I dare you to eat this!
To this day I remember one of my culinary school instructors describing haggis. The very description made my stomach give a little heave ho.
Maybe it was the thought of eating stomach my stomach didn’t like. But really, what sort of sane peoples eat this stuff?: sheep’s liver, lungs, and heart chopped up with onions, oatmeal, fat, and spices and then stuffed inside a sheep’s stomach and boiled. Try making your kid eat that.
It sounded like the most repulsive food concoction on the planet, next to eating bugs and worms and such one sees on Survivor; at least I know that is for the sake of ‘good TV.’ Yet there it was: haggis was featured on nearly every menu at the 32nd Highland Games.
There, in all its repulsive glory, for real people to eat, not TV actors.
Haggis, claimed by the Scotts as one of their traditional dishes, is a dish that utilizes all of the ‘leftover’ parts of the sheep, which tend to spoil quickly.
So cooking these parts by stuffing the chopped organs into the stomach and boiling it (think sausage or hot dogs) kept the meat edible longer, good for long distance travels through the highlands down to the urban areas.
What’s wrong with jerky? Or those hard tack biscuits and salt cod the Pilgrims ate on the Mayflower?
Is it any wonder that Scotch whisky was invented? Get blitzed on the whisky to kill the taste of the chopped lung stuffed stomach. Which is exactly what I did at the Highland Games.
I needed a bit of that liquid courage, a dulling of the tastebuds, before I could muster up to the idea of eating the haggis and the lesser of the evils: Scotch eggs, bridies, and rumbledethumps.
The Highland Games honor Scottish and Celtic culture and traditions in a gathering of clans and games each year in Scotland and other parts of the world, including Loon Mountain, New Hampshire.
In addition to bus-sized men in kilts throwing telephone poles end over end, bagpipe and harp competitions, and traditional Scottish dance, the organizers of the event also offer whisky tasting seminars. Yeah!
Simon Brooking, the Dalmore Master Ambassador, led four ‘water of life’ tasting sessions, discussing different whisky brands and blendings from the Dalmore Distillery and a Laphroaig Single Islay Malt 10-year-old.
Laphroaig is pronounced like ‘la frohg’ or la frog in my flat Midwestern accent. In my little mind, any booze that sounds like ‘frog’ can’t be good. Don’t get me wrong, I love frog’s legs, especially fried in butter with a little Remoulade sauce on the side. However, this whisky tasted like dirt.
According to Brooking, the three main ingredients in Laphroaig are barley, water, and yeast.
He forgot to say that each bottle includes a handful of smoking peat.
Imagine drinking liquid, smoked dirt and then eating the stuffed sheep’s belly and then toss a few sausage-packed deep fried eggs on top of it.
With each bite my stomach churned and each burp a little bit of bile hit the back of my throat.
Sure it all may be an acquired taste, but it’s no wonder Mike Myers’ character in “So I Married an Axe Murderer” said “I think most Scottish cuisine is based
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