I love this recipe. It’s classic, easy, and extremely hearty. From our kitchen to yours, enjoy!

4 Black Angus top sirloin steaks

Sauce:
4 tablespoons Scotch Whiskey
500ml double cream
4 cups quartered mushrooms
1 teaspoon grainy mustard
salt and pepper to taste
2 oz butter unsalted
4 sour dough bread bowls

Method:
1) Cut steaks into 1″ cubes and season with salt and pepper.
2) Pan fry cubed steak until browned with butter. Carefully add whiskey and flame.
Add cream and mushrooms and bring to a boil. Simmer gently till sauce reduces by half, stirring
periodically.
3) Purchase bread bowls from your local bake shop. For preparation of bread bowl, take a paring
knife and cut on a slight angle and cut a circle out of the top. Push bread in base in with fingers.
This reinforces the bowl.
4) When steak and sauce is ready, ladle into bread bowls and enjoy

The Haggis is a very old, traditional Scottish dish that combines meats, spices and oatmeal.  A traditional recipe for The Haggis would involve the boiled and minced liver, lungs and heart of a sheep mixed with chopped onions, toasted oatmeal, salt, pepper, and spices.  The mixture would then be stuffed into the cleaned sheep’s stomach, sewn up (leaving enough room for expansion to avoid an explosion) and then boiled.

Don’t go…wait come back!  We have an updated version of The Haggis for you prepared with modern techniques that just may tickle your culinary fancy.  And rather than using a sheep’s stomach you can prepare the Haggis in a bowl or use the same type of casing most commonly used to make breakfast sausage.  Ask your butcher if they will sell you sausage casing.

Go ahead be adventurous – you just might like it!

Ingredients

½ lb minced lamb shoulder
½ lb minced beef
6 oz. beef suet
½ lb beef liver
1 cup of oatmeal
1 cup of stock (reserve this from the boiled meat)
2 finely chopped onions (or you can grate the onions if you choose)
½ tsp grated nutmeg
1 piece of mace or ¼ tsp ground mace
¼ tsp of cayenne pepper
¼ tsp ground coriander
Sea salt and ground black pepper to taste

Method

1. Preheat oven to 250 °-300°F
2. Place the liver in cold water, bring to a boil the liver for five minutes, allow to cool
3. Chop the liver with the onion as finely as you can
4. Boil the remaining meat in a large stock pot approximately one hour; then allow to cool.
5. Reserve the stock
6. Meanwhile, toast the oatmeal in a sauté pan shaking occasionally to be sure all toasts equally and doesn’t burn
7. Chop the meats finely
8. Mix all ingredients together including the reserved stock
9. Transfer to a well greased oven-proof glass bowl and cover with a layer of foil or parchment paper.
10. Place in a baie marie (a water bath) using a pan large enough to accommodate the bowl and add warm water to come ¾ of the way up the bowl. Check from time to time to replenish the water level.
11. Cook for 3 hours.
12. To serve, cut open the casing if you are using and spoon out the filling
13. Accompany with neeps and tatties.(turnips and potatoes mashed together)

“We look to Scotland,” Voltaire said “for all our ideas of civilisation.”  And on January 25, Scots around the world, both real and honourary, become extra, um, civilized as they mark the grand tradition of Robbie Burns Day with all of its customs, including The Haggis.

Born on January 25, 1759, Robert “Robbie” Burns, also known as the Ploughman Poet, the Bard of Ayrshire and, in Scotland,  simply “The Bard,” was Scotland’s greatest poet and favourite son.  Although he died more than 200 years ago, he is still considered the  Greatest Scot, as a poll conducted by a Scottish television channel confirmed last year. So in your face, Sir Sean Connery. You too Alexander Graham Bell. After all, you didn’t pen the song that opens every new year and closes the classic Christmas movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Nope. “Auld Lang Syne” is all Burns.

The first Burns observance wasn’t held on his birthday, as it is now, but actually upon the fifth anniversary of his death. The idea caught on and shortly thereafter, Burns Clubs sprung up across Scotland, turning into an annual event that eventually came to be celebrated on January 25, complete with The Haggis.

Over the years, Burns’ influence spread due to worldwide Scottish immigration.  Intrepid Scots brought their love of Robert Burns with them when they settled in Canada, Brazil, Jamaica, New Zealand, Argentina, and elsewhere.  As a result, the poet is celebrated in the many countries where Scots settled, and “Robbie Burns Day” is observed.

There are so many Scottish Canadians, they are considered Canada’s third largest ethnic group – and Gaelic is still taught and spoken in some parts of Cape Breton.  In fact, wherever you are in Canada, chances are good you won’t have to look  far to celebrate Robbie Burns Day.  Here in Calgary, for example, the Ship & Anchor Pub salutes The Bard with Scottish dancers, the Address to the Haggis and the John Allen Cameron Band.  Not to be outdone, the University of Calgary features the U of C Pipe Band at their Sixth Annual Robbie Burns Supper and Dance. And many Calgary offices this week will be ordering from our Weekly Specials Menu, themed, appropriately, with Scottish delights.

No celebration of Robbie Burns Day is worth it’s whiskey without the Haggis, which, truth be told, is actually nothing more than a large sausage. So of course, we’ve provided you with the perfect recipe to make your very own Haggis to celebrate Robbie Burns Day with friends and family at home.  Grab your kilt, throw on a bagpipe band CD to pipe in the Haggis while you recite Burns’ Address to the Haggis for a memorable and fun celebration of Scotland’s most beloved poet.

And don’t forget to serve a dram of Scotland’s equally famous drink– whiskey for all!