haggis hunting

I’ve spent a good few hours this week hunting for the elusive wee rampant Scottish beastie that is the haggis. It’s Burns’ night on Monday and we need a few of them to stab and recite poetry over.

Lamb’s pluck is not that easy to get hold of. After trying a range of butchers, all of whom seemed to think that making my own haggis was a bit insane and needed a good few days to get hold of any, I tried the excellent  Marky Market. He rang me, as requested, from Smithfield meat market at 4am on Wednesday to tell me what was on offer. I’ve been having Delicatessen-style dreams about sheep organs ever since.

A few hours later he arrived with a bag of three lambs’ plucks, delivered straight to my door and up four flights of stairs.

I was shocked but quite excited by the fact that all the organs were still joined together and the blood bright red, as if the lamb’s insides had been pulled out just that minute.

Today I started following Tim Hayward’s step-by-step instructions to his haggis challenge last year. I must say, the fact that he isn’t doing it again this year made me worry that it might be an extremely disgusting process…

Feeling a bit like a wicked witch in a fairytale I separated the livers and and cut out the hearts of the three plucks. This was pretty simple and just involved just one gutsy stroke for each. I then set about cutting the gristly windpipe from the lungs. Washing these was a strange sensation. I’ve never seen or felt lungs before; they were large and strangely smooth and soft, like liver but lighter. I ran water through the heart ventricles and got rather a shock as I put my finger in to rinse out any blood clots and was spurted with a gush of bloody liquid. I’ve always quite liked handling liver and once when I was little my nanny threw an uncooked liver at my older sister’s pristine friend and we ended up having a liver fight. Not today. Concentrate on the haggis.

I’ve put everything except the strange looking windpipes into my big stockpot, covered them in cold water and brought to the boil. Very strange and exciting things seem to be happening in there right now: the lungs, having turned a deeper purple and part white, are refusing not to float and there is a mixture of pink bubbles and brown froth forming.

After a couple of hours I’ll turn off the bubbling pot and leave the plucks to soak in their cooking juices overnight. Either tomorrow or Saturday I’m hoping that an ox bung will be delivered in an envelope by Weschenfelder. If not, I’ve been assured by Oliver Thring, who is also making haggis, that something clever can be done with cling film and foil. I’ll make the actual haggis mix this weekend, with the help of Mei, who has never seen a haggis before and is enormously excited by the prospect of grating liver.

If the thought of all this gore doesn’t send shivers up your spine, come join us on Monday night for a three-course dinner at Rambling Restaurant Burns’ Night. There will be homemade haggis-stabbing, neaps, tatties and poetry!