

The Maple Smoked Pineapple Vinegar went on the lobster at the end. A few sprays. The smoke and the sweetness lifted it without changing what it was. That's what the vinegar is for — not to transform a dish, but to reveal it. Fresh lobster doesn't need transformation. It just needs that final note of acid and smoke to bring everything into focus.

"The lobster hadn't had time to lose anything. There's no compromise in that kind of freshness."

What I've been cooking this summer

Scotland was two moments in a summer that has been full of them. There was a Hangi earlier in the year with Hunter Gather Cook — food buried in the earth, cooked the way my tīpuna (ancestors) cooked it. Slow, intentional, communal. It reminded me what food is for before it's anything else.

A double birthday lunch where the Big Green Egg ran all afternoon and the pork butt went on low and slow at dawn. A supperclub at Blok Knives in London. A pontoon dinner on the Camel Estuary in Salcombe. A Māori masterclass that I'm still proud of. Download Festival with no clothes — a story for another time.

The common thread in all of it is fire. And the belief that the best ingredient in any dish is attention.

What's coming

The lobster boat content drops very soon — keep an eye on Instagram. I'll be at Rock Oyster Festival this weekend for a Long Table Banquet alongside some people I have a lot of respect for. Then Fire and Ember Festival in Leeds, Meatopia in London, Big Feastival at the end of August where I've curated a supperclub I'm genuinely proud of — Mel Brown from The Laundry Brixton, Asim Merali from Goldies, and Josh Eggleton MBE. One evening. Three chefs. The kind of dinner that earns its own stories.

There's also something new coming to the Kai range later this year. A salted yuzu rice vinegar I've been developing quietly. It's going to be something different. More on that when the time is right.

And there's a restaurant concept — a close friend's project that I'm involved in from a food development perspective. Launching this autumn. You'll hear about it here first.

It's been some year. And we're not done yet.

— Matt