Monday 25 January 2010

“Oh wad some power the giftie gie us / To see oursel's as others see us!

Tonight, of course, is Burns Night, the annual celebration of Rabbie Burns, poet, rebel, loyalist, romantic, contradiction and all-round Super Scot.

The traditional celebration involves whisky (well, duh) and haggis, the king of foods. Congratulations American readers: haggis is now legal for import, after 21 years of paranoia. Here's one of his lesser-known poems:

Heart, lungs, liver and lights
A Haggis wi' neeps every Scot delights.
Oats, pepper, whisky too,
All washed down wi' Irn-Bru!
And after a snifter o' skag and Buckie
Patriotic Scots sneak off for a…

I'm not a Scot, but Burns is a fantastic poet and haggis is just wonderful. As long as it's homemade or from MacSween. Even their (ahem) vegetarian haggis is lovely. As an after-dinner treat, why not have that traditional Scottish Deep-Fried Battered Mars Bar (I kid you not)?

3 comments:

intelliwench said...

I was not familiar with that particular verse of Burns' - and I suppose if they have vegetarian bacon, it was only a matter of time to cook up a recipe for veggie haggis.

Anonymous said...

Have you ever had a deep fried mars bar? I've often wondered if they are one of those things that works when it shouldn't but I'm not really a big fan of mars bars anyway.

I deep fried a Twirl in a very light cinnamon batter once and it was a delight so it might work but having said that finding decent batter in a chip shop is an increasingly difficult task.

The Plashing Vole said...

The Twirl sounds good. I reckon deep-fried chocolate is great, but haven't tried. One day…