It’s that time of the year again! A traditional feast of food and drink, Burns Night on 25th January, is a cheerful post-Christmas pick-me-up when Scots all around the world celebrate the birth of the greatest Scottish poet Robert ‘Rabbie’ Burns.  Burns Night is one of the strongest symbols of Scotland’s national identity and its ritual has remained unchanged for over 200 years.

Like all rituals, the detail is important and a brief summary cannot do full justice.  Suffice it to say that speeches, a lot of standing up and sitting down, clapping, bagpipes, respect for the haggis and recitations of The Bard’s works are involved – all in strict order. The menu features favourite Scottish dishes and is washed down by good quantities of excellent whisky.

By nature the Scots are patriotic and many of them head north for a traditional Burns Supper and wee dram of whisky.  This year however, to experience and appreciate the full glory of this merry celebration you don’t need to venture up to the Highlands.

Boisdale of Belgravia and Boisdale of Bishopsgate, Scotland’s principalities in London, will be featuring the legendary piper Pipe-Major Willie Cochrane and Scottish actor Brett Findlay, who will be reciting the Ode to a haggis in 18th century period costume as well as, not wanting to spoil the plot, stabbing (murdering!) the Haggis every night from Monday 18th January until Saturday 30th January 2010 at Boisdale Belgravia and Thursday 21st until Tuesday 26th at Boisdale of Bishopsgate.

Three set menus, featuring the finest Scottish ingredients including, amongst others, Hebridean salmon and langoustine, Mini roast Macsween haggis and the very best grass fed dry aged Aberdeenshire beef steaks will be available.  In keeping with tradition, a small noggin of Johnnie Walker whisky will be served with the haggis.  The menu options for parties include:

Boisdale of Belgravia

• Talisker 10 years old Burns Night Menu at £47.50 for four courses
• Talisker Distillers Editon Burns Night Menu at £55.00 for four courses
• Talisker 18 years old Burns Night Menu at £69.00 for four courses

Boisdale of Bishopsgate

• Talisker 10 years old Burns Night Menu at £38.50
• Talisker Distillers Editon Burns Night Menu at £59.50.

The full Burns Night ritual and special menus listed above can be provided for parties of eight or more.  The menu options for all other customers include a la carte selection or Johnnie Walker Green Burns Night Menu at £40 for three courses.

Please see www.boisdale.co.uk for full details or contact Boisdale of Belgravia on 020 7730 6922 or Boisdale of Bishopsgate on 020 7283 1763 to book your table.

It is one of the busiest times of the year at Boisdale so to join in the revelry, if not the reeling, book early!

Ranald Macdonald- Boisdale Founder

I’ve always been interested in food. I always cooked at home and hung around my mother in the kitchen as a child.

When I used to go sailing, I always dealt with everything to do with food and snacks. I ended up paying for myself to go through university by working in a restaurant, first washing up and then in a kitchen. I never thought that I was going to have a career there, but then I got into the wine business and from there into a restaurant.

My first restaurant was Boisdale, which I opened in 1988. We’re a Scottish restaurant and source many of our ingredients from Scotland, where possible, and particularly from the West Highlands and Islands. Boisdale itself is a port on the southern tip of the island of South Uist in the Outer Hebrides, and we get a lot of our langoustine, crab, scallops, lobster, mushrooms and salmon from the island.

Sourcing food in this way is something we’ve been doing for 20-odd years. We used to buy our beef from Highland farms before we started getting through too much for them, so we now buy our beef from Aberdeenshire, all properly dry-aged. Everybody’s making quite a big thing about beef at the moment, but we’ve always done it the right way. We’re pretty eclectic, but most of what we do is cooking good ingredients fairly simply. We don’t do anything extraordinary, but I don’t think anything’s sacred – it’s fun to do different things. As it happens, this focus on sourcing, provenance and seasonality is currently very fashionable.

Personally, I think the greatest enemies of food are also the greatest purveyors of food and the people who brought food to a much wider market: the supermarkets. The supermarkets provide this magnificent opportunity for people to try a different product, but at the same time, they end up controlling what we eat. More importantly, they also control the price at which farmers are able to make a living or not make a living.

I think the problem of the supermarket is a fascinating element in how we buy and consume food today. For example, 15 per cent of the money spent on the high street is spent at Tesco. The supermarkets buy ruthlessly and they squeeze profit margins all the time.

On the other hand, there is an increasing opportunity for the public to bypass the supermarkets by buying direct from producers. While some of them are more real than others, the farmers’ markets and farmers’ shops are giving a great opportunity to buy more direct and cut out the middleman or the supermarket.

If you’re online, you can have everything delivered in the post. There’s no harm in it, either. Despite what some people would have you believe, human beings did exist before refrigeration, and there’s no danger to health from sending food out in this way. Hopefully it won’t be attacked by anyone, be it the big supermarkets or some government department, trying to make it illegal.

(That kind of interference wouldn’t surprise me, though. I do think there are too many rules and regulations about everything. For me, the public sector thinks very differently from the private sector. These rules and regulations help to keep them people in the public sector employed.)

I think maybe the greatest opportunity is connecting the actual producers direct with the public, which could open up to fascinating possibilities in terms of variety and price. For example, if we could relax some of our onerous abattoir laws that would enable farmers to go really ‘boutique’.

Another area where there is room for innovation is in frozen produce. Consumers haven’t fully understood that if products are frozen very well and then defrosted correctly, like fish in water in the fridge, you have a very good product. I doubt many farm shops in England have the ability to blast-freeze, but it is a process that hardly alters the food. It could open up another range of products that farm shops could sell directly to the public.

