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13th February 2011
A Haggis For All Seasons
Two weeks after Burn's night and I'm almost out of Haggis.
Thank Christ.

Haggis Curry Dinner It seemed that my Haggis dinner made no recognisable impression in the massive quantity of haggis I turned out this year, so I've pretty much been living on it ever since.
I adapted a very nice keema recipe to get rid of a pound or so of the haggis, and invented a couple of nice curries to use up the leftover mashed neeps and tatties, which took me through a couple of dinners.
I also extended my curried neeps to use up a leftover half-turnip from the dinner in a tasty chunky turnip curry, and of course no blistering leftover curry meal would be complete without a yoghurt sauce to cool it off.

All of which means that after freezing a lump of haggis to send to my brother, and persuading Jenny to take a gift box of haggis away with her, I am now left with only another ten pounds or so to get through myself.

So here are some other ideas you might want to try to use up your leftover haggis:

Based on a Pat Chapman Punjabi Keema recipe
Haggis Punjabi Masala
curry main meat
Serves 4

Ingredients
Method
Preheat the oven to 375°F/190°C/Gas 5.
Purée the onions in a food processor with some of the oil as necessary, grate the ginger and press the garlic.
Grind the whole spices and cardomom seeds, then mix all the powders together with some hot water to make a paste.

Heat the oil and fry the onion purée for 5 minutes, or until it softens and the oil starts to separate,
add the ginger purée and fry for a couple more minutes until the oil begins to separate,
add the garlic puré and fry for a minute until the oil begins to separate,
add the spice paste and fry for about 3 minutes until the oil begins to separate,
add the tomato puré and fry for a minute until the oil begins to separate.

Finally add the tomatoes, coconut milk powder and then the minced lamb.

Stir and place in a lidded casserole dish in the oven for 15 minutes.

Chop the green pepper, not too large, and slice the chillies into chunks about the same size, rolling them to squeeze out the seeds.

Stir, add a little water if necessary, add the lemon juice, the chopped green pepper, the chopped green chillies and salt to taste, then return to the oven for another 15 minutes.
Serve with rice and yoghurt sauce.
A pretty good use of leftover haggis. You could probably do it all on the stove top if you don't have a casserole. Or an oven.

Chilli Mashed Potato
curry side veg
Alex tells me that his local Indian takeaway does a very mean mashed potato curry, so I thought I should do one too.

Serves about 4 as a side dish

Ingredients
Method
First cook your potatoes and mash them with butter or ghee.
Separate the coriander leaves from their stalks, wash and slice them.
Deseed and mince the green chillies.

Gently fry the spices in a tablespoon of ghee until the oil begins to separate, then add the gram (chick pea) flour and continue to fry for a couple minutes more, then add the mashed potato and stir through.
Add the lemon juice and the chillies and stir round until warmed through.
Fold in the chopped coriander leaves and season to taste just before serving.
Not a bad mashed potato - a bit on the dry side though, you could definitely add water or more lemon juice.
It might work with cream or yoghurt instead of lemon juice either.

Curried Mashed Turnip
curry side veg
Quite a tasty, mild mashed-turnip curry, though apparently not worth photographing! Might be worth expanding into a full-blown turnip curry.

Serves 4

Ingredients
Method
Grind together the spices.
Fry the grated ginger in ghee until the oil separates, add the spices and fry again, then add the mashed turnip until heated through.
Not bad, for leftovers.

Turnip Curry
curry side veg
Well, I haven't come across turnip curry before, so this seems like a nice addition to the armoury.

Serves 4

Ingredients
Method
Purée the onion with enough vegetable oil to lubricate it, then fry this with more oil, as necessary, until the oil separates don't skimp on this - fry thoroughly or the result will be bitter
add the crushed garlic and fry
add the grated ginger and fry
grind the spices together, add them to the pan and fry until the oil separates
chop the turnip into bite-sized pieces and add to the pan
chop the carrot into bite-sized pieces and add to the pan
add the whole green chillies to the pan
add the grated creamed coconut, and a little water to lubricate.
simmer very gently until the vegetables are meltingly soft.
Quite a nice little invention. Super mild of course. And quite sweet.
You could try using a tin of coconut milk instead of the creamed coconut/water mixture for simmering.
I did try adding some avocado into the mix (a first attempt to find a good indian-style avocado dish) - both puréed into the sauce and as pieces cooked in the curry, but it just made the dish thick and oddly bitter.

A Quick Yoghurt Sauce
sauce veg curry
Ingredients
Method
Mix it all up to together and serve it as a curry side dish.
A perfectly acceptable yoghurt sauce, even if it isn't quite up to professional standards

Haggis Mushrooms
starter meat
Serves 1 person per mushroom

Ingredients
Method
Preheat the oven to Gas 6.
Cut the stalk out of the mushrooms and fill them with leftover haggis. Drizzle with a little Worcestershire sauce and top with Mozzarella cheese (if you like).
Meh.
Might have been a bit nicer cooked slower for longer, but to be honest the flavours didn't really blend.

Chicken Balmoral
main fowl meat
I found this idea online whilst searching for ideas to get rid of my leftover haggis and I thought it sounded nice, though I didn't get around to trying it.

Serves 2

Ingredients
Method
Cut a pocket into the chicken breasts without going all the way through and fill with haggis, wrap in bacon, then pan-fry to brown and stiffen the bacon then put in the oven to cook through.

Meanwhile deglaze the pan with the stock and the whisky (feel fry to fry some shallots first), reduce to about half, add the cream and mustard (or just peppercorns), finally whisk in the butter to thicken.
Serve the breasts with the sauce poured over.

Haggis Ravioli
starter main meat pasta
When I made these I just rolled out two pasta sheets, spooned filling into small piles on one of them, then pressed the other sheet over and cut around the filled lumps.
I'm sure it would have been better to cut out nice pasta shapes first, then fill them and press them together.
Make sure you re-roll the scraps left over from the cutting to make more shapes.
I filled some of the raviolis with chopped cooked beetroot and sour cream, which were alright, though the cream coagulated a lot during cooking. I'm sure you could do better.

Ingredients
Method
Make your pasta dough and roll it out very thinly - you should be able to (faintly) see the outline of your hand through it when you hold it up to the light.
Cut shapes from the pasta sheets using a tumbler as a template or a cookie cutter. Place a pile of filling in the centre of each, then cover with another shape and seal the edges.
I have read that you should use beaten egg to make the join. Pressing the edges with a fork looks quite nice.
Simmer for about 10 minutes until the pasta is cooked.
Serve with a nice rocket salad, or with Joyce's salad of beetroot mixed with yoghurt or sour cream and a dash of horseradish.



I made my usual pasta dough using semolina, but to be honest it was a bit too grainy for ravioli and tended to tear and leak during cooking. I think using just flour or mainly flour for the dough would be better here.
I also made up a couple of ravioli using chopped beetroot and sour cream, which weren't bad. I imagine ricotta or mascarpone or soft goats' cheese with the beetroot would be nice too.
Beetroot does go well with the haggis.

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