Canned Haggis is almost as good as the real thing
Dinner last night was mostly leftovers from our Burns Night celebration: fried nips, haggis-on-toast, smoked salmon, lake trout on toast points with cotswold cheese, and finally, shortbread with a rather authentic Masala chai we picked up at the British imports store.
The Burns Night we threw Sunday was really fun, thanks to all the people who came to help celebrate:
I had to look up some of the dinner items: I knew neeps, nips, and tatties went with haggis, but I didn't know that nips were parsnips, boiled, chopped, and sprinkled with nutmeg, nor that neeps are "swede" which is what Scots call yellow turnip, which is rutabaga. Well, there you have it. Tatties, of course, are mashed potatoes with a -lot- of milk and butter. In fact, the trick to Scottish cuisine, if I can use that term, is "add more butter". Sort of explains why that side of the family tends to the barrel-shaped.
The menu for the evening:
Appetizers-
Cotswold, Mustard Cheddar, and Cheddar cheese
Smoked lake trout and salmon
Highland oat cakes
Fried Kale (brought by friends, it was startling and yummy)
Mains-
Haggis of two varieties
Cock-a-Leekie soup
Baked meat pies
Onion and Chedder Pasties
Neeps, nips, and tatties
Dessert-
Homemade shortbread of 3 varieties, brought by friends
I mentioned already that there was a run on haggis at the local store, but we found a couple of cans of regular and a couple of cans of vegetarian, warmed them up in the oven and tried to form them into the usual shape, but lacking a proper sausage wrapping it was best to just leave them in their dishes. Once they were hot and dinner was just about ready, I brought them in (I did not pipe them in, to the relief of my neighbors, as I do not own bagpipes at the moment) and read Burns' Address to the Haggis, topping them off with a shot of Oban at the end.
Speaking of Scotch, between my collection and several bottles brought in, we had 2 blended and 12 single malts for sampling, as well as some soft drinks like Burdock&Dandelion Soda, Cloudy Lemonade, and ginger ale. The winners of the night were Lagavulin 12 and Lagavulin 16, with the 12 edging out the 16 for subtlety. The Oban was also very well regarded, as was a slightly rare bottle of Bruichladdich I brought back from a business trip a couple of years ago.
Dinner went over quite well, and nearly 80% of the haggis got eaten, so I feel anybody who wanted to try it got to. I did see a number of people reading the ingredients on the cans carefully ;) It's much less scary when it isn't wrapped in its usual serving vessel, although I must say that coming out of the can cold it looks an awful lot like cat food. We wrapped up the evening with So I Married An Axe Murderer, which has Mike Myers playing his own father in a sort of hyper-nationalist Scotsman sort of way- "If it's nae Scottish, it's crap!"
