Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Mmmm, haggis, my favorite!

Since Christmas is coming soon and there are plenty of goodies around, it occurred to me that you might be interested in some of the delicious foods available in England and Scotland. Scotland has a few unique dishes - like Haggis for instance - and I thought I'd share some of them with you today.
Haggis is a food strongly associated with Scotland and I can assure you, I've never eaten it nor am I going to start now. Here's the official Wikipedia description: it is comprised of sheep's 'pluck' (heart, liver and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally simmered in the animal's stomach for approximately three hours. Most modern commercial haggis is prepared in a casing rather than an actual stomach. Blech!!
In addition to haggis, you might find cock-a-leekie soup (chicken soup with leeks), Scotch pie (think pot pie), Neeps and Tatties (mashed turnips and potatoes), and Rumbledethumps (potatoes, cabbage and onions) on a typical Scottish restaurant menu. They don't eat as much beef as Americans do but still eat a lot of pork and lamb. In Edinburgh and other coastal cities, you will find north Atlantic seafood (salmon, in particular) on most menus.
I visited Scotland in 1988 while I was studying abroad and I remember Scotland being well-known for (or at least well-stocked) with sweets - particularly shortbread biscuits (cookies), vanilla fudge and toffee. You'll find some of the same English sweets in Scotland (like scones, McVitie's biscuits, trifle) but each region has its own idiosyncracies.


By the way, this made me think of something else worth mentioning about the differences between the English and Scottish. Over here, we tend to use the terms British and English interchangably but the United Kingdom is a sovereign state made up of the island of Great Britain (Wales, England and Scotland) and Northern Ireland. In Great Britain, a native person will probably introduce themselves as Welsh, Scottish, or English first and then identify themselves as British. Make sense? All Scots are British but not all Brits are Scottish.

1 comment:

Sara said...

As long as they have those yummy sweets you mention, I'm good! And I'm with you, will NOT be trying the haggis! Thanks for all these fun facts, love reading them!