General Haggis Recipe (meat or vegetarian)

Filling - lamb/lamb lung and offal/Veggies 1kg (this is the cooked weight, so when using meat 1.25kg raw meat)

Fat -  200g butter (or vegan alternative) + 50g flour (cornflour if wanting gluten free) or 250g suet

Pinhead Oats (also called steel cut oats) 350g

Onion - 2 medium approx 400g

Liquid 600ml - veg or meat stock. When making veggie I used the cooking water from the lentils and some marmite, some veg stock and maybe worcester sauce. For meat ideally use the liquid you cooked the meat in

Spice  - eg

2tsp salt approx, you need to taste the mix. Salted butter or marmite will also add salt

3 tsp ground pepper (or 1tsp pepper and 2 cayenne pepper)

1 tsp ground coriander seed

1 tsp nutmeg (or mace)

1 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 tbsp vinegar (but not needed when you use olives in the veggie version)

For the vegetarian option you can use anything you fancy for the filler, but consider how much flavour lamb has, you need to add this somehow.

Popular flavour enhancers are marmite, worcester sauce or soya paste, consider the volume of liquid if you use worcester sauce.

250g black beans (cooked - I used Cassegrain tinned haricot noire with Lemon grass and combava leaves)

100g mushrooms

180g carrot (2 largish carrots)

250g cooked green lentils (125g dried lentils)

150 g cooked black lentils (75g dried)

30g peanut butter

40g olives 

Cook the lentils (reserve the liquid to use with the stock), grate the carrot, chop the mushrooms and olives small and mash the black beans

Mix everything together all these ‘filling’ ingredients

Fry the onions gently in the butter until soft not brown

Mix with the veg mixture and add the liquid, flour and pin head oats.

Add all the spices.

Mix well

Should now be sloppy but not wet.

Put in to foil trays or loaf tins and cover with foil and cook in a 140°C oven for 2 hours (or steam in a pan)

When cooked the pinhead oats will be soft and have grown a lot in size (maybe 3 or 4 times the size they started off) and the mix will no longer be sloppy, it may be lightly browned.

Let cool and can be frozen at this point. 

To reheat cook in oven at 150 for about an hour mins. I like to leave the foil off for half that time so it goes a bit crispy, but this may not be highly traditional.

Serve with mashed potato and mashed turnip - or any veg you want!

Ready to out in the trays and cook

Cooked (twice) and ready to eat.

Failed to take a pic of it on the plate as too busy scoffing :)

Vegetarian Lasagne

I read the Delia recipe but made something not the same as I didn’t have all the ingredients and I put it together like I do my meat lasagne. I think it would be nice with bacon or chorizo in if you wanted a bit of meat.

Brilliant way to use a whole marrow that isn’t too courgette like for variety when you are swamped with them ;)

Makes enough for 8 people (or 6 if you don’t serve with much else…)

For the filling

2 onions

1 pepper

4 medium tomatoes

1 clove of garlic

6 courgettes or 1 marrow (I used a round courgette and most of a marrow). This looks like a lot but cooks away to nearly nothing…

200 ml tomato puree

200g black olives (stoned)

A block of ricotta cheese

If you don’t want it to be vegetarian add some bacon!

To make the lasagne

600ml béchamel sauce (you can buy it ready made in the supermarket in France, I presume in the UK too if you can’t be bothered to make it)

Grated cheese (emmental and cheddar or what ever you fancy…). I use a good covering og emmental and then a bit of cheddar on top.

Lasagne sheets

Dice the onion, pepper and tomato. Put in an oven tray with olive oil and crushed garlic.

Cook at 170°C for about an hour until the onion is translucent and the liquid has evaporated.

Dice the courgettes/marrow and put in a bowl with 1tbsp salt for a couple of hours. Stir occasionally if you can. Liquid will come out. Rince the pieces thoroughly and put in an oven dish with some butter and half the tomato puree.

Roast for an hour at 170°C or until no liquid is in the bottom of the pan (may take longer)

Cut the olives in half and the feta in to cubes.

Mix together the filling ingredients including the rest of the tomato puree. Add salt and pepper as needed.

Put 1/2 in the bottom of a dish and cover with lasagne sheets

Put in the rest of the filling and cover with the rest of the sheets.

Then the béchamel and top with cheese

Cook for an hour at 180°C or until the top is crisp and brown 

Instructions

I used all the yellow one and about two thirds of the green one. If the marrow has large seeds then scoop them out and just use the surrounding flesh.

Courgettes before roasting, they will end up only a fraction of this volumn.

The filling needs to be reasonably dry so the lasagne doesn’t come out all sloppy. So make sure you roast the veg for long enough. 

Cooked!

Mexican black bean veggie burgers

1 onion

1 pepper

Some garlic (crushed - I used 1/2 a clove as didn’t want to make it over powering)

Good splosh of olive oil to cook the onion and pepper and garlic in). 2 tbsp maybe)

Some Mexican spice (I used 20g pack of old el paso guacamole spice)

2x 400g can of beans (the beans will weigh less when the water in the tin is drained off, I think my tin said the beans weighed 250g)

1 egg

1/2 cup bread crumbs (I used panco)

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp sesame oil (or walnut oil, or whatever you have)

Salt to taste - the spice pack i used had salt in it so I didn’t need much more)

Cut up the onion and pepper and cook in a roasting tray with oil at 180°C until soft and there is no liquid (except some oil maybe) in the bottom of the tray.

Open the cans of beans, drain and put in to an oven tray. Cook at 180°C until the beans have dried off (no liquid when you stir them). About 20 mins.

Mash the beans with a fork, leaving some large lumps. They should be very soft and easy to mash after the roasting. 

Dice the cooked onion and pepper up small, I wizzed them briefly in the chopper.

Stir everything together and chill the mix (to firm it up)

Should be a firm mixture you can make patties from. If not add more breadcrumbs.

Shape in to burgers and BBQ (or fry or grill). 

If you want to bbq them you may need to do it on foil or a tray or BBQ mesh as they are a bit crumbly.

Serve with avocado, tomato and lettuce in a bun

I forgot to take a photo before scoffing! So here is one of the preparations to BBQ them, and of the oven ‘dried’ beans.