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Jonnyboy

Burns Night

Quote:
Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the pudding-race!
Aboon them a' yet tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o'a grace
As lang's my arm.

The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin was help to mend a mill
In time o'need,
While thro' your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.

His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An' cut you up wi' ready sleight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like ony ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin', rich!

Then, horn for horn, they stretch an' strive:
Deil tak the hindmost! on they drive,
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve
Are bent like drums;
Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
Bethankit! hums.

Is there that owre his French ragout
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad make her spew
Wi' perfect sconner,
Looks down wi' sneering, scornfu' view
On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
As feckles as wither'd rash,
His spindle shank, a guid whip-lash;
His nieve a nit;
Thro' blody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread.
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll mak it whissle;
An' legs an' arms, an' hands will sned,
Like taps o' trissle.

Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o' fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies;
But, if ye wish her gratefu' prayer
Gie her a haggis!


Haggis is too excellent a dish to eat once a year, but If you've never tried it, tonight is a good place to start as any.
sally_in_wales

We're doing a belated Burns Night this saturday, complete with frightingingly bright tartan tablecloth, and for some bizarre reson, crackers. (not sure why, but my mum thinks Burns night is a bit like Christmas dinner but with Haggis and whisky instead. ) Not that I mind, I love haggis. Would like to make our own but getting a pluck off the butcher is nigh on impossible, or so Gareth tells me.
gil

I'll be celebrating Burns Night up in Aberdeenshire this year at the weekend, at a full-on Burns dinner and ceilidh. Usually have a haggis dinner and Burns poetry reading at home.

Haggis, mashed potato, mashed swede (separately, not mixed) + greens and rowan jelly
+whisky

If you can't get a fresh haggis from the butcher, I would recommend a McSweens (and their veggy haggis is very good too) as the best of the 'mass-produced' / widely-available pre-packed. Not crazy about Halls myself, but it will do if you can't get anything else.
Fee

Getting my haggis this afternoon....mmmmm, haggis, tatties and neeps...we really should eat haggis more than once a year, it's bloomin lovely (it's catching them that's tricky)!
Jonnyboy

I see mad prince charlie does a duchy version, organic of course. Now they are a bugger to catch.

Shame raspberries aren't in season, cranachan would be the perfect dessert.
mochyn

We don't do Burns Night here, although I love the poetry and the haggis: as it's 25th Jan that means it's Diwrnod Santes Dwynwen: kind of a Welsh Valentine's Day, so it'll be roast chicken with roast spuds and yorkshire puds, carrots, kale, gravy: one of the old chap's favourite meals (just beaten by Steak & Kidney pud, whhich he gets for his birthday next week). And chocolate cake and wine.
Fee

mochyn wrote:
...just beaten by Steak & Kidney pud, whhich he gets for his birthday next week...


Funny, my OH gets Steak and Kidney puds as a special treat too, I can't stand kidney! Do like a suet pud though...mmmm
sean

I quite like haggis, not having any this year though 'cos it would mean a special trip to Barnstaple Sainsbury's. Rabbie Burns was rubbish though basically.
gil

sean wrote:
Rabbie Burns was rubbish though basically.


A tad harsh. Overrated, perhaps.
thos

I bought myself a Haggis for New Year's Eve. It was just for me, as Terri can't stand it. We then decided to have the New Year's Dinner on New Year's Eve (another turkey, as the Christmas one was so good). However, she had one of her dos, and we ended up having egg on toast for New Year's Eve and the turkey on the Day, so the haggis got left.

With an expiry of 16 January, I didn't fancy keeping it until Burns, so I celebrated Epiphany with haggis and whisky.

It was lovely, even though it came from the British Shop, which is a CostCutter.
monkey1973

And here it is. I hope your all eating organic, free range ones?
Sarah D

sean wrote:
Rabbie Burns was rubbish though basically.


Your post is rubbish though basically Laughing Laughing
As Scotland's Bard and national poet, he wrote some of the best poetry to come out of Scotland. A true people's poet, and he penned some of the most romantic lines ever to be set to music.

Please tell me you're not a Mcgonagall man........... Rolling Eyes
sean

No, not a McGonagle fan. Here's a joke anyway:
Tony Blair is visiting an Edinburgh hospital. He enters a ward full of
patients with no obvious sign of injury and greets one.

The patient replies"

"Fair fa your honest sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the pudding race,
Aboon them o' you take your place,
Painch, tripe or thairm,
As langs my airm."


Blair is confused, so he just grins and moves on to the next patient.

The patient responds:

" Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it,
But we hae meat and we can eat,
So let the Lord be thankit."


Even more confused, and his grin now rictus-like, the PM moves on to the
next patient, who immediately begins to chant:

"We sleekit, cowerin, timorous beastie, Thou needna start awa sae hastie, Wi
bickerin brattle."

Now seriously troubled, Blair turns to the accompanying doctor and asks
"What kind of facility is this? A mental ward?"


