Burns Night revels

Well, until it hap­pened to me, I wouldn’t have believed that some­thing look­ing like this could land on a din­ner table ANY­WHERE near me. I’ve lifted this photo from the Daily Mail, which in the per­son of Tom Parker Bowles was try­ing to con­vince peo­ple to cel­e­brate Burns Night even though a crea­ture like this might turn up unan­nounced and demand to be eaten. Yes, it’s hag­gis. I have heard many, many accounts of this sto­ried Scot­tish dish, but until Sun­day night it had never passed my lips. And before I say any­more, it was DELICIOUS.

Burns Night is a tra­di­tional evening meant to cel­e­brate the life and work (and appetite, appar­ently) of Robert Burns, the renowned Scot­tish poet who was born 250 years ago on Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 25th. The rev­els include the read­ing of a poem devoted to hag­gis (luck­ily there was a Scot­tish man on hand to per­form this), the rit­ual pre­sen­ta­tion of the hag­gis, and then in what must be a stun­ningly painful cli­max for the poor piece of lamb-stuffed intes­tine, the cer­e­mo­nial stab­bing and rend­ing from end to end of the hag­gis. Ouch.

We were lucky enough to be invited to Avery’s chum Emily’s warm and friendly house just a few streets away, for the big event. Emily’s mum Annie is fast becom­ing one of my near­est and dear­est. The whole fam­ily are full of energy, fast-paced and gen­er­ous to a fault: young Fred had come by the pre­vi­ous day with a bevy of choco­late fon­dants for us, and my good­ness that fel­low can cook. He and I have many impas­sioned dis­cus­sions about food, the absolute supremacy of cook­ing as part of daily life and the utter unfair­ness of the timed cook­ing round on “Mas­terchef.” “No one cooks under pres­sure in real life at home! It’s ridicu­lous!” he explodes. I so agree. So Sun­day night found us walk­ing to their house with the clean fon­dant ramekins, the plate on which Annie brought brown­ies for the Inau­gu­ra­tion, a bot­tle of Pol­ish vodka… you name it. Of course as we approached, John smote him­self on the fore­head: “Why the hell are we bring­ing VODKA to a Scot­tish man’s birth­day party?”

Lovely, lovely evening. Other friends were already there, tot­ing a very alert and well-behaved four-month-old baby girl that Emily imme­di­ately took charge of. Coo­ing, bounc­ing her up and down, Emily tried to con­vince my child, the least mater­nal crea­ture on earth, of the charms of baby­hood. Avery, while not actu­ally get­ting up and leav­ing the room, con­trived to get as far away from the baby as she could. I must remem­ber to tell my sis­ter and brother-in-law how divine Avery must think THEIR new baby is, to have treated her so nicely at Christ­mas. Never mind, early moth­er­hood isn’t for everyone.

We repaired to the din­ing room, one of my favorite spots on earth now, glow­ing dark red walls, gor­geous art col­lec­tion, Annie’s spe­cial hand-lettered place cards, everyone’s smil­ing faces. There was a gor­geous salad of lamb’s let­tuce, smoked salmon (Scot­tish!) and quail’s eggs, hard-cooked. My first quail’s egg not in a restau­rant, and I couldn’t help think­ing of dear Sebas­t­ian Flyte in “Brideshead Revis­ited,” for whom they were one of the four basic food groups along with whiskey, cham­pagne and gin.

Then our Scot­tish guest intoned the poem, with a MUCH more pro­nounced Scot­tish burr than I noticed in ordi­nary conversation!

Address To a Hag­gis

Fair fa’ your hon­est, son­sie face,
Great chief­tain o’ the puddin-race!
Aboon them a’ ye 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 wad help to mend a mill
In time o’ need,
While thro’ your pores the dews dis­til
Like amber bead.

His knife see rus­tic Labour dicht,
An’ cut you up wi’ ready slicht,
Trench­ing your gush­ing entrails bricht,
Like ony ditch;
And then, O what a glo­ri­ous sicht,
Warm-reekin, rich!

******************

Here Christo­pher plunged the knife into the hag­gis and I got my first sur­prise: it doesn’t slice, as you expect it to, like a sausage: it… implodes. Well, it deflates and oozes. None of which make it sound very appeal­ing, I’m aware of that, but the odor is delec­table, and the tex­ture most sur­pris­ing. It’s merely ground lamb and oat­meal, for the most part, and quite, quite lovely. The sheep’s intes­tine serves merely as cas­ing, and when Avery said later, “I’ll never eat hag­gis because I’ll never eat intes­tine,” I men­tally crossed my fin­gers and hissed inaudi­bly, “John, don’t you say a word about sausages…” but no such luck. “Well, you know, ordi­nary bangers are cased in intes­tine, too.” This was said with great rel­ish by my hus­band, whose job it is NOT to find some­thing we will all three eat at din­ner, among which things was, until that moment, a sausage. For heaven’s sake.

With our hag­gis came the tra­di­tional neeps and tat­ties: with a nice flair for pre­sen­ta­tion, Annie added car­rots to the turnips, the “neeps,” and the mash was fluffy and quite a per­fect foil for the rich, lux­u­ri­ous hag­gis. Divine! The dessert was tra­di­tional as well, and very nice for peo­ple like me who don’t like heavy, sweet pud­dings. Here it is, from Xan­the Clay’s col­umn in the Daily Tele­graph:

Cranachan
(serves 6)

4oz/110g rolled oats or pin­head oat­meal
10floz/280ml dou­ble cream
11oz/300g crowdie or Quark
6 tbsp heather honey
5 tbsp whisky
1 bag frozen rasp­ber­ries, defrosted

Put the oats in a large fry­ing pan and cook over a medium high heat, stir­ring con­stantly, for 5–8 min­utes until they turn brown and smell toasty.

Tip on to a plate to cool.

Lightly whip the dou­ble cream and mix with the cheese, which will make the cream stiffen up more.

Roughly stir in 4 tbsp honey and all the whisky.

Layer the cream, oats and rasp­ber­ries in six glasses, fin­ish­ing with a drib­ble of honey and a few raspberries.

Eat imme­di­ately or keep in the fridge.

*******************

A delight. We of course stayed far too late, on a school night, but it was worth it. This sort of evening makes me feel even more than usu­ally grate­ful for good friends: and British friends! When we lived here in the early 1990s, I am ashamed at how few British friends we made. Part of that lack was to do with how many expa­tri­ate friends we had, but part of it was the lack of a school-age child to pull us into rela­tion­ships (and the atten­dant adven­tures) with real peo­ple who are part of real British life. I know I will never be an Old Girl from Avery’s school, as Annie is, nor am I mar­ried to an Oxbridge gen­tle­man as her hus­band is, but we can bask in their reflected glory, when­ever we’re lucky enough to be invited. A rare night.