A Plea for Better Haggis

During the last few weeks of January it seems every group that has a remote link with Scotland has some sort of salute to Robert Burns. This means that everywhere you turn someone is serving up haggis. More often that not the haggis is moderately awful at best. In an effort to combat the low quality of haggis on offer I am posting my version of the family recipe for haggis.

Some might say that there is no such thing as good haggis. That is like saying that after eating a hamburger from the local fast-food joint, there is no such thing as a good hamburger. There is a vast difference between the hamburger you fashion yourself from ground beef, well seasoned, fried and topped with some double smoked bacon and old cheddar`and the hamburger made from a frozen puck

The flavor of haggis is dominated by liver. If you don't like the flavour of liver, haggis may not appeal to you. However, the texture of liver has been eliminated by grinding it. So if the texture of liver turns you off, that is eliminated here.

The haggis should be peppery but not overly spicy. You are not trying to appeal to the palate of your Mexican  friends. You have to taste it as you add the seasoning. Keep in mind that the pepper will increase in intensity as the haggis is steamed. Also, you  are not trying to mask the liver, rather you are trying to complement the flavour.

The final texture will be determined by the type of oats used. In this version, I used a very coarse steel cut oats. The result will be a course texture. In the past I have used a finer Scotch Oatmeal which yields a finer texture haggis. Do not use rolled oats. Rolled oats have the wrong shape and would likely cook too fast. I have no idea how the end result would be. Experiment at your own risk.

Given the difficulty of obtaining a sheep stomach to act as the casing, I use cheese cloth to hold the haggis. It looks rustic and is still permeable to water. The haggis will need to be steamed where it will absorb some of the water.

The recipe is scaled by the size of the heart. The original recipe called for a sheep's heart. I have never seen a sheep's heart available an any of the local meat shops. A sheep's heart is about 1/4 the size of a calves heart. So, you could reduce the recipe if you can find a sheep's heart. The other option would be to only use a portion of the heart. The other option would be to use just beef, bu that goes against using the offal cuts of the animal that inspired the recipe.

For Haggis:
Ingredient	Calories	Protein (g)
1kg calves heart	1670	288.2
856g beef liver	1635	248.9
747g beef suet	6379	11.2
695g Steel Cut Oats (4 cups)	2685	110.6
4c beef stock	125	18.9
915g onion (5 med.)	384	8.4
1/2 cup whisky	307	0
2 tbsp peppercorns	33	1.4
2 tsp cayenne	11	0.4
1 1/2 tbsp salt
For Poaching:
2 litres water
2 onions
6 bay leaves

Raw Haggis ingredients, or deconstructed Haggis! For less than $20 you can make enough haggis to feed a small army.


Quarter the onions for the poaching liquid and add to the water with the bay leaves. Bring to a boil and add heart and liver. Simmer for 15-20 minutes until the liver and heart are cooked. Remove liver and heard and let cool. Discard the poaching liquid.

Meanwhile toast the oats in a 375F oven until well toasted ~20 minutes. The outer edges will brown faster so you will need to stir the oats part way through the toasting. Let cool.

Meanwhile, cut the onions down to a size that will fit in the feed tube of your food grinder. When the liver and heard is cool cut into pieces that will also fit into the feed tube of your food grinder.

Fit you r food grinder with the coarse die. Alternating onion, liver, heart and suet feed everything into the food grinder. Combine the ground mixture with the oats. Add the cayenne, pepper, salt, whisky and stock. Taste the mixture and adjust the seasoning if necessary. The mixture will be quite loose. The oats will eventually absorb much of the liquid. At this point refrigerate the mixture to allow it to firm up.

Lay a double layer of cheese cloth over a small bowl and portion the haggis into the bowl.

Tie up the corners of the cheese cloth.

 Here are for 500g balls of haggis

Now to cook the haggis! Place a ball in a steamer and allow to cook in the steam for 60-90 minutes. After it is cooked cut the cheese cloth and empty into a serving bowl.

The haggis can also be frozen. Just wrap the balls with plastic. It will keep for some time in the freezer. You will just have to add some time to the steaming process for it to thaw.

Enjoy!

Meatloaf no more

Continuing with my new years effort to cook some of the recipes in the wall of cook books I have. In my zeal to follow a new recipe I forgot the commandment around this house: Thou Shalt Not Make Meat Loaf! As a result, I am discovering that a definition of eternity is one person and a meat loaf.

This one comes from Emeril's book Prime Time Emeril. This is titled in the book Dad's Meat Loaf. I actually made my own Chili Sauce based on a recipe from the Bernardin preserving book.

