Canned Haggis, Tatties and Neeps. Yum.

Here it is folks! As promised, one glorious can of yummy, meaty Lamb Haggis! Just delivered from the fine folks at the Caledonian Kitchen.



The first ingredients are in order: Water, Lamb, Hydrated Pinhead Oats, Beef Liver, and Refined Beef Suet. R-e-f-i-n-e-d spells delicious!!! In case you are watching your figure this one 14.5 ounce can contains 1320 calories and 212% of your daily saturated fat intake. Thats all that tasty beef suet working around in there.

Lets crack this bad boy open and see whats shaking. The odyssey begins.



OK, upon opening the can you are literally punched in the face by the smell. The smell of this crap is like concentrated corned beef hash stank mixed with that gamy smell particular to lamb. Some how I do not think the choice chops of lamb made it into this mess. I think I caught a sniff of mechanically separated lamb anus. My kitchen was completely hotboxed in like 6 seconds. My wife who is currently incubating my minion (pregnant) headed for the hills cursing me in some strange gypsy tongue.



Oh good god! After shaking it out of its can I was a little disappointed that the wee haggis was not ensconced in some thing's stomach. But disappointment quickly faded against the strength of the stench that shook even my Anglo-Scots soul to its foundation. How to prepare this jiggling column of lamb scrote and oatmeal? I decided upon the traditional treatment of Haggis, Tatties, and Neeps. I decided to substitute Parsnip for the, in my opinion, nasty Scottish Turnip (rutabaga) which represents the Neep part of the dish.



First I sliced a couple half inch rounds of the Haggis and browned them well in a generous amount of butter.



While this was working I set a large peeled Yukon gold potato and a peeled parsnip to boil in salted water. You are gonna want to boil these until tender but not mushy.



When these are done (about 20 minutes), dry, cool somewhat, chop into symmetrical
cubes, and saute until crisp on all sides.



Next, reduce a couple jiggers of single malt scotch until syrupy. Add a half cup of whipping cream and reduce further for a couple minutes. Season, and finish with some finely chopped parsley.



I served these two rounds of haggisy goodness with points of good German Schinkenbrot, the crisped tatties and neeps, a drizzle of the whiskey cream sauce, and a sprinkling of chopped parsley.



Next step, Dig In!!! Yum!!! Immediately break out remaining single malt, fix a pint glass size whiskey and water, gargle, spit, repeat until rotting, fatty, nasty, gamy, lamby ass funky shit taste dissipates.



Seriously folks, this is slap your children gross. It is a food with which the ass smell is locked in mortal combat with the ass taste for supremacy.

Verdict: I fed this to my cats and then felt bad for them.

Your Father is a Hamster and Your Mother Smells of Elderberry Wine Cheese...

This particular cheese caught my eye on my favorite internet cheese site (doesn't everyone have a favorite cheese website?). It is Cahill's Elderberry Wine Cheese. They have a couple like this. I have previously tried their stout cheese and whiskey cheese. Cahill's modus operandi is to wash some cheddar curds in some form of alcoholic beverage. Cheese and booze is truly a match made in heaven and I liked both the whiskey and stout versions. The cheese itself is a fairly uninteresting young cheddar, but the novel taste of the alcoholic ingredient plays well in both. The elderberry wine version, however, kind of tastes like ass. Now, I have never had elderberry wine before, but if I ever get a hold of some let us say I won't be throwing any cheese curd in it. This stuff was a little funky, I think berry wine might be a little too acid to go with the cheese harmoniously.



Visually the cheese is striking. The pattern of cheese curd with the pink wine is kind of beautiful, reminds me of a colorful piece of granite or something. This proves we eat with our eyes first, I laid out 9 bucks for this hunk based on the fact that I thought it was pretty.

Classic Potato Gratin

Sometimes the simplest recipes are the best. I had some left over potatoes and heavy cream yesterday. The cream was from a less than successful Chocolate Milk Tres Leche Cake recipe I tried the other day. Lets just say it was a giant Cake Fail. I decided to make one of my favorite foods on earth- the Potato Gratin.

First slice 4-5 decent size Yukon gold potatoes thin. Err on the thin side, think potato chips. Some use a mandolin or food processor, I favor a good and sharp chef's knife. Throw the tatties in a large, heavy skillet. Add a teacup full of heavily reduced chicken stock. I used the stock resulting from a small roaster carcass and a large white onion. Raw bones and white onion are best for this because they don't mess up the nice white color of the dish. Reduce 3-4 cups of this stock to the half cup. Next, cover the potatoes in cold whipping cream and season. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and cook for about 10 minutes.



Transfer potatoes to a sturdy greased casserole. I would have used my Le Creuset but it was full of some nasty crap I made last week in the back of the fridge. I was entirely too lazy to clean it. Tamp down spuds with a spatula. They should only be just covered with cream, not swimming. Reserve excess cream for some other fattening purpose. Bake the mess at 400 for about 45 minutes.



The result should be browned and look about as good as a pint of cream and a pile o'tatties possibly can. The taters should be tender but still retain some tater integrity. It should not be a mushy mess.



I ate the whole lot of this in less than 24 hours. My pregnant wife got halfway through a plate when I mentioned the chicken stock. Her nutty pregnant brain imagined the sad, lonely chicken carcass boiling away in a pot and was unable to
continue. Her loss.

One more gratuitous shot of browned goodness.



I have a shipment of canned Haggis arriving tomorrow. Mwa hahahaha. I am thinking Canned Haggis, tatties, and neeps shall be whipped up. Then I have to find some friends to force this on. I still have the elk meat but have been too lazy to do anything with it.

