It has been a difficult few years for Kathleen MacDonald. “An emotional rollercoaster,” she says from her home on the Isle of Lewis
Kathleen’s brother Murdo Alex Macritchie died in 2019 after a three-year fight with pancreatic cancer.
Murdo Alex, a talented chef who spent his career advocating on behalf of his beloved Hebrides, battled right to the end, even competing in grueling running events for charity during chemotherapy.
One of the projects he started during his illness was a cookbook that not only compiled the best of his recipes but also served as a love letter to the Hebridean ingredients that played such an important role Murdo Alex’s cooking.
Murdo Alex died before he could finish the book, at the age of just 42. But his sister was determined this would not be the end.
With assistance from friends, family and Murdo Alex’s wife Michelle, Kathleen spent her lockdown finishing the book.
“It was something I had to do,” says Kathleen, who still finds it difficult to speak about her brother. “For him to have the mindset to just start on something like that while fighting cancer… well, it was something I had to do.”
HAAR The New Hebridean Kitchen to launch next month
The resultant book, HAAR The New Hebridean Kitchen, will be released on December 3 with all royalties going to the Bethesda Hospice in Stornoway and Pancreatic Cancer UK.
The bilingual book – in English and Gaelic – includes photographs and a forward by Murdo Alex along with descriptions of the Hebridean recipes he spent his life collating.
In completing the book, which she did by scouring through Murdo Alex’s handwritten notes, Kathleen found herself once again immersed in her brother’s life.
It was not always an easy task.
“You’re going through everything that he had in mind for the book so it was definitely difficult,” says Kathleen.
“But I just wanted to bring all his ideas and make a tribute to the talented chef that he was.”
The Hebridean chef and the ‘New Heb’ project
Murdo Alex discovered a love for cooking in the Army, which he joined after leaving Lewis at a young age.
When his Army service ended, he worked in kitchens in England and Scotland before opening his own restaurant, Sulair, in Stornoway in 2007.
In the three years that Sulair was open, Murdo Alex created ‘New Heb’ cooking, an idea influenced by the New Nordic cooking revolution in Scandinavia that saw restaurants such as Copenhagen’s Noma take traditional dishes and give them a modern twist.
New Heb and Sulair put Murdo Alex on the culinary map as one of the country’s brightest young chefs. However, the financial crash of 2008 took its toll and Sulair closed in 2010.
Still only 33, Murdo Alex continued to champion Hebridean food in everything he did. Up until his diagnosis, he was a private chef in Suffolk for film director Matthew Vaughn and his wife Claudia Schiffer.
In the meantime, he created pop-up restaurant concept HAAR, which he toured around the country.
HAAR was the embodiment of Murdo Alex’s work – “a complete dining experience driven by outstanding produce and the natural and cultural history of the Hebridean Islands of Scotland,” he writes in the forward to the book that shares the pop-up’s name.
Kathleen, who assisted in HAAR, says: “It was about bringing dishes, old style dishes, dishes that we all know and grew up with but making them into something a bit more special. He just wanted to bring those flavors back.”
A cancer diagnosis that gave Murdo Alex just months to live
It was while working at a HAAR pop-up event on Lewis that Murdo Alex first started feeling unwell.
He returned to Suffolk to see a doctor, and a week later was told he had pancreatic cancer. The doctor gave him 11 months to live, but Murdo Alex, with the help of his strong Christian faith, met his illness head on.
“He coped with it extraordinarily well,” says Kathleen, recalling the cycling and running event her brother competed in in 2018 to raise money for cancer charities.
Murdo Alex was undergoing chemotherapy at the time and kept the race secret from his parents so they wouldn’t worry.
“He had so many rounds of chemo,” remembers Kathleen. “So he had three years rather than just the 11 months.”
‘It’s going to be so emotional for all of us’
When he died on October 17, 2019, he left behind a family devastated by the sudden void in their lives.
Next month, they face yet another reminder of what they have lost when the book comes out. Kathleen, with mum, dad, brother Iain, and Murdo Alex’s wife Michelle, will be at the book’s launch in Stornoway.
It is expected to bring up lots of old memories.
“It’s going to be so emotional for all of us as a family,” says Kathleen. “But we are so proud of everything that he did, and how determined he was.”
One thing Kathleen is sure of is what her brother would think of the book she spent so long putting together on his behalf, and which is set to bring his love of the Hebrides to an audience one more time.
“I think he would love it,” she says.
HAAR The New Hebridean Kitchen is published by Acair Books and available for pre-order from www.acairbooks.com. The book, priced £25, is released on December 3. Royalties go to the Bethesda Hospice in Stornoway and Pancreatic Cancer UK.
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