1 lb ground beef
1 lb ground pork
2 onions chopped
3 cubanell peppers
3 cloves of garlic
2 large eggs
1/2 cup half & half
1/2 cup Italian breadcrumbs
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tbsp Emeril's Essence
1/2 lb chorizo sausage
1 cup chili sauce
2 cups beef stock
2 tbsp flour


Chop the onion & pepper and garlic. whiz up in a food processor to get the pieces fine enough.

Combine the beef & pork, chopped onion, pepper & garlic, bread crumbs, cream and bread crumbs.

Put half of the mixture on a roasting pan forming a 9x4 inch mound. Cut the Chorizo into 1/2 inch pieces and place on top of the meat mound. Top with the remaining meat mixture.

Coat with the chili sauce and bake in a 350F oven for about 1 1/2 hours. When done carefully remove the loaf from the pan. De-glaze the pan with the stock and thicken with the flour mixed with some water.

Server with some boiled potatoes. When you have finished the loaf, expect the second coming any time.

Chili Sauce

Make a spice bag consisting of 4" cinnamon stick, bay leaf, 2 tsp mustard seed, 1 tsp celery seed, 1/2 tsp whole clove, 1/2 tsp whole peppercorn

Chop and finely dice in a food process or 2 onions, 3 cubanelle peppers, 1 red pepper, 2 jalapeno peppers, 4 cloves of garlic.

In a pot, combine 1 28oz can of tomatoes, chopped pepper mix, 1/2 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 c white vinegar, 1/2c white sugar. Along with the spice bag. Simmer until it reaches the desired consistency.

Battle Pork Leg

The local Italian grocer is offering whole pork leg for $0.89/lb. How could I resist the opportunity to de-bone a pork leg? The total weight from the store was 12 kg or 26.5 lb

I watched a few youtube vidoes on how to debone a pork leg to try to help. Of course it is always more difficult than it appears. Here are the links to the videos

How to debone a pork leg: Part 1

How to debone a pork leg: part 2

How to debone a pork leg: part 3

In the beginning there was this leg of pork:

and from the other side:

Ain't it a beauty!

I think I eventually won the battle. I got the bones out and most of the meat was intact!

And from the other side:

Now what do I do? I cut off what I think was the heel portion and ended up tying that into a roast. I ended up rolling the rest and tying it off so I could portion it into 3 roasts with the skin on - sweet.

The bones were roasted with 3 onions, 5 carrots, 4 celery stalks and a whole head of garlic. Then boiled with a tablespoon of rosemary and a dozen bay leaves. The pan was de-glazed with a cup of white wine and added to the stock pot with 4 litres of water. This stock will end up as one of the best pea soups you can imagine.

I still have some skin to deal with. I will cut some of it into strips and roast with the pork tonight.

Boudin Sausage Ravioli with Pumkin Sauce

This dish was years in the making. I can't remember when I made the ravioli but I discovered them during an archaeological expedition into the fridge freezer. They were left because the ravioli did not meet with general approval.

I still have the recipe for the boudin sausage meat. This is based on a recipe from Emeril Live

Boudin Sausage Meat
3lb pork shoulder roast - cubed
3/4 lb pork liver
2 litre water
2 onions
1 celery
1 red pepper
4 cloves of garlic
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp cayenne
1 cup rice

Put the pork, liver, onions, celery, bell pepper and garlic with 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, into a pot with the water and bring to a boil and simmer for 1 1/2 hours

Cook the rice.

When the meat is done drain and let cool. When it is cool feed it all through a grinder. Combine with remaining spices and rice. Of course, season as you like. Since everything is already cooked you can taste the mixture.

If you like you can now use this to make sausages or use it to make ravioli.
I used a standard pasta recipe and put about 1 tbsp of sausage in one ravioli. They are quite large. Remember to seal the ravioli with an egg wash. Now freeze for 2 years before making the sauce.

Pumkin Sauce
2 cups pumpkin - (freeze for 2 years - optional)
1 litre chicken stock
4 cloves of garlic
1 onion
1/4 tsp cayenne
salt & pepper
1 tsp oil
1 tbsp dried thyme
1 tbsp dried parsley

Finely chop the onion & garlic. Fry in a large pan with the oil until it becomes translucent. Add the pumpkin, stock, thyme and parsley, cayenne, salt & pepper. Simmer until it thickens to your desired consistency.

Boil the ravioli for 5 minutes. Remove the ravioli and allow to drain. Combine with sauce. Grate some asiago cheese over top.

It is pretty good. You could probably cut the time down by a couple of years if you don't do the freezing step.

Getting Crusty with Chicken

This year I hope to take on some new recipes from the wall of cookbooks I have. This week I will be taking on a Pecan crusted chicken from the Prime Time Emeril book.This isn't a big stretch because I've done Cheerio Crusted Chicken before. Although, I didn't use the buttermilk soak.

