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Calling Scottish Cooks - traditional haggis?

Those Gornish pipes are surreal, Phil! They look like leftovers from a Dr Who episode... But...what a lovely, mellow sound. I'm off to research a bit more. Got a faint reminder of Maddy Prior's backing band, or maybe June Tabor, or even early Strawberry Hill Boys, but can't pin.it down. Thank you! Another musical rabbit-hole.
 
My wife has a CD in her car of Pan-Pipes.
Whenever we go out and use her car, that's all I hear! :(
Same sound over and over and over, no thump and umph.
 
It has pretty much looked! We did all the prep over the past two days. I prepared the stinky stuff outside. Twice - for the cameras. In the end I got our local butcher who is also an ex-chef to give me a hand, and it was a nice pay day for him. Luckily the storm didn't affect us much but it did rain yesterday. My BBQ area is an outside open building though, so it was fine. All the root veg mash, with a shed load of butter was done yesterday. We tried their traditional neeps recipe versus my root veg recipe and we made neeps for the camera and mine for the actual dinner tonight. Mine is a lot richer.

The actual service is at 9 tonight and I won't do much until 7.30 ish as frankly there is not much to the final cooking and they also have an actor and actress pretending to do stuff. The starter is a soup / broth and the pudding is basically very similar to what the english would call spotted dick. I forget the scots name for it. We've made 6 litres of custard, which is a lot of eggs. Nearly got ripped off there as we've had a local supplier scam this week.

Drinks are very simple. They turned up on Wednesday afternoon with two giant oak casks of ale and a lot of whisky. And a tent. And a mobile caravan lorry. The production team have basically been pissed for two days. They have brought at least a dozen 12 bottle cases of whisky of various kinds, plus some generous gifts for me, and the recycling wheelie bin is already pretty much full.

Bizarrely for the camera they have been using Loch Ness bottled water, which I have never come across before, but what everyone is actually drinking off camera is San Pellegrino. We've also got through 4kg of coffee beans, which is more than I would normally use in four months. Coffee is not very Scottish :unsure:

We cooked a couple of wild haggis last night. They were fine. I had a taste but then ate a nice Dover Sole. Haggis is not my idea of fine dining. And I harldy ever feel like eating much if I have been elbow deep in intestines all day. It will be coming to a TV near you at some point presumably. No idea when. It's all set dressed of course.
 
AJB Temple said:
It has pretty much looked! We did all the prep over the past two days. I prepared the stinky stuff outside. Twice - for the cameras. In the end I got our local butcher who is also an ex-chef to give me a hand, and it was a nice pay day for him. Luckily the storm didn't affect us much but it did rain yesterday. My BBQ area is an outside open building though, so it was fine. All the root veg mash, with a shed load of butter was done yesterday. We tried their traditional neeps recipe versus my root veg recipe and we made neeps for the camera and mine for the actual dinner tonight. Mine is a lot richer.

The actual service is at 9 tonight and I won't do much until 7.30 ish as frankly there is not much to the final cooking and they also have an actor and actress pretending to do stuff. The starter is a soup / broth and the pudding is basically very similar to what the english would call spotted dick. I forget the scots name for it. We've made 6 litres of custard, which is a lot of eggs. Nearly got ripped off there as we've had a local supplier scam this week.

Drinks are very simple. They turned up on Wednesday afternoon with two giant oak casks of ale and a lot of whisky. And a tent. And a mobile caravan lorry. The production team have basically been pissed for two days. They have brought at least a dozen 12 bottle cases of whisky of various kinds, plus some generous gifts for me, and the recycling wheelie bin is already pretty much full.

Bizarrely for the camera they have been using Loch Ness bottled water, which I have never come across before, but what everyone is actually drinking off camera is San Pellegrino. We've also got through 4kg of coffee beans, which is more than I would normally use in four months. Coffee is not very Scottish :unsure:

We cooked a couple of wild haggis last night. They were fine. I had a taste but then ate a nice Dover Sole. Haggis is not my idea of fine dining. And I harldy ever feel like eating much if I have been elbow deep in intestines all day. It will be coming to a TV near you at some point presumably. No idea when. It's all set dressed of course.
Click to expand...
Brilliant! Especially the production team... Keep us posted on any tv schedule?
 
Nope. Clootie is basically a Christmas Pudding isn't it? This was light in colour. I've mislaid the recipe sheet photocopied from some old scots cook book, but it was made of beef suet and raisins in a sheet, rolled up like a swiss roll, wrapped in muslin and put in the steam oven in special tinned copper loaf tins that they brought. I kept one. When they pronounced it at the event where absolutely everything was piped in, it sounded a like Dogge - yay pudding to me. Very simple.
 
