Operation: Haggis One!

Contrary to recent appearances, here at the homestead we do more than bake bread.  In fact, there's nothing my Lord and I enjoy more than serving some unfamiliar dish to somebody and hear them say (sometimes after a little encouragement to "... just taste it!") , "WOW!  That's really good!"

We think we can make that happen with haggis. 

Yes.  I said haggis.  Relax.  I know it has a bad reputation, but really, it's going to be OK.

Haggis has this reputation as the ultimate nasty food.  Most people I know would eat bugs before they'd try haggis, which is somewhat unfortunate, in my opinion.  I mean, haggis is just a type of sausage, really.  Ground meat, with some spices and herbs and filler (in this case oatmeal), cooked and served up.

Seems easy enough.  We're up for the challenge!  The hard part was finding the meat.  We chose to go with liver, heart and tongue, and had to special order them from a shop in Indianapolis (unlike the ancient Scots, we don't have our own flock, alas).  The people at Goose the Market were super helpful in our quest to locate fresh organ meats, although stomachs were unavailable, so we picked up some pig stomachs at Saraga International Market (WE LOVE THIS PLACE!  If you're looking for a good broad spectrum of ethnic food ingredients, I can't recommend it highly enough!)    Here's the stomach, still in the package.  NOTE:  These stomachs have been cut open, and cleaned.  That's great... except it creates problems when you want to use them as a steaming pouch. ;)  You'll see my nifty solution later! 

So, with lamb tongue, heart and liver in hand, we're ready!  The first step is to soak everything in salt water.  After thawing the organs out (they came to us in frozen bricks.. heh), I put the organs in a plastic bowl of salt water and let them rest for about 5 hours.   In this picture, from the top left there is liver, tongue, and heart.  The butchers had already cleaned the organs (removed the gallbladder, split the heart, etc.), which was nice!  Made my prep work go a lot quicker.  Nothing ruins liver like accidentally nicking the gall bladder!  So, here you see the organs already soaked and rinsed.

After that, I covered the organ meats with cold water, brought them to a boil, covered the pot, reduced the heat, and simmered them for about a half hour. The oats are supposed to be lightly toasted for this recipe, so I put them on medium-low in the skillet while I kept an eye on the simmering pot.  Steel-cut oats are used in the recipe.  Remember those from the Scottish Oat Bread a couple of projects ago?  Here they are as they toast in the skillet.  Mmmm.  Good stuff!

 I will tell you, during this entire process, the biggest "icky" moment I had was boiling the organs.  At about 15 minutes into the simmering process, I guess the fats in the organs gave up the ghost and started to render out, and that was both a somewhat unpleasant smell and look.  Fortunately, it didn't last very long!   After 30 minutes, the organs were firm and cooked, so I drained them, then began mincing the meat.  I did peel the top layer off the tongue, because it felt a little tough and chewy and I didn't want that in my haggis.  I chopped the heart and tongue, then grated the liver (it was easier than chopping, honestly!). 
 
 

Other ingredients we used were diced suet, onions, garlic, sage, thyme, salt, pepper.  We're flying by the seats of our pants on the seasonings, because we didn't like the idea of nutmeg/mace.  Maybe it's not traditional.  However, we know the spices we used would have been available, so I'm willing to go with it for the sake of science.  My Lord, known in the SCA as Uisdean mac Cailin, graciously chopped the onions and garlic for me while I was working on preparing the stomach.  (You should try his brisket some time if you get the chance.  By Freyja's Frozen Left Earlobe, it's a rare treasure!)  Thanks, Love!  :) 

Now, remember that stomach that's all flat?  This is where all those frillion hours stitching garb by hand came in handy.  With a large needle, some kitchen twine, and a little ingenuity, I sewed the stomach into a pouch, leaving the top open so we could fill the stomach with the haggis filling.  If you do this, I recommend having a paper towel handy.  The needle gets a little slippery when it slides through a soaked stomach!    Here's my beautiful A&S entry... just kidding.  But it worked! 

Important note:  You have to leave room for the oats to expand.  Now, I will be honest.  Using the "rudely stitched together stomach" method, I think this is less of a crisis, as the air in the stomach is going to escape through the gaps at the "seam", but you do need to be mindful that the oatmeal is going to expand as it cooks, so we went ahead with the recommendation of filling the stomach 2/3rds full.  Traditionally, you'd poke the stomach with a large needle as it cooked to let out the air.  Ours is "pre-poked".  Haha!  So we're in decent shape.  We also had WAY more filling that we had room for in the stomach pouch, so we put the rest of it into a casserole with a couple of bay leaves on top and covered it loosely, put the casserole dish in a water bath,  and baked it at 350F. 

The stomach was submerged in a pot of boiling water with a couple of bay leaves, with the handy leftover string tied to a spoon for easy retrieval when it's done.  We honestly have no idea what we're doing at this point, since neither of us have ever made a boiled pudding, so this is pure conjecture from here on out!  Uncharted territory!  Huzzah!

The recipe calls for the haggis to gently boil for three hours.  The pork stomach is *much* smaller than the sheep stomach would be, but really, the last thing we want is undercooked haggis, and it's not like you can gently open the baking dish and peek at it, so we're going to let it go the full three!  

So, the proof is in the pudding.  We pulled the casserole out of the oven, and the stomach out of the boiling water.  It's 11pm, so we didn't dance Road to the Isles to Scotland the Brave or anything feisty like that, instead we just carved open the haggis and dove in.  The casserole was a little drier, which makes sense, as it was NOT boiled for three hours.  The flavour was very good, although the mineral tang of the organ meats was fairly pronounced.  The "traditional" haggis, however.  Oh my.  Oh my!  The pudding is creamy and delicious, with just the barest hint of the flavour of the liver.  The onions and garlic melted into the meat mixture, and the oats absorbed the flavour beautifully.      I believe that to appeal to Midwestern palates, we're going to have to adjust the spices a little, perhaps add some nutmeg, or add more fresh-cracked black pepper, or maybe some rosemary, but this is *definitely* delicious.  I'm so thrilled! 

For a little more proof, here's my son, knowin in Society as "Piro", agreeing to be our stalwart guinea pig.  He's 13, and while we can all agree teenage boys are bottomless pits, I think this is still pretty telling!