Tag: black pudding

Haggis and Black Pudding on apple mash

Robert Burns, the Scottish poet, is known throughout all of the UK but it is in Scotland and the far north that his life and works have been celebrated on  Burns Night  for well over 200 years. That means haggis.

If you don’t know what is in haggis and you look it up, you might, perhaps, feel just tad nervous about eating it…..if you just eat it first then you may well be pleasantly surprised. There’s a lovely deep meatiness there, balanced with a richness from the oatmeal and suet and spices that, well, you wouldn’t believe came from a mixture of sheep’s innards.

Maybe it is best that I leave the description at innards. Click on the link if you want to know exactly WHAT innards.

I was given haggis from an early age, served with the traditional accompaniments of mashed potato and turnip or swede, so I was never fazed by it. That is probably how it ought to be done.

If you are an adult coming to haggis for the first time, do try it.

At a Burns Supper you will be served haggis with neeps and tatties (that’s the mashed turnip and mashed potatoes)  and a dram of whisky. Now, that resonates with me…. any meal where whisky is served as an integral part of the menu gets my vote.

Thing is, there are other ways to serve haggis and the other ways tend to be more friendly, say, to those who have never eaten it before. The Bear for example, being a Cockney,  probably thought that haggis was foreign food, beloved of savage Northerners and Scots and wasn’t something a boy from London should eat.  Mind you, I think much the same of jellied eels, which is a favourite, apparently, of those from the East End of London.

A good way to introduce haggis to innocents is to serve it with something to perhaps soften the effect…… and I thought that sweetening things up might help. I had some delicious black pudding and adding apples to that is always good… so I came up with haggis with black pudding and apple mash… and  a creamy, sweetly sharp sauce to go over it.

Haggis is easy enough to cook… you can poach it gently for an hour or so, or roast it in the oven, if you wrap it in tin foil to protect it, or, if you are pushed for time, you can cut it open and slice it, then put it in the microwave for 8 or so minutes, maybe breaking it up with a fork to make sure it is evenly cooked.

I like roasting it – there’s always the danger that you might burst the haggis if it boils… and then you will have ruined it beyond any chance of saving. The whole point of a haggis is that all those spices and meat and oats are bound together tightly – it’s already cooked, of course, you are just heating it up properly – and if it bursts open then unwanted water gets in and it turns into a dissolving mush.

I started roasting my haggis and while that was in the oven (175 degrees, wrapped in tin foil and placed in a casserole dish with some water to keep it moist) and got on with the other stuff… that was going to be in the oven for an hour and a quarter, or thereabouts, so that gave me plenty of time.

I had a lovely sharp Braeburn apple which needed peeling, coring and cubing.

I wanted it to keep its shape and sharpness but not to be too raw… so quickly tossing it through  butter and a pinch of sugar would do that. I scooped out the apple from the pan, leaving the appley, buttery juices behind – I was going to use them in the whisky cream sauce later.

I chose red skinned potatoes as they always make a great, fluffy mash, and used a potato ricer  to make sure there were no lumps. I know it seems more effort than using a masher, but the result? Ohhh… the difference is incredible… beautifully light and fluffy potato that you can beat your butter into…

That’s not a great photograph, I know, but you can get the gist of it. I was trying to get a shot with one hand as I squeezed the ricer with the other. The potato is forced out of the little holes and there are no lumps. Not one. Just oodles of beautifully riced potato.

Use a wooden spoon to beat in a big knob of butter, you’re looking for a gorgeous creamy mash.

Add those slightly softened cubes of apple – they make a lovely contrast to the smooth and creamy mash.

The black pudding needs to be gently fried. You’ll need a slice per person.

You’ll see the change from that dark red colour, to a glassy black – just keep the heat gentle so it cooks slowly.

Oh and remember that covering needs to be peeled off….

The haggis should be coming along nicely – that darkens down .

If you have decided to poach it, be careful when you cut into it – it is going to be very hot when that outer skin is cut.

I made a little whisky cream sauce… but forgot to take photographs. 

What I did was make a cream sauce (a couple of teaspoons of butter, a couple of teaspoons of flour, a pinch of salt, mixed and cooked through, then single cream stirred in until all the lumps disappear and it becomes a glossy smooth sauce… ) then thinned slightly with the apple juices and some whisky and heated through until the alcohol has cooked off. This is not an overtly sweet sauce but a savoury , fruity fresh one – you have sweetness with the nuggets of apple in the mash.

I wanted to make this look, if not glamorous, then at least vaguely presentable.  I was thinking of the round slice of black pudding and I wanted to get away from the normal haggis, neeps and tatties look of just everything spooned on the plate.

So I made a stack. Black pudding on the bottom. Then apple mash.

Then I pulled up the ring and spooned haggis in.

A spoonful of the whisky cream over the top and then served it.

I have to say this is probably not the best way of doing it, but it was what I did.

