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.