I am so lucky I have a housemate who loves cooking. Because then when I find an old recipe and want to translate it to modern cooking instructions, she’s willing to test it out for me. And then magic happens.
The only thing sweeter than your jealousy is THIS CAKE.
(Recipe will be in the forthcoming Captain Ramos collection and the SFWA cookbook. SOON MY PRETTIES. SOON.
Seemed like a perfect thing to do after watching Chef.
So this happened:
It may not be immediately evident, but that’s haggis, which exploded (with flavor?) from its sheep stomach container whilst cooking. My verdict? Tastes a lot like Bremer knipp, which tastes a lot like scrapple, which is a thing I grew up eating and still like when I’m not thinking too hard about my daily fat intake.
I feel like there was some expectation I’d be appalled by the entire haggis thing when it was given to Mike and I for Christmas. Look, one of the few soups I like is menudo and I grew up eating chicken hearts and gizzards and thinking they were a special treat. (Spoiler: I still do think that, actually. Mmm, hearts and gizzards and dumplings.) I’ll basically try anything once unless it (a) still has the head attached because I have this thing about my food looking at me or (b) is something I’m ethically opposed to such as whale meat. I may think the jelly on top of a pork pie is utterly disgusting, but it’s an informed sort of utterly disgusting since I actually did eat it in order to draw that conclusion. (The only exception I’ve made to this rule is for natto, because I literally can’t get past the smell in order to even get it close to my food hole.)
Haggis is something a lot of American pop culture likes to freak out about since it involves sheep tripe that’s cooked in a sheep stomach. Because I don’t know, it’s un-American to use the less glamorous bits of the animal. Personally, I think a culture that consumes that many hot dogs per capita and invented the Twinkie should probably just shut the hell up and quietly slink away.
So anyway, haggis: solid thumbs up, a good addition to the ground up tripe with beef fat repertoire of scrapple-lovers everywhere.