Haggis is one of those things that, for me at least, has been a strange and almost legendary dish. Coming from Canada it’s something that is rarely ( ok never ) eaten unless one had some sort of recent Scottish lineage.
It just so happened that Burns Night recently passed with all of the usual folks out in force to drink whiskey like they needed an excuse, to wax poetic and to do their best Billy Connelly impression. In the days approaching I noticed surprisingly frequent appearances of haggis in the “normal” grocery shops which gave me warning of the impending festivus; much as news stories of over enthusiastic fireworks displays conveyoring small children into A&E alert us to the upcoming Guy Fawkes celebrations.
What was different this year from my previous 14 spent in the UK is that my wife decided to buy one with the notion that we would “address the haggis”.
My first natural question was… “What exactly is Haggis?”
I didn’t mean the answer to be “The legendary Scottish dish commonly associated with Robert Burns.” I wanted to know exactly what it was made of. I could look at wikipedia or the packaging. Below is the all star list of ingredients for my beast…
Haggis: Pork Lungs, Oatmeal, Pork Fat, Pork Liver, Pork Heart, Onions, Salt, Rusk, Spices
Essentially if it were legally possible I don’t think they would publish this list. It’s a who’s who of what normally bypasses anything we would knowingly eat with the possible exception of the ironically Scottish sounding McDonalds meal.
Potentially because it was a pre-made version, the cooking instructions were relatively straightforward. 2 hours at 190 degC. Or gas mark 5 for us old-school farm house types. I still almost screwed it up because I took off the packaging and saw it was wrapped in a nice tight zeppelin shape and popped it in the oven. My wife, knowing I was part Canadian and part idiot told me that the outer layer was in fact plastic. Note that apparently good haggis is wrapped in something wonderfully thematic like the animal’s stomach. I guess I had the basic superstore haggis so I rescued it from the oven, cut the goop from the fake stomach and popped it back into the oven for 2 hours. That’s it. Easy right!
2 hours later…the verdict?
http://instagram.com/p/yXn05zw5sY/
It’s good. It’s better than good actually. It was very good! Clearly there is a reason for the longevity of the haggis beyond the standard obligatory yearly visit to traditionland. It does seem that working on a recipe of what is essentially spiced detritus for 600 years works. This was a store bought cheap one as well. Imagine how good a proper one would be. It’s going on the list followed shortly by a haggis from scratch.
Time for a whiskey.