I won’t do it like this again because at the end of it, it didn’t look so great. Far too monochrome.

Tasted fantastic though, so I am not upset.

Still, as my mother always consoled me, looks aren’t everything.

Bacon and apple risotto with black pudding

This afternoon the Bear and I went out to help clear the road into our estate

 

The gritters don’t come up the hill to us because they are too busy trying to keep the main roads clear.  There’s no grit or salt left that we can scatter ourselves and what was ordered has been taken by Birmingham City Council as their need is greater than ours. Apparently.

Oh, and we don’t live in Birmingham.

Nothing for it then, than to rally to the cause and help.

If we don’t do it, we won’t get in or out…. not bad if it is before we set off to work, but not so great if we happen to be at work when more snow comes down.

We went out and helped clear the road and some paths so cars could get up the hill without sliding backwards which is always a good thing if you are driving up hill.

After a couple of hours we got back in and felt we deserved something really good for supper and I had my eyes on some black pudding.

When I met the Bear he said did not like black pudding…. when what he really meant was that he had not had black pudding cooked in a way that he liked.  Now? After three years of marriage? He really is becoming omnivorous.

I have plans for most of the black pudding for tomorrow, but there will be enough left for something I have been thinking about… we love risotto and I have a fancy for black pudding  risotto. I kept thinking about what would work well with it and realised that bacon and apple would be just the ticket.  One thing to remember is that cooking apples wouldn’t be any good in this as I didn’t want the apple to dissolve into a mush, so I chose a bright, sweetly sharp Pink Lady. It was beginning to look like a pink theme was developing so I got some red onions out as well.

Let’s get everything ready –

 – to feed four people well, you will need maybe 250g of risotto rice. I am using Fior di Riso, a vialone nano risotto rice which tends to be used more in the north of Italy. Other rices to look out for are carnoroli or arborio – just as long as you do get risotto rice.

2 red onions, 2 big slices of black pudding and 25o g of bacon bits , or lardons , some stock, some butter, a Pink Lady apple and some Parmesan cheese to shave over at the end.

To start with… get two pans out – in one you are going to have stock bubbling away ( you can make your own or use cubes or granules – just make sure they are good quality. I often use Knorr stock granules)

and in the other, melt a knob of butter…. while that is melting, quickly peel and chop the red onion and then add that to the pan with a pinch of salt

After softening the onion, add the rice and stir it round in the buttery juices. This forces flavour into the rice grains – or so I was told…. and then add half a glass of vermouth. You will hear a fantastic sizzle and a really aromatic smell will whoosh out of the pan.

All the alcohol evaporates and you are just left with an enigmatic hint … it’s quite safe, even for children to eat. If you haven’t got vermouth then a dry white wine or maybe some sherry would be good. Just stir it round until the liquid is absorbed by those greedy rice grains.

Once the vermouth, or wine, or whatever has been absorbed, add a ladleful of hot stock and stir it gently round so that can also be absorbed.

Oh and this IS important – I was taught to make risotto by a real Italian cook and it was stressed that when you stir the risotto, you stir in ONE direction only. This isn’t some mad superstition, there is a valid reason for doing it – if you just keep going in the same direction, the rice grains swirl around in the beautifully flavoured stock, absorbing as they whirl. If you go bashing them back and forth with a wooden spoon, they start to break and starch comes out into the stock, making it gloopy. The aim is just to get each rice grain swelling separately.

I love making risotto because I particularly love just standing there, quietly, ladelling in stock, stirring gently and relaxing. It doesn’t take long, you know – maybe twelve minutes or so, just until the rice has absorbed enough of the stock to be plump and delicious with just a hint of a bite to it. 

Trust me – doing it this way makes the risotto really good.

While this is all going on,

put the lardons of bacon into a frying pan and cook gently – you need to get the pieces tender before you add them to the risotto. Once they are ready, add them and any of the juices to the rice, stirring gently as you go.

Start to cook the black pudding now – keep the heat gentle and cook both sides so it changes into  rich and shiny, slightly crusted slices of spicy black pudding.

Roughly peel and cube the Pink Lady apple and then add that in – you aren’t wanting to cook it through, but it does want to be in there for a few minutes, so all the flavours can blend

The final thing to do is to add a knob of butter to the risotto… this enriches the stock, giving it a lovely rounded flavour…. stir it round gently…

Then, put your risotto into your bowls and  break up the black pudding over the top….

A few shavings of Parmesan over the top finish it off

The result? Really good.

Each spoonful  has the perfect combination of  bacon bits giving a lovely savouriness and a gorgeous chewiness amongst the savoury rice… the little nuggets of Pink Lady apple gives a sweet and juicy almost-crunch, while the black pudding provides a deep and earthy richness, bringing it all together.

It didn’t take long at all and it certainly doesn’t involve costly ingredients but it added up to a truly delicious and warming supper – perfect for a freezing night, after an afternoon’s labour shovelling snow.