I ate a baby - An ode to Scottish food

Before coming here, I thought there were two food items Scotland was famous for:
Haggis and deep-fried everything.
These are a) stereotypes and, b) completely true.
However, there is more to Scottish cuisine than the short list above.

Let's start with deep-fried haggis.

Yes, this is a thing. All the haggis I have had here, even the canned stuff, has been thoroughly enjoyable. I know full well it's made from the heart, lungs and liver of a sheep, held together with oats and fat but I don't care. All the better if it's battered and deep fried. There is "Vegetarian Haggis" too, made from beans and lentils and spices. It's actually not a bad alternative to the real thing.

Staying with the deep-fried Haggis theme, I came across "Haggis Pakora" at a music festival on the Isle of Skye and had to try it. This was multi-culturalism happening right in front of me, in a polystyrene box.

Another notable food group in Scotland is Black Pudding. Black Pudding is everywhere and added to everything. I happen to love Black Pudding, so this suits me just fine. I made a Black Pudding and mushroom Risotto last week (delicious). The best black pudding famously comes from Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis in the far north of Scotland. I found this delicacy in a butchers shop in Inverness. It is the traditional Scottish breakfast sausage pattie, but it has an elegant spiral of black pudding running though it. Genius.

There is also white pudding, sometimes known as mealy pudding. From what I can gather this is essentially a sausage of very stiff, savoury porridge made with animal fat instead of water or milk. Not nearly as abhorrent as it sounds. It softens as it is heated and the skin is not eaten. White Pudding is eaten hot - as a side dish, as a stuffing for rolls of schnitzel or......battered and deep-fried.

Butteries are a plain, salted oval of lard pastry that is usually eaten as a snack with butter or jam spread on it. When I first visited Aberdeen, I looked up traditional Aberdeen foods, and this was it, so I bought one to try. A buttery is what a croissant would be like if it was made by an angry Scotsman.

In my mind, the Scots eat oatcakes all the time. I don't know if they really do, but oatcakes have become one of my staples. With butter, with pâté, with peanut butter, with cheese. It's just like a cracker really. Unlike the oatcakes I have had in NZ, Oatcakes here do not contain sugar.

I was pleased to find there is a burgeoning craft beer scene in Scotland. There are some excellent hoppy amber ales and IPA's from Windswept Brewing, Black Wolf Brewery and The Speyside Brewery among others. This offering from Stewart Bewery, the Ka Pai South Pacific IPA, made right here in Scotland, made me appreciate the place New Zealand craft brewing has in the world. (Note for non-New Zealanders: Ka Pai is a Maori word meaning "good"). It's nae bad.

I have not yet had the quintessentially Scottish dish of Mince and Tatties (photo stolen from the internet). This dish would be much more commonly eaten (and enthused about) than haggis, and the name says it all. Sometimes white pudding is added somewhere in the mix or served on the side. I have to admit to being slightly intrigued by this addition.

Tablet is a Scottish take on Fudge. The ratio of sugar to fat is higher in Tablet, giving it a crunchier, "grainier" texture.

I dare you to try eating Tablet in anything but moderation.

This monstrosity is an off-the-menu item at my local Chinese takeaway in Dufftown. It consists of Chicken Chow Mein, topped with chips, then slathered in a horrible spicy gravy they call "satay sauce". I had heard about this dish and I didn't believe it was real.

It is real and I put it in my body. All of it.

I'll try anything once.