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My husband is Scottish-Canadian. He is the first male in his family born outside of Scotland. His family hails from Peebleshire which is in the Lowlands very near the Borders. There is even a castle there bearing his family's name. What's left of it anyway. Hell, his name is James. Middle name is McIntosh. Aye!

He's been eating haggis since he was a wee lad and I wanted to try and make it for him, but I wasn't going to be messing around with any meat. Low and behold...Bunnyfoot wrote about a vegetarian haggis that she made and so I thought I would give it a try. Traditionally, it's all stuffed into a sheep's stomach and made like a big, stubby, fat sausage. It sounds weird and disgusting to some, but I've had it before (when I ate those sorts of things) and it is very good. If not for the description, it may have caught on. But I think the Scots like having it for themselves.
I was curious to see how close it would come to the real thing. This one, obviously, isn't stuffed into a casing, but made in a casserole dish. Jim said his Gran, Mary McIntosh, who immigrated from Edinburgh, used to make haggis quite a lot. Making it the traditional way is mainly for ceremony and special occaisions (Robbie Burns Day). Gran would make it for Sunday dinner and just pack it into a casserole dish. I guess in a similar fashion as North Americans having a big turkey feast at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but a roasted chicken for Sunday dinners. Not so fancy or with all the frills.




I started mixing it all up and the recipe called for 2 cups vegetable broth. That seemed like quite a bit as the mix was already a pretty good consistency.

I put in 1 1/4 cups. Yikes, I hope this cooks down. It makes a lot.

I cooked it for 45 minutes and it was still kinda gloopy, so I left it uncovered. After about another 45 minutes, it seemed to thicken up only a teeny bit. This was not looking good at all.

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Haggis is usually served with tatties (potatoes) and neeps (turnip) and scotch. We had tatties with roasted carrots and asparagus. We're not big fans of the neeps, unless they're in a soup or a stew. Jim had a wee spot o' scotch before dinner. I don't like scotch, so I passed on that.

It doesn't look too bad in the photo, but in the end, the haggis was a bust. The consistency was wasn't right and the flavour was just all wrong. It was too sage-y or something. I ended up throwing the rest of it out. I haven't given up though! I've got a good starting point and a few ideas so we've not seen the last of haggis!

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**I don't even want to talk about that ridiculous display that they called a hockey game. Only one team showed up to play and it certainly wasn't the Oilers.