Well, I did tell you at the outset it would be a bit smelly.

I agree though that if you cook something that smells a bit funky, you don’t necessarily want to eat it. Happened to me with tripes à la mode de Caen. But that was a betting situation (bottle of expensive Burgundy if I recall). So I struggled through it. The steamed off label of the wine with a plaque commemorating the achievement still hangs about somewhere. As indeed does the stench of the tripe.

Funnily enough I quite like tripe now. Just want some one else to prepare it.

And, for the record, on Burns’ night we had shin of beef, stewed in red wine with suet dumplings. Partner can’t eat onions, so commercial haggises are out. One year I seem to remember that I went to 3 separate Burns’ celebrations in a week for client entertaining purposes. Good grief I was fed up with his poetry by the end of that. And he was a philandering Ayrshire spendthrift. Other views may vary. But I digress...

Clootie dumpling recipe to follow, but it a bit christmas puddingy. But have you tried black bun? I think it creates its own gravitational well.
 
Looking forward to recipe. Never had or even heard of black bun. I shall look it up.
 
Usual steamed pudding method, in a floured cloth. . Like a boiled baby. I stick nutmeg in as well.

125g suet
250g plain flour
125g bread crumbs or oatmeal
250g mixed sultanas and currants
1 tablespoon of molasses. Or syrup, or treacle
75g sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon of ginger
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
4 tablespoons of milk
A bit of salt

Takes a while to steam. It is heavy. But, on the bright side can be sliced and fried for breakfast.
 
Now that is really interesting. This site doesn't allow webp pictures else I would post a snap here. But it appears to he a rich cake covered in pastry like a pie. I like pies and so I will try that!

Edit - we crossed. I was referring to black bun. And my mind immediately started thinking about black pastry as well.
 
I think I'll pass on the haggis of whatever denomination, the neeps, the tatties and settle for a wee dram. Or two - Rob
 
Tiresias said:
Usual steamed pudding method, in a floured cloth. . Like a boiled baby. I stick nutmeg in as well.

125g suet
250g plain flour
125g bread crumbs or oatmeal
250g mixed sultanas and currants
1 tablespoon of molasses. Or syrup, or treacle
75g sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon of ginger
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
4 tablespoons of milk
A bit of salt

Takes a while to steam. It is heavy. But, on the bright side can be sliced and fried for breakfast.
Click to expand...
To the untrained eye (ie mine) tht looks somewhat similar in principle to tea cake or Bara Brith, but with added fat. Beyond gorgeous......
 
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Duncan. Get a grip man. You obviously don't work in the media. (nor me). Our dining room is vaulted to about 5 metres or something and the acoustics are good. What they did was "pipe in the haggis". It looked and sounded really good the first time. 14 takes later (including some of that poetry) and they decided it was satisfactory. We had got through a bucket of steaming haggis or haggi or whatever by this point and I finally twigged why we had made so many. I had to have a ring on on the larder to have enough hot water going constantly to avoid the dining room looking as if a steam train had gone through.

Stand next to some massive scots bloke in a skirt, puffing like a madman the SAME tune (if you can call it that) over and over and over again. The novelty wears off really fast, but the medias don't give a toss as they've nearly all drunk a bottle of whisky by this time and are very refreshed.

Also, neeps. Don't make me laugh. We turned 40kg (2 sacks) of Pierre Koffman (yes I know he's not scottish) into triple cooked chips. They pretended to eat neeps and tatties but mostly ate chips, with French Sel de Gris. Three bottles of Sarsons. Traditional in Scotland obvs.
 
Mike G said:
To the untrained eye (ie mine) tht looks somewhat similar in principle to tea cake or Bara Brith, but with added fat. Beyond gorgeous......
Click to expand...
Isn’t bara brith baked, not steamed? And yeast leavened?

However I will freely admit I know little about Wales.

Although, now I come to think about it, my brother was a professor at Cardiff (his house was within easy walking distance of Sophia Gardens), I’ve been to Port Meirrion a number of times, and to a Landmark Trust called Plas Uchaff. And I valued a chain of Ford dealers that had one in Colwyn Bay – one of my less fond memories. And my partner’s brother in law was born and brought up in Anglesey. Still, I do not feel qualified to pontificate on welsh cooking.

Although that has never stopped me before
 
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