I think inevitably as people get more education, they will cook more at home and consume less processed food. People say that they don’t have time, but there’s only so much you can do in your leisure time. Instead of worrying about convenience, we should see that cooking is a pleasure, it tastes better and it’s cheaper. Cooking a meal from scratch really doesn’t take a lot of time. When I walk into my kitchen, the first thing I do is put on a pan of water and in the time it takes to boil, I take out and prepare the ingredients. I can easily cook for 4-6 people in no time – and very cheaply. I think people will, in time, learn how much fun cooking is. A good meal shouldn’t cost more than £2 a head and it’s very easy to create good food for less than £2.

In general, I think we’re paying far too much for our food. I can see how much I pay for ingredients and what the public is paying and the mark-ups charged by the supermarkets are huge. That’s not a problem that can be solved easily, but maybe consumers going direct to producers is part of the answer.

The Scottish take pride in their tradition and culture and nothing demonstrates this better than their rich and varied cuisines. The most popular Scottish dishes seem to each have a history of their own, shown in the following five dishes.

1- Haggis

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The recipe first appeared in 1615 in “The English Huswife” by Gervase Markahm and is heralded as Scotland’s national dish. While the thought of haggis seems unappealing to tourists, this dish actually has a pleasant taste. Traditionally the heart, liver, and lungs of a sheep were removed, boiled, and minced with chopped onions, oatmeal, and spices, and stuffed into a cleaned sheep’s stomach. Then the stomach was sewn shut and boiled for 3 hours. Today, haggis is served in a synthetic skin and there are vegetarian recipes made with legumes and vegetables. Haggis is usually served separately with mashed potatoes and turnips, also know as neeps and tatties, or with a whiskey based sauce.

2- Bannocks or Oatcakes

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A chewy type of pan fried biscuit, bannocks are a popular breakfast food in Scotland. The barley and oat flour biscuit is historically tied to the druid’s division of the seasons where special bannocks were made for each. Traditionally bannocks were made unleavened, but with the modern use of baking soda and powder it is light and airy. Several versions of bannocks are made in Scotland, with the most popular being the selkirk bannock. The selkirk bannock is a spongy variety with a lot of raisins first made by Robbie Douglas in 1859. It is said that when Queen Victoria visited Sir Walter Scott’s granddaughter she took a slice with her tea, ensuring the bannocks place in Scottish history. The bannock can now be found in supermarkets of Scotland and variations are made worldwide.

3- Hotch-Potch or Scotch Broth

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Hotch-Potch is a delicious soup stock made of boiled mutton, carrots, leeks, turnips, onions, and celery. Mutton is the traditional meat used, but can be replaced with chicken or beef and the choice of vegetables is up to the chef. In this popular Scottish dish the mutton was removed after cooking and served separately as the main course. Now, the meat is kept in the soup as a one course meal. A popular New Year’s Day dish, Scotch Broth is better served a day after cooking which gives the flavors time to marinate.

4- Stovied Tatties or Stovies

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Stovies are made from potatoes with left over roast beef or sausage and onions which are stewed with fat. The ingredients are boiled on the stove with meat drippings, water, and meat stock. When finished, stovies have the consistency of mashed potatoes. Traditionally, this popular Scottish dish was cooked on Sunday using the leftovers of the week.

5- Black Bun

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Another recipe steeped in Scottish history, this popular dish is made in a pastry crust with a fruity filling of raisins, almonds, currents, and brandy. This recipe was once eaten to celebrate Twelfth Night, but is now enjoyed for Hogmanay on December 31st (the Scottish new year’s eve). This popular Scottish dish is thought to date back to the 16th century and made several weeks in advance in order for the fruit to absorb the alcohol.

Though haggis is often thought to be a dish originally made in Scotland, findings point in other directions. The Ancient Romans were actually the first people to make haggis like dishes. Haggis was used as a cheap way to feed the Roman armies as well as the citizens.

When haggis arrived in Scotland sometime between the 10th and 13th centuries, it soon became an integral part of the Scottish culture.

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Traditional Scottish haggis is prepared using a sheep’s heart, liver and lungs, minced with onions, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally boiled in the animal’s stomach. It is also served with swede, yellow turnip or rutabaga and potatoes. It was often used by the poor in Scotland as a filling and nutritious dish.

Modern day haggis is served in artificial casings instead of the sheep’s stomach. Fast food establishments deep fry it in batter and serve it with chips. Higher class restaurants serve it stuffed in chicken breast, a dish called “The Flying Scotsman”.

There are also various Scottish shops and manufactures that sell vegetarian haggis for people that don’t eat meat. They use pulses and vegetables as a substitute for the meat.

Scottish whiskey is a common drink served with the traditional haggis, though some people drink wine with it.

There is plenty of folklore about haggis. The wives of Scottish cattle drovers were said to prepare rations for the men in preparation for the cattle drive to the market in Edinburgh. The sheep’s stomachs were supposed to allow for easy transportation of food during the trip.

Another story says that when a Chieftain or Laird had a sheep or cow killed for it’s meat, the workmen were given the offal as a way of thanking them.

There is also a rather amusing tale that haggis is actually a small animal that is native to Scotland. This animal is supposed to have one set of legs longer than the other so that it can stand on the steep hills of the Highlands without falling over. Many Americans actually believe this story and look for this mythical animal when visiting Scotland.

Though haggis may not have originated in Scotland, it is now so much a part of Scotland that has become a true a Scottish dish.