I guess this is a bit of nostalgia for the good old days of the food network - Kicking food up to notches unknown to mankind! I have to say, this chicken is pretty kicked up.



Pecan Crusted Chicken with pan Roasted Potatoes

1 cup buttermilk
3 tbsp Emeril's Essence
2 tsp salt
1 chicken
1 cup pecan halves
3/4 cup flour

Combine buttermilk, 1 tbsp Emeril's Essence and salt in a plastic zip top bag. Cut the chicken into pieces and add to buttermilk. Refrigerate over night.

Preheat oven to 400. chop the pecans into a fine meal (Food Processor works good). Combine pecans, flour, 2 tbsp Emeril's Essence. Remove the chicken from the buttermilk and coat with the pecan mixture and place in a roasting pan.

Bake in the oven for 20 minutes, turn and bake for another 20 minutes. The time will depend on the size of the chicken.

Serve with the potatoes and the veg. of your choice.

This is pretty simple but it is here for completeness
Pan Roasted Potatoes 

3 medium potatoes, or as many as you like
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp dried thyme & parsley, or herbs of your choice

Wash and cut the potato into large pieces. I like 1/8ths. Place in a pot of salted water and bring to a boil. Simmer until the potatoes are just done.

In a large frying pan on medium-high heat, melt the butter. When hot add the potatoes and herbs. Fry until the potatoes develop some color. Done

Here is what it looks like when it is done:

I don't think I got the pecans quite as fine as I should have. However, it is very yummy.

On to the next cookbook recipe!

Beef Stock

This is what it is all about. There isn't much finer food that well made beef stock. Some of the stock you can buy is OK but it always contains ingredients I can't pronounce. The mass produced stuff just doesn't compare to what you can make at home.

Here is my current recipe for making my own beef stock.

4-6 lb beef soup bones
1 tin tomato paste
2 onions
2 carrots
2 celery
1 bulb of garlic, cut in half
1 cup of red wine
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp peppercorns
2 tbsp dried thyme
2 tbsp dried rosemary
2 tbsp dried parsley
3-4 litres of water


Preheat the oven to 425F

Put the bones in a roasting pan and roast for 10-15minutes

Then coat the bones with tomato paste as seen below and roast for an additional 15-20 minutes

Then add the onions, celery, carrots and garlic. Continue roasting for an additional 25 -30 minutes. See the results below.

After roasting move everything to a stock pot. Deglaze the roasting pan with 1 cup of red wine and add to the stock pot. Add about 4 litres of water along with the herbs, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and simmer for 4 hours.

Result: liquid gold

Fennel & Squash Soup with shrimp

Making use of the leftovers from Christmas dinner. Squash is best roasted with garlic and then combined with the garlic to create a squash and roasted garlic mash, yum. It is pretty simple to do and always save the seeds and toast them while the squash is baking.

Roasted Squash
1 large butternut squash
1 whole bulb of garlic
oil
salt & pepper

Split the squash in half and scoop out the seeds. Brush with the oil and season with salt & pepper. Peal all the cloves in the bulb of garlic. Divide the cloves of garlic between the two halves of squash. Place the squash cut side down on a baking sheet with the garlic in the cavity and bake in a 350F oven until soft.

When the squash is done let it cool. Scoop out the flesh and push through a food mill or place in a food processor with the garlic cloves and process until smooth.

The flesh is quite sweet but if you prefer add a bit of maple syrup and serve as a side dish.

This soup makes use of the sofrito technique. Cook the vegetables until most of the water evaporates and concentrated the flavours. I think this recipe could be improves with the addition of some herbs such as thyme, rosemary, tarragon. If you were to add some herbs add them when you add the squash & broth.

Fennel & Squash soup with shrimp

Ingredient	Calories	Protein
4 fennel bulbs (1400g)	435	17.4
1 1/2 tbsp oil	145
3 med. onions (105g)	105	2.3
3 carrots (198g)	81	1.8
1 celery stalk (131g)	18	0.9
4 cloves of garlic (15g)	27	1.1
454g shrimp (peeled yeilds 366g)	256	47.6
4c butternut squash (782g)	313	7
2 litres chicken broth	80	8
1/4 c pernod	150
Salt & Pepper

Total Calories: 1610
Total Protein: 86.1

Per Serving (8 servings): 201 Cal. 10.76g protein

Directions
1. Chop the fennel, onion, celery, carrot. Crush or finely dice the garlic.
2. In the soup pot add the oil and on medium heat start cooking the vegetables with some salt and pepper. The lid should be slightly ajar.
3. When the most of the water has been cooked out add the butternut squash, Pernod and chicken broth.
4. Bring to a boil, taste and season if necessary.
5. Turn off the heat and add the shrimp.
Done