(wait for it)



"No", replies the doctor. "This is the serious Burns unit."
tahir

Laughing
hardworkinghippy

Laughing

...and total respect Sean if ye wrote aw that oot yersel...
sally_in_wales

We're doing St Dwynwyns day chinese takeaway (so he doesnt have to cook) washed down with Scotch. Hows that for mixng yer metaphors!
dpack

Laughing nice one sean
mc sweens are nice
haggis is for life not just for burns night Cool
Fee

Mmm...haggis was great, and even managed to convert someone who said they didn't like haggis...turns out she'd never tried it!
Fee

mochyn wrote:
Diwrnod Santes Dwynwen: kind of a Welsh Valentine's Day


I knew it rang a bell, mentioned it me OH and he reminded me who she was, we've visited her island several times, it's lovely there Very Happy
mochyn

Laughing Laughing Laughing

I particularly like the poem that starts: "Now westlin winds and slaught'ring guns..." it's anti hunting, but I like it anyway!
Will

Overcame my general distaste for stealing other people's cultural traditions (I can't claim any Scots blood and I only lived in Edinburgh for a year) and made a stab at the whole H, N&T idea.

Not having five hours, a sheep's pluck or stomach, or any pinhead oatmeal, or any onions, I came up with....

Will's Bastardisation of Haggis:

Makes enough for four generous portions

2 hearts (lamb I think)
2 kidneys (1 ox, 1 pig)
Big chunk of liver (lamb again)
Porage oats
Suet

Simmer the offal in salted water for about two hours, skimming regularly
Fish the offal out, cut out the worst of the gristly/suety bits and blitz to a minced consistency
Toast about two cups of porage oats gently under the grill, without browning or burning them.
Stir the oats and a goodly tip of suet into the minced offal. Season with lots of black pepper and a generous shake of mixed spices
(If I'd had them I'd have fried off some onions in butter and stirred them in too)
Add a couple of cups of the boiling liquor to stick the mixture together.

At this point I thought about wrapping in muslin and steaming for a while, but Who Do You Think You Are was on the telly so...

Shape the mixture into balls and fry gently in melted butter.

I was quite impressed that it tasted and looked quite haggissy.

Having submitted on this occasion I will definitely be continuing my one-man boycott of Guinness on St Patrick's Day. I'm not Irish and can't claim any connection...
cab

Popped out to the butcher at lunchtime yesterday to pick up a haggis. They'd been selling loads of them all morning, and a good number of their punters were believing every word that they were telling them (about the small ones being caught in traps, but the bigger ones having to be shot).
Will

Or indeed chased the wrong way round the hill, taking advantage of them having one leg shorter than the other...
cab

Will wrote:
Or indeed chased the wrong way round the hill, taking advantage of them having one leg shorter than the other...


You know as well as I do that Welsh sheep grow up hoping to have longer legs on one side than the other, as the alternative is having shorter legs and the front and that's most unfortunate...
mochyn

Round here the sheep farmers make weather-go-nimbles for the sheep: a sort of wooden leg extension for the shorter legs, for when the sheep (rarely) find some flatter land.
Gervase

I was out too late to catch one - the butcher had sold out and even T*sco had none. So instead we had a not-very-Scottish Rogan Josh which had much the same effect on me as haggis, much to the displeasure of my child bride, who spent much of the night with her cute little pixie nose wrinkled in displeasure.
I blame the cats...
Jb

I had a particularly naff day in the office and came home late looking forward to my OH having stopped off on her way home to buy a haggis (we had the neeps and tatties just no haggis) ... only to find she had had a particularly bad day and had come home late looking forward to me stopping off on my way home to buy a haggis Sad

Oh well a traditional Burns night chili it was then!
cab

We're having haggis either today or tomorrow. Any advice on the perfect neeps and tatties, anyone?
gil

I usually do a potato mash (butter and milk) with sweated onions mixed in, and whatever green herbs are around, and the neeps mashed with just butter and nutmeg. Two completely different textures...
Jonnyboy

cab wrote:
We're having haggis either today or tomorrow. Any advice on the perfect neeps and tatties, anyone?


Avoid the neeps, go for parsnip mash instead. says the heretic
Sarah D

Champit tatties - boiled floury tatties, mashed with salt, butter and cream,served piping hot with extra butter.

Bashed neeps - boiled turnip (aka swede in England), mashed with butter, little salt and a lot of black pepper, served piping hot again.

Wash it all down with whisky, can't go wrong.
Fee

We went for (as usual) good old basics; mash with butter and milk and mashed neeps with butter and pepper...I'd usually add nutmeg to my neeps too, but like to keep it as basic as possible on Burns' night.

There's something quite satisfying about 3 different coloured piles of food on a plate, don't you think?
Bernie66

To be honest the only way i can really enjoy haggis is to fry it with loads of pepper and have haggis sandwiches. I like the neeps and the tatties but don't feel that they go together well.Heretic that I am! Laughing
Northern_Lad

Sarah D wrote:
... turnip (aka swede in England),...


