Early memories
I’ve never much cared for haggis. I blame this on the time my mum got a bit excited on a trip to Scotland, bought a haggis and made us all eat it. Even though it burst open in the boiling process. It was runny and soupy as well as being made from all the less alluring bits of animal. Historically, Scottish hunters would start with the offal, using the cleaned animal’s stomach as a cooking bag. Minced heart, liver and lungs are mixed with oatmeal, onions, suet, seasoning and spices before cooking. An early zero waste approach, but not one that appealed to 10 year old me.
Time to get over myself, so I did a traditional Burns Night special for one of my Bread Ahead seasonal workshops – I taught my class how to cook their haggis and serve it with neeps and tatties and a whisky sauce to add a wee extra level of deliciousness. We also made a Scottish cranachan for dessert, the creamy, oaty, fruity and lovely.
Burns Night supper
This reminded me of a highly entertaining Burns Night supper I hosted a few years ago. The brilliant Nigel Slater was kind enough to share a recipe for a Burns night compromise. Nigel seems like a very nice person and didn’t actually call it Chicken with a haggis up its arse. I’m not saying that my family and friends are not nice people, but that’s what we all call the dish now.
The festivities
I tried to bring an element of authenticity to my London Burns night. Courtesy of Spotify, we began with Scottish country dancing music, but we very soon tired of that.
The chicken/haggis was accompanied to the table by a bagpipe rendition of Flower of Scotland and then my actor brother read us Rabbie Burns’ Address to a Haggis in his best Scottish accent. We toasted the haggis and then someone decided we should listen only to music with some kind of Scottish connection. This turned out to be a great idea – we began with the Proclaimers and worked our way through Aztec Camera, Texas, a bit of Talking Heads, Ultravox and many, many more. Lena Zavaroni and Deacon Blue both put in an appearance. It wasn’t all good…
The meal
Everyone loved the chicken with haggis – spectacularly tasty and feasible to get it on the table at a reasonable time after a day at work. Once the chicken is in the oven, there’s plenty of time to go and slip into your finest tartan. The sliced neeps and tatties were succulent, just cooked in a little olive oil with some thyme, with the chicken on top. The chicken, from the excellent Hampstead Butcher, was perfect, tender and beautifully complemented by the haggis stuffing, which was a revelation to me: not at all runny and very delicious. Should have invited my mum…
For dessert, which we didn’t need at all, cranachan, of course. I have seen recipes that use yogurt but frankly why do that when you could have lashings of double cream – it’s what Rabbie Burns would have wanted, I’m sure.
A bit more tradition
Before we retired to our beds, we had the essential Toast to the Lassies and so we had to have the Reply to the Toast from one of the “lassies” present and we even managed to finish the evening with our finest attempt at Auld Lang Syne.