Stewart's New Pet

Yet another reason that Stewart's Shops of upstate New York rock, aside from the whole year round egg-nog thing and "Crumbs Along the Mohawk" ice cream.



For those of you who can't make it out it says, "This is our new pet KYLE. He grows bigger everyday. Buy your own today, only 2.59$." It is a giant version of one of those spongy dehydrated animals that we all bought as children. I remember being consistently dissapointed with the lame increase in growth those things had. Kyle, it seems, is another story.

But anyhow, Stewart's is a shining example of how a chain, even a chain of mini-marts, can maintain some semblance of character and charm. On this same day there were advertisements for sidewalk chalk written in sidewalk chalk in the parking lot which was also great. Not to mention you can get a chocolate milk "Refresher" and two buttered hard roles for 2.47$.

As a side note, I just noticed the box of Tampax in the bottom right corner of the picture. This must be the things that get bigger in liquid section of the store.

Meat on the Fourth of July

Some downtown Albany friends of mine invited me for a Fourth of July barbecue to celebrate Uh'Merica. I thought what better way to celebrate Uh'Merica than with meat- several species in several combinations. On the menu from my end was bacon wrapped, cheese stuffed, White Eagel brand brats, Rochester Whites, and red wine marinated sirloin. I ensured that none of these fine proteins even touched vegetable matter so as to ensure it was not tainted by any healthy nonsense.

I threw about 8 bacon dogs and 25 Rochester Whites on the grill at the same time and quickly managed to start a large meat fire. The uncleaned grill combining with the melting bacon grease caused quite the conflagration. I was nonplussed because the only thing better than a bacon cheese dog, is a flame broiled bacon cheese dog. See below.



I thought the bacon dogs among the Rochester whites looked like the parasitic larvae of some violent hot dog beast laid to grow with (and eventually consume) the tame, white larvae of a more passive hot dog creature.



Here is a finished bacon cheese dog. I later smacked my associate for sullying the wiener with ketchup. As anyone should know, mustard or bacon grease are the only natural condiments put on a bacon dog.



Then I cooked up the sirloin to a nice bloody rare. It had been marinating in nothing but red wine, salt, and pepper.



Some less skilled Meatsman made some nasty looking crap.



The day ended with this fine cake that I whipped up. To recreate, simply make 1 recipe each of your favorite brownie, cheesecake, and spongecake in spring form pans. Cool, ice, and layer into one mountain of delicious love handle fuel.



Later we were full and drunk so we fed some cake to the neighborhood stray foot.



All in all it was a patriotic fourth of July. Nothing says America like meat fire and cheesecake!

Still on deck- Tater-Elk Hot Dish.

Bacon Vodka Experimentation and Recipes

Last week I found myself with a package of overpriced yuppy bacon sitting in my fridge. I paid like 7 dollars for the lot and it is the good stuff, thick cut and hickory smoked. As I have been trying to shed some pounds lately I suppressed my first instinct to make a giant bacon sarnie on wonderbread to be devoured guiltily while standing over my kitchen sink. After some thinking I was inspired by something I think I saw online or in a magazine somewhere, namely- Bacon Vodka.

The process I used was fairly simple as I will outline below.

First step, cook bacon.



Second step, drain bacon.



Third step, steep bacon, refrigerate and wait 1 week.



After a week I was left with a somewhat cloudy brownish jar of liquid. It definitely smelled and looked bacony and this was encouraging. I strained the mixture through a muslin cloth to get rid of any particulate bacon matter (Note: particulate bacon matter sounds delicious). I was left with a clear, amber liquid that had a pleasant, smoky aroma.



I will have to say a shot of this stuff tastes pretty much how you would expect. It tastes like bacon, burning alcoholic bacon. The bacon flavor was very pronounced. The vodka had truly absorbed much of the essence of cooked bacon.

After taking a shot I started to think how this meaty brew could be used in recipes. I came up with two I thought were pretty good, Bacon Crepe Suzette and a deconstructed bacon, cheese, and egg biscuit.

For the Bacon Crepe Suzette I started by whipping up some basic crepe batter and cooked up some nice, large crepes. I won't bore with the exact recipes here, they are pretty standard and easily found.



After making the crepes I threw some of the bacon vodka into the pan followed by some brown sugar. I thought the molasses flavor of the brown sugar would go nicely with the smoky bacon flavors of the liquor. Then I threw in a knob of butter, placed the crepe in the pan, and folded it twice. This is a pretty standard Crepes Suzette recipe with the Grand Marnier replaced by the Bacon Vodka.



I plated the crepe, spooned on some sauce, and topped the mess with a quenelle of vanilla icecream and garnished with some of the vodka pickled bacon.



Verdict: I was expecting this dish to be weird at best. I was shocked at how good it actually turned out. The combination of savory and sweet flavors worked very well, think a certain caloric pancake sandwich from the golden arches. The bacon flavor ran more as a base note under the general sweetness of the brown sugar and ice cream. It was downright pleasant. I would actually consider making this again.

Next I thought to make a deconstructed bacon, egg and cheese biscuit. All though, I would usually deem anything "deconstructed" as unbearably retarded I think the following is at least worthwhile in a tongue in cheek kind of way. I simply plated a shot of Bacon Vodka with a bacon swizzle stick, a mini drop biscuit, a small slice of cheese, and a small slice of hardboiled egg. I think this would best be taken as a shooter. Bite the biscuit, slam the shot, snort the cheese... I don't know. It looks kind of cool on the plate though.



All and all I find Bacon Vodka to be a success. I think a nice bacon martini with olives would be tits. If you have any questions or want a more complete recipe, email me at ridiculousfoodsociety@gmail.com.

On Deck- Tater-Elk Hot Dish!!!