Are they the same? I thought turnips were smaller and whiter than swede. Oh, and it should be white pepper, not black.
Fee

Sarah D wrote:
Bashed neeps - boiled turnip (aka swede in England)


Don't get me started!! I'm from Cumbria, and my folks are Scottish (lived there for a few years as a kid too), and I'm forever having the arguement with my friends about Swede/Turnip...until we moved to the South, and went to buy turnip for my carrot and turnip mash, I had no idea that turnip down here is something completely different!

For those who don't know, what people in the South (and the Midlands, not sure about Wales) call a Swede is actually a turnip (wikipedia tells us that a swede is actually short for Swedish Turnip...so it IS a turnip) in Northern England and Scotland (and N. Ireland I believe), so for anyone getting the neeps in for their Burns dinner in the South, get Swede, not the little white turnips you get down here.

Aaah, right then Wink
cab

Northern_Lad wrote:

Are they the same? I thought turnips were smaller and whiter than swede. Oh, and it should be white pepper, not black.


They're different, but it all comes down to names really. Turnips, when I were growing up on tyneside, were referred to as 'baby turnips', if you ever saw them, and swedes were called turnips. And you used to make lanterns out of turnips at halloween.
Bernie66

We made lanterns out of swedes and have carrot and swede mash.
Bugs

Sooo..turnips are small, and swedes are orange? I have never willingly eaten either yet I'm afraid.

So what was The Enormous Turnip of Ladybird fame?
Northern_Lad

Bugs wrote:
Sooo..turnips are small, and swedes are orange?

I wouldn't go so far as to say orange, but they do have some colour to them.

Bugs wrote:
I have never willingly eaten either yet I'm afraid.

What, not even mashed with carrots?

Bugs wrote:
So what was The Enormous Turnip of Ladybird fame?

Fiction.
Bernie66

Bugs wrote:
Sooo..turnips are small, and swedes are orange? I have never willingly eaten either yet I'm afraid.

So what was The Enormous Turnip of Ladybird fame?


Fantasy I guess. I like swede but cannot take to turnips at all.
cab

Bugs wrote:
Sooo..turnips are small, and swedes are orange? I have never willingly eaten either yet I'm afraid.


Yes. Except when the swedes are cream, the turnips are purple or black and/or large. Or the swedes are small.

Do you have Roger Phillips vegetable book? He comments on the history and origin of both.
Bugs

Northern_Lad wrote:
Bugs wrote:
I have never willingly eaten either yet I'm afraid.

What, not even mashed with carrots?


I was dreadfully fussy as a child. Then again my mum's cooking and presentation of vegetables isn't the sort to make Delia lose any sleep over whether her next book will buy her another county or two. These days I'll try nearly anything once though.

I don't believe either you or Bernie about the Enormous Turnip though. Ladybirds don't lie Wink
Bugs

cab wrote:
Yes. Except when the swedes are cream, the turnips are purple or black and/or large. Or the swedes are small.

Do you have Roger Phillips vegetable book? He comments on the history and origin of both.


Oh dear. No. And you did this to me before, typing sweet nothings about the attractions of his herb book, and look what happened there, Amazon's stock nips up another point or two. I'll have a look in my food plants book though and see what I can learn.
Jonnyboy

Turnips are smaller than swedes and creamier in colour, whilst swedes are larger than turnips and yellower in colour.

I'm having my haggis tonight, with chips.
cab

Bugs wrote:

Oh dear. No. And you did this to me before, typing sweet nothings about the attractions of his herb book, and look what happened there, Amazon's stock nips up another point or two. I'll have a look in my food plants book though and see what I can learn.


The herb book is better. The veg book is good, if you like pages and pages of pictures of different varieties of carrots, tomatoes, etc., with brief notes on how to grow them, a little history, and a good (but not totally exhaustive) list of obscure and common vegetables. Good garden porn.
Jonnyboy

cab wrote:
Good garden porn


Bugs, may I direct you here if it's the real thing you're after?
cab

Ahh, the legendary Hessayon. A nice book, but he's sometimes a bit too reliant on chemicals for my tastes.
Will

Surely porn is all about artificial enhancement?
thos

Bernie66 wrote:
We made lanterns out of swedes and have carrot and swede mash.


According to the local rag, the Irish in America started to use pumpkins for Jack O' Lanterns in place of swedes because it was easier [especially after a skinful]. Mind you, since they used le navet (parsnip) rather than le rutabaga (swede) I think they pinched the article from somewhere else.

Of course, they may have meant turkeys [le navet is also a bad film].
Bugs

Jonnyboy wrote:
cab wrote:
Good garden porn


Bugs, may I direct you here if it's the real thing you're after?


Tsk. Got that. Phillips' books are soooooooo pretty, lovely clear pictures, big books you can hold open on your lap. It's more an artistically posed celebration of the beauty of nature than porn I would say. Where have I heard that one before?
mochyn

My son read the Enormous Turnip to me when I was ill once. He was only about 5 at the time, but we both still remember it fondly!
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