Scotish

As January 25th draws near and Burns Night starts to approach, a lot of people with Scots ancestry start thinking about haggis.

There are, of course, any number of people who will run screaming in the opposite direction at the very mention of the word, freaked out by vague images of unmentionable wobbly organ meats. Well, to each his or her own.

Haggis is simply an outsized country sausage, made -- as country sausages tended to be in previous centuries -- out of the parts of various animals which rich, snooty or fashionably squeamish people were too highfalutin' to be caught eating, no matter how good it tasted. Haggis includes the "pluck" of an animal -- its liver, heart and lungs: from this usage comes the adjective "plucky", meaning someone who has (surprise) guts. The phrase "liver and lights" (see also "I'll punch his lights out") is also associated with haggis, the lights being the lungs.

Haggis also usually involves something to bulk the meat content out -- usually suet and oats or oatmeal -- and is seasoned with onions, stock, salt and various spices. The meats having been cleaned, trimmed, and chopped, and mixed together with the oatmeal, some stock, and the various seasonings, the whole business is then packed into a casing. Traditionally this would have been a sheep's stomach: nowadays it's as likely to be an artificial casing of some kind. The haggis is then ready to be cooked. This means simmering it slowly for two or three hours in water or stock.

At a Burns Night ceremony, the haggis is served forth with great ceremony, often accompanied into the dining room by the skirl of pipes. It is courteously saluted with a recitation of Burns's great Address to a Haggis before being sliced up and served with the traditional accompaniments -- neeps and tatties (mashed turnips and potatoes), and Scotch whiskey... often quite a lot of it, sometimes used as a distraction by those who like Robert Burns more than they like the haggis.

Seriously, it's not so terrible. Visitors to Scotland who visit a well-provided breakfast buffet at their hotel are likely to find sliced haggis there along with the bacon and fried mushrooms and other traditional Scots breakfast foods. It's particularly good fried (as so many things tend to become in Scotland, sometimes without warning, or indeed without any detectable reason. Whose idea was the deep-fried Mars Bar?). If anything, it's a little bland, and a dash of Tabasco does it no harm at all. Possibly this is why "designer" haggises, such as haggises based on smoked venison, are starting to turn up. There are also vegetarian haggises available.)

Click on "read more" for details on how to order a haggis for your Burns Night, and how to deal with it after you've got it.