Burns Night

This has been a lovely week, but a busy one - not only was there my usual burlesque class on Wednesday evening, I had a ukulele workshop on Thursday evening - and work has been as busy as always. As such, I have picked up little bits and pieces from the market, but haven't placed a full order for shopping to be delivered, as I usually would.

And so Friday dawned without me having yet bought my haggis for Burns' Night. I didn't think it would be a problem, and popped into Marks and Spencer on my lunch hour. Horrors, the shelf was bare! Not to worry, I thought, and bustled off to the butchers at the market, only to find they had sold out as well!

We decided to go with plan B, and eat out, as several local restaurants were offering a Burns' Night menu. The first place we tried had been 'debranded' from the pub chain they belonged to, and were no longer running the menu. The second and third places were fully booked!

And so we turned to plan C - we would drive out to the supermarket, get the ingredients and cook our own Burns' Night supper. Alas, when we got there, we found the shelf was bare again!

We thought that we would have to admit defeat, but as we walked back to the car, I remembered there was another restaurant near by which might just might be celebrating Burns' Night. We had a moment of worry when we got there and they asked if we had booked, and we hadn't, but happily they found us a table and seated us really quickly.

The menu was really good value, at £19.99 for 4 courses, and I actually really liked that there was no choice at all. Sometimes choice can be so overwhelming. We started with smoked salmon, brown bread, wedges of lemon and a little garnish of bitter peppery watercress, and then were served slices of haggis on neeps and tatties, again garnished with watercress. Next out were medallions of venison which came with a redcurrant and red wine sauce which was heavenly, some cubes of roast swede, and some horseradish mashed potatoes. The meal was rounded off with a version of cranachan which was really crunchy as they had used a granola base for it.

It looked like we weren't going to have any haggis for a while there, but it was a really lovely meal, and I don't think we would have found our way to the restaurant otherwise, so it was serendipitous and lovely.

Hope you had a Happy Burns' Night!