Post-pub nosh deathmatch: Haggis pakora v huevos rancheros It's been more than a month on the salads and with our necks in the fruit bowl for the Special Projects Bureau's elite post-pub nosh deathmatch team, following the mealy pudding v migas clash of titans. We reckon our arteries have recovered sufficiently to make another foray into the calorie-packed world of nourishment …
Whut wid ye ken aboot it, ye Southron jessie? Ye widnae last five seconds in the Highlands. Ye'd be found deid, yir heart stopped and yir hair turned white as snow, after ye hear the terrifyin' wail of the haggis as it skirls across the moors!
Proper huevos rancheros are made with pico de gallo leftover from last night.
A big breakfast for two: The night before, take two 2 large tomatos, chopped, half a red or white onion, diced, three or four small radishes and one Jalapeno & one Serrano, fine diced. Three or four green/spring onions (scallions?), sliced into 3/8ths inch slices. Throw in the zest & juice of one lime, and a small handful of cilantro leaves (coriander leaves to you brits). I sometimes substitute fresh oregano for the cilantro, and one or three epazote leaves adds a background note that most folks can't figure out. Add salt & pepper to taste. Leave it covered on the counter overnight, do NOT refrigerate it or you'll kill the tomato flavo(u)r.
The next morning, strain the veggie liquid into a small container and reserve. Put the salsa into a skillet, and bring up to a simmer. Cook for a couple minutes, or longer if you want the veggies to break down more. One at a time, crack four eggs into a ladle[1], and make divots in the simmering salsa with the ladle, and pour the egg into the divot. Salt & pepper to taste, and poach eggs to desired doneness.
Serve with proper bacon, streaky bacon, sausage of choice, or whatever. I often have a small portion of "spanish rice" & black beans with this. For utensils, instead of knife & fork, use warm corn or flour tortillas ... but on the side, so they don't get soggy. Use the reserved strained liquid as hot sauce ... or break out your favorite hot sauce[2].
To drink: mixed citrus juice[3]. The night before, squeeze five or seven oranges, a couple meyer lemons, a couple limes, and a grapefruit or two into a glass pitcher. Add strawberries, stone-fruit, apples, mangoes, pineapple and etc. in any combination. Refrigerate overnight. Serve over ice, with fresh cut mint. And of course, always fresh roasted & ground coffee.
[1] Always crack eggs on a flat surface, unless you actually like bits of eggshell driven into your eggs.
[2] The wife & I often use this variation on the theme, mixed 50/50 with the strained veg juice for this meal.
[3] If it's a "day off brunch", a good dry, crisp sparkling white wine[4] or clean pale ale works alongside the coffee. Or spike the fruit punch with a little vodka or rum ;-)
[4] For Gawd/ess's sake, NEVER ruin good wine by mixing it with fruit juice!
As a resident of the haggis munching country, I should also react to the tinned variety, but as Lester says, it's not easy to come by, so the tinned variety was a necessary shortcut.
I still don't like the idea of deep frying after drinking...
One thing of which I'm sure is
Don't try to cook, when you've been out on the piss...
I saw you list fresh coriander and I wondered where in Spain you found it. I live in a major city and I can't recall the last time I saw it for sale, either in a supermarket or in a greengrocer's. I suppose following the comment about its use in Mexican food I could try the Mexican stall in the central market.
We are haggis free apart from the tinned variety. There is an import ban on meats containing offal from the UK due to CJD/BSE (complete nonsense). Some locals have claimed to produce the wonderful stuff but unfortunately they don't compare to a decent MacSweens or indeed a Halls for that matter.
I make proper Haggis[1] whenever I slaughter lambs/sheep ... like most peasant foods, it's inexpensive, easy to make, and quite tasty. It's also available on "black" menues across most of the US where Scots settled, if you know where & how to ask[2]. But tinned haggis? Are you insane? Blargh ...
Foie gras is also still readily available on the underground here in California[3], despite recent legislation. Legislation can't ban things that people (think) they are addicted to. See: Prohibition ... or the totally useless anti- recreational-drug[4] legislation in the nation of your choice.
