Happy Bobby Burns Day!

Last week I braved the North Side and trekked to the Paulina Meat Market (“We Cater to Particular People” is written on their bags), where I shocked the butchers with my requests for sheep stomach, sheep heart, suet, liver, and lard.  They only had three of the five, so Jeff and I headed south to Halsted and Grand, and the Halsted Packing House.  This is what I had hoped to find up at Paulina – it smelled like meat inside, and they had a bucket of stomachs to choose from and readily found a nice little sheep heart from the coolers for me.  I lugged my treasures home, and stuck them in the freezer.

Apparently I didn’t take them out early enough, because when I started “cooking” on Friday evening, everything was still decidedly frozen solid.  But I thawed them quickly, banged and wrenched on the heart until I separated it from the stomach – Simon and Mushkilla watched enviously – and began the haggis process:

I used a recipe I found online, here, but I’ll tell you what I did below.

INGREDIENTS:

1 sheep’s lung (illegal in the US – I went without)

1 sheep’s stomach

1 sheep’s heart

1 sheep’s liver (I got part of a cow’s liver)

1/2 lb. fresh suet (kidney leaf fat, I believe from a cow)

3/4 c. oatmeal (McCann’s – finished off my stash)

3 small/medium onions, finely chopped

1 t. salt

1 t. freshly ground pepper

1/2 t. cayenne

1/2 t. nutmeg

3/4 c. stock

I was supposed to wash the lungs and stomach and soak them in cold salt water, but I was running late, so thawing them was the best I could do, although I did add a bunch of salt to the water it was thawing in, so I suppose that counts for something.

Cover the heart and liver with cold water, bring to a boil, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes.

In the meantime, chop the onions and suet.  The suet was surprisingly nice – it shaved nicely, like firm bacon fat, slightly crumbly and waxy, and a beautiful pale pink color.  Also, now’s a good time to toast the oatmeal in a skillet, until golden.  After the heart and liver have simmered for 30 minutes, chop them…I had no idea how finely they should have been chopped.

Combine all the ingredients, and mix well.  Turn the stomach inside out for stuffing.
Loosely pack the mixture into the stomach, about 2/3 full, since the oatmeal will expand when cooking.  Press any air out of the stomach and truss securely – take care to tie up BOTH ends of the stomach.  I had two little holes in my stomach wall, but that didn’t seem to make much difference, there were just a few onion bits floating in the water.

Put the haggis into boiling water so it’s covered.  Simmer for 3 hours, uncovered, adding more water as needed to keep the haggis covered.  Prick stomach several times when it begins to swell, to keep the bag from bursting.

Place on a hot platter, and scoop out the filling to serve.

Haggis is traditionally served with mashed neeps and scotch whiskey.  We certainly had the whiskey part down, but instead of neeps we had mashed spuds, a nice beet and blood orange salad, some stuffed grape leaves, oat cakes made by Kendra, grapes, and a delicious whiskey and oat mousse atop buttery shortbread (Dena’s creation!) for dessert.

And, of course, the beloved Robert Burns poem, Address to a Haggis, was recited, with as much pomp as can be mustered when reading a poem that is supposedly something like English but which makes absolutely no sense, especially after everyone’s share of whiskey.

For skeptics out there, I’ll have you know that everyone not only ate the haggis, but the consensus was that it was tasty, too!

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