Scotland Burns

Burns Night is Friday, 25 January.  Burns Night is to Scotland what Thanksgiving is to Canada and the USA.

I just bought my "fresh" haggis from the butcher.  I've made my own haggis in the past (using my grandmother's recipe - a German variant).  But with several hours of prep time though, it's much easier to have the butcher make it.  Before the Scots announced their drive for independence, it was easier to find haggis in the grocery stores.  This year (2013), it seems to be invisible.

Haggis will be the dinner's main course.  In more traditional homes, the haggis is addressed with a poem.  You could say that the address is similar to the prayer before the Thanksgiving meal.  But, it's more like an irreverent Passover ma nishtana, the "four questions" reciting the story of Passover.

Haggis is a meat dish that folks tell me requires a special palate.  I find its taste similar to Lebanese kibbeh or maybe a Turkish köfte.  That description probably doesn't help you, does it?  With its mixture of meats and grains, it has a nutty, savory taste.  If you don't know what's in it or what it is in, it's easy to eat.  If you know, well ... raise the mental blockades ... it can be like eating a pet dog or pet cat served in its own gut.

My partner, D, dreads this night of all nights.  Haggis, he says, is a ruminant regurgitated to be chewed again, which isn't entirely untrue.  And, offal, he says, is simply mis-spelled.  He refused to eat it last year, so this year he'll be served pseudo-haggis, a lean beef mince mixed with pre-cooked pin-head oats, cooked in a mini-tajine.

I also doubt he'll not take either the Balvenie or the cullen skink .  A moderately aged Balvenie, from NE Scotland's Speyside coast, is comparable to a well aged Kentucky bourbon. Sacrilege that it is, we may break open the King's Ginger instead.  The King's Ginger is English.  It represents everything Scotland remembers and both loves and hates: Empire.  It's a liqueur with the bite of fresh ginger and the pucker of a tart lemon.

And, cullen skink?  "Skink" is the Scots word for "shank".  Cullen skink is a light, creamy soup made from smoked haddock and potato.  I make my own skink using a French bisque method that liquefies the fish and potatoes.  So rich; it is a heart-attack in a soup cup!  Takes forever as well, but it can't be bought outside the 3-star Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, in Oxfordshire, where it requires a Monarch's ransom.  Le Manoir, in any case, doesn't do "takeaway".

For desert last year, we had cranachan -- a kind of pudding with raspberries and whisky.  D. refused that too.  I think he starved, actually.  I'm thinking of going with clootie this year -- a kind of brownie with baked-in fruits, served with whipped cream and, yes, more whisky.  I'll have shortbread ready, as a back-up.

Here, in advance, is to Scotland.  Scotland, you gave my country so much -- mostly Kentucky and Tennessee.