Burns Night

After a quiet January on the restaurant and entertaining front Burns Night arrives at just the right time when I can get enthusiastic about the art of planning and cooking a meal for friends. Given that our crowd is a good representation of the UK's four nations the Scottish theme was very fitting.

There seem to be a great selection of recipes giving ideas for Burns Night  and seafood, haggis and raspberries (from last years bountiful crop) were the ingredients I used to develop my plan.

To start I went for an easy fish selection of shrimps, prawns, and salmon served with lemon mayonnaise, rocket and crusty brown bread.

Main course was pork fillet stuffed with haggis and wrapped in bacon served with a sauce flavoured with a little drambuie and cream. Rosti potato cake, mashed swede and red cabbage with onion and apple went perfectly and the extra haggis all disappeared too.

We finished with a stunningly simple dessert of Raspberry Cranachan. Whipped cream with toasted oatmeal flavoured with honey and whiskey was layered between raspberries sweetened with caster sugar.

Luckily for me there is a portion left