Robbie Burns and Thanksgiving!

Just a couple of months till Robbie Burns day! The poets birthday, a freezing January day, a day of unintelligible poetry, folk songs will be committed upon the populace, people will say the Selkirk grace, bagpipes will turn brains to pudding, whisky will flow like…well whiskey, Scottish Country Dancing (If you can call a nun in combat boots swinging you round a room in 4/4 time dancing) will be performed by people who are usually the very definition of sobriety, and of course haggis will be eaten.

Why the haggis? Why the dancing? Why the Drunken Poetry? Because it’s traditional, and we didn’t get where we are today by ignoring traditions. We would be far more advanced, remember the middle ages? The burning of books; leeches and bleeding as the primary medical cures; oppressive state sponsored religion and violent witch trials? Enough about the fifties, on with the traditional traditions in their traditionalness.

Well back at St Joe’s the Sisters served a type of pot haggis. So not really haggis in a sense because it had no skin, it was sheep’s liver, and other bits mixed up together with oatmeal and onions, some pepper and maybe a little thyme, not sure about the last bit though.
As I have mentioned before you can’t get a real haggis in the United States because the government decided that sheep lungs are unfit for human consumption, but chittlins are ok?

For the “Pot Haggis” A pound of chopped or ground liver one or two onions, ½ a cup of beef suet, ½ tea pepper, 1 teaspoon, 2 cups of oat meal, 1 pound of other meat ground, pinch of all spice, pinch of cayenne pepper (Or a few drops of hot sauce) and about half a cup of stock. Mix it all up place in a baking dish, place in a larger baking dish and pour water in the larger baking dish and cover with a lid or foil, bake at 350 until it smells like death about 2 hours.

Ok, so it’s not traditional! But it is very close to the haggis we were served at school, on Robbie Burns’ day, we had barley broth to start, and then sliced beef brisket and mashed neeps and tatties. We would recite the Selkirk grace with Sister McMahan, then one of the lunch ladies would turn on a tape player, that would play auld Lang sang or Scotland the Brave and another lunch lady would come round to each of us with a large hotel pan, and dollop about ¼ cup of oven steamed haggis on your plate. Steaming grey black, and rather rubbery. A ceremonial tradition of boiled entrails and a musical instrument that sounds like the squealing cries of wildebeest being slowly flattened from the hooves up by a steam roller.

Well maybe not that bad, but L@rd it wasn’t good I believe that their version was similar to mine, in that it was oven steamed and did not have the stomach casing. So sad, no little stomach casing. Speaking of stomachs there is a really wonderful recipe for the cooking of tripe.
Tripe? Yes, well, I should know I speak loads of it. Honeycomb tripe cooked in red wine and tomato sauce for several hours till very tender, quite juicy, if you can get over the fact that you are eating hot dog meat before it becomes hot dog meat.

For Afters there was always custard, either a bowl of piping hot tongue burning, mouth scalding, plain custard, or custard on plain sponge cake, custard on un-drained canned fruit salad with the tiny nuclear red strangely tough cherries, custard on custard, rhubarb and or apple crumble, custard with cream poured on top, I still remember the look of doom, I asked if I could not have any custard on my cake.

I could say that the room went silent that the clattering moving line of kids behind me stopped moving, and that the sound of a record abruptly being scratched cut through the air.
It didn’t, what did happen was a very disturbed middle aged lady, of a certain age and girth, in a big flowered shiny vinyl apron and a blue hairnet, with horn rimmed glasses over a face that had seen better days (Well it must have surely?) leaned forward with her large copper jug of steaming yellow frothy eggness and said:

“No custard? “

“None, Please.” Doing my best imitation of Oliver twist and holding out my hand for a bowl of crumble unadulterated by custard, at my wide eyed expression she scowled in a way that made her hair net droop in anticipation over the custard jug.

“Bleeeeaaah…it’s all dry with no custard.”

“I would just rather have it plain, thank you.”

“All right, but you won’t like it.”

Do you know she was right, without the custard it was quite horrid. My Crumble was crumbly, more like ceiling plaster than a nice sweet dessert.

I made a pledge then and there that is the lunch ladies ever said the like again, such as “You’ll be wanting gravy over the silverside now. “Accept their advice; they cooked it they should know.
The Crumbles were however my favorite dessert, rhubarb or strawberry at the top of my list followed by apple at the bottom, bad apple…

Apple? Ok so I just gave away then ending of "DaVinci Code" Really? If you didn't get: "Apple" thirty seven chapters before it happened...well F#$k you. Your problem not mine. Maybe you should have been paying attention in class instead of smoking reefer by the ROCK with the P.E. Teacher. Even if he was hot!

Never mind, that's why you have seven ba$tard children.
Then again if it wasn't for ba$tard children I wouldn't have been born.
Nothing like a night of misplaced passion to create a dynasty.
Hmmm I was going to post a recipe for Scotch Eggs, However I think the recipe for "Pot Haggis" above will suffice.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Se you in December!

Alexander Edwin Main Cadwalladyr Cross Spence-Cotgreave