I love haggis.

Let's be honest, Burns Night is the first excuse for excessive eating and drinking after Christmas. You've spent all of January skint, trying to lose weight and breaking resolutions, and by the time it gets to the 25^th you're sick of all that and it's time to just sack it off and gorge again. With this in mind, I decided to invite some friends round for a Burns Supper. Despite the fact I'm Scottish, I couldn't promise tartan, pipers or poems, but I made sure there was plenty of food and drink available. Rabbie would've been proud.

There were oats in every course, and whisky in two of them.

In a traditional-ish menu we had:

• Smoked mackerel pate with oatcakes (I decided cock-a-leekie soup was too boring)
• Haggis, neeps and tatties with a whisky cream sauce. (Except I added other root veg to the neeps)
• Sort of Cranachan

I prepared the starter and pud in the morning, then went out for the afternoon.

Smoked Mackerel Pate.

The pate is ridiculously easy. It would be even easier if I had a full sized blender, but as it is I had to do each mackerel fillet individually. I figured as I was serving them in individual ramekins, there's no harm done. For each fillet, add a teaspoonful of crème fraiche, a teaspoonful of cream cheese, the juice of a quarter of a lemon, and some pepper. Then blitz. Done. I served it with some token salad and some oatcakes. I didn't make those myself, life's too short.

Haggis, neeps and tatties.

Cook the haggis according to the instructions on the packet. We got MacSweens. It was ace. I'm debating going and eating the leftovers of it right now to see if it'll cure my hangover.

Peel your spuds and boil in plenty of salted water. Peel and cube a turnip. If you're English you will probably call it a swede. Once the turnip has boiled for five minutes, add carrots and parsnips. You don't have to, but I find neeps a bit boring on their own, but love mixed root veg mash.

Drain your spuds and let them steam off in the collander for five minutes before mashing/ricing with plenty of butter, milk and a touch of cream.

Mash your veg with plenty of butter. And serve. It's not the prettiest dish, but it is nice. 

Not a great picture - it's not pretty food!

For the sauce I made some lamb stock. You absolutely don't have to bother with this, just use some chicken or lamb stock cubes but I happened to have some lamb bones kicking around in the freezer. Add to this some whisky, some cream and salt and pepper and reduce down. When it's done, add some chopped chives. 

Cranachan.

 

Traditionally this is a blend of cream, oats, whisky, honey and raspberries. However, it's not raspberry season, so they're really expensive. I opted for buying one small pack of raspberries, and buying some frozen berries too to turn into a coulis. I did this first thing, by boiling up half a bag of frozen berries, a couple of tablespoons of whisky, and a few of honey. Add a drop of water, then pass it through a sieve to get rid of the seeds. 

Amazing colour!

Toast your oats in a frying pan over a lowish heat. Do this really slowly, because if they burn even a little bit they're ruined and they cranachan will taste rubbish. If they do burn just start again. Oats are cheap it's fine.

Now whip up some cream until it's in soft peaks, stir through three tablespoons of honey, three of whisky, your raspberries and toasted oats.

Then layer it up in some glasses. I don't have the right sized glasses for this, so it looks a little odd but still good. 

Now you've made all that, eat it with friends, drink loads of whisky and talk rubbish for hours.

Wake up with a terrible hangover, and a kitchen that still looks like this even after half an hours cleaning effort:

Whilst eating this we mostly listened to: our entire vinyl collection and discussed it drunkenly at great length.

Using my Christmas presents: Slow cooked beef shin and mash.

Happy New Year! Hope you've all had a lovely one. I was in the Highlands. Can't lose really!

I don't really believe in New Year's resolutions. It's January, it's cold, and therefore it is not the time for diets. To be honest, I've never been on a diet in my life, I love food too much. I eat pretty healthily and don't have a sweet tooth (the recipes on here are the ones I make as a treat at the weekend). I admit, I could try and sort out my crisp and wine intake a bit more... but ah well. Life's too short. And now is the time of year for comfort food.

As well as this, I got some cracking Christmas presents which mean I absolutely have to make lovely stodgy food! We now own a Le Creuset casserole dish and I'm very excited! Plus I got a potato ricer, and they're supposed to make the best mash ever.

However, we are on a January budget... so it's time for cheap cuts of meat. I went to the butcher and bought a pound and a half of beef shin for a fiver. Brilliant. It does mean it has to cook for ages, but that's all the better as it left me with a lovely lazy Sunday afternoon.

Preheat your oven to 150 degrees.

First, get your butcher to cut your beef into casserole sized pieces (or do so yourself) and toss it in a little bit of seasoned flour. Get some oil nice and hot in your pan (either a big casserole dish that can go on your hob or a large saucepan) and fry the meat off a couple of pieces at a time. Don't do it all at once as it'll steam, you want lovely brown sticky bits at the bottom of the pan. 

You want it WELL browned. (Although not burned, obviously)

Put the meat to one side, then fry off a couple of sliced onions and some sliced celery. I also fried off a load of halved mushrooms, to make the cheap meat stretch even further, but this is optional. You could add root veg if you want? But I didn't want the sweetness of carrots or anything, I want this to be really rich and savoury. While it's frying use your wooden spoon to scrape up the brown stuff from the bottom of the pan – that's pure flavour.

Once everything has fried down nicely and picked up some of the colour from the bottom of the pan put the meat back in and stir in a couple of tablespoons of tomato puree. Whack up the heat and pour in as much red wine as you're willing to spare, about half a bottle for us! Then top up with some water or beef stock. You want the meat to be just about covered. Shove in a few bay leaves and some thyme, then season well. Put a lid on (or decant it into an oven proof dish, then put a lid on) then put in the oven for ages. I reckon about three hours should do the trick. Check it regularly to make sure it's not drying out, and add more water if you think it's getting low. You could also put some tin foil directly on top of the casserole underneath the lid to help contain the liquid if you're really worried about it drying out.

Mash: Peel your spuds and chop into fairly big chunks. (if they're too small they soak up more water; no one wants watery mash) Boil in salted water.

My latest trick with mashed potato (whether you have a ricer or standard masher) is to leave the potatoes sitting in the collander for five minutes after they're cooked. It stops them from being too watery as they drain more thoroughly, but more importantly give off loads of steam and dry out a bit. This isn't groundbreaking stuff, I probably saw it on the telly, but it really does make a difference.

While they're doing that, heat your butter and a little drop of milk over a low heat, and season it. Then either tip your spuds back in and get mashing, or send them through the ricer straight into the pan.

Serve with bloody great piles of veg. Delicious. The rest of this is going in a pie.

This weeks soup: Sort of potato and bacon. It's an interpretation of a Simon Hopkinson recipe which made me realise all my chives have died in the winter. It's cheap as chips and surprisingly tasty (even without the chives):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/potato_soup_with_soured_27576

Whilst making this I was mostly listening to: Lots of stuff. After all it was in the oven for three hours. But it included Laura Marling and Bon Iver.