[1] I learned how when I lived on the Applecross Peninsula in Scotland.
[2] Don't ask me where to find it, I make my own ;-)
[3] Likewise, don't ask me, I don't like Foie ... Wild duck livers, when lightly smoked with applewood, on the other hand, is mega-tasty :-)
[4] Again, don't ask me ... Rather than hide from it, I get high on big chunks of life.
Many years ago my mother succeeded in getting 2 dozen 'Scotch Pies' through customs at Newark Airport for a Scottish convention in the Big Apple, despite this 'ban'. The ape at the desk quizzed her as to the ingredients as the labelling was (deliberately) vague. She feigned ignorance and they let her through. Do all Merkins associate pie with fruit or something?
If you're going to give time to haggis (indeed to tinned haggis), I think you should consider the Pennsylvania Dutch specialty Hog Maw.. Take one hog maw, cleaned, and stuff it with loose sausage, diced potatoes, salt and pepper, then roast in the oven till done. If you need to get in there and fight for thrombosis points, you can save some for the next day, slice it in rounds, and fry it.
Some 20 years ago, I was sent to California to debug someone else's code for a Data General machine (Eclipse IIRC - different numbers for byte or word addressing was the problem). I used to have Huevos Ranchero at my hotel for breakfast, but it also came with chilli beef and refried beans! It set me up for the day of fighting this stuff which was lucky to run on any machine...
The best thing you can do with haggis is put it in a tin; that way you can post it to someone you dislike.
Huevos rancheros on the other hand - particularly if there are, say, some refried beans, some chili, and maybe some sweet peppers to hand, is an elixir of the gods.
@LH 15:25.
What's illegal with sticking the haggis in a jiffy bag and sending it to Spain? I think I'm going to have to rethink how my Marmite gets sent.
Butifarra negre is the Catalan version of haggis. Round where you are the closest thing is Morcilla, but not Morcilla de Burgos which has rice in it. And there aren't many fans of spicy food in Spain, when all's said and done it's quite bland.
P.S. For the Merkins commenting in this thread about Huevos Rancheros, Spain is not in Latin America.
Carrefour's on the blacklist, they seem incapable of programming the prices on their tills properly. Although now you've said that I might pop in one day and have a look for Marmite.
The true kings of dubious-food-with-booze have got to be the Chinese. Some of the snacks I have had there were truly disturbing, and definitely only worth trying with a liberal serving of (cheap nasty) beer.
May I suggest:
Fried chicken feet (popular snack. Fry with chilli and spices; suck skin and meat off bones)
Stinky tofu (deep fried mature mouldy tofu. The Chinese equivalent of blue cheese. You can easily smell a stinky tofu stand a couple of streets away, and will almost certainly gag from just the smell the first time you experience it. The smell was described by my lovely better half as 'like old period')
Then of course there's many varieties of mystery meat onna stick, but those can only really be experienced from a dodgy unlicensed food stand.
I must confess one of the best meals I've ever eaten post pub consisted of a quality haggis, about 1/2 pint of peat/alcohol mix from an obscure distillery (I was pissed and forgot to keep the bottle), salt, fresh ground pepper and towards the end of said meal some brown sauce.
I think it was near Pitlochry but the haggis was as hot as a phal in a haggisy way and the best bit was 2 1/2 lbs of haggis takes the other bit of the scotch to cook to the draminute.
I will try it with friends when I stop programming...
I don't know where you got that grossly complex version of huevos rancheros. Something extremely strange must have happened crossing the pond. Here in Colorado -- and also in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and the whole western US, as well as places I used to eat it in Mexico, huevos rancheros is universally made like this:
- Cook up one or two eggs - your choice of style: sunny side up, over easy, scrambled, or whatever.
- Smother the cooked eggs in green chile.
- Serve with (mexican-style reddish) rice, refried beans, and your choice of corn or flour tortillas.
That's it. Fast. Easy. Tastes great, assuming you have good green chile.
Now, making the green chile is a whole issue of itself. That can take upwards of a day, starting with browning a roux...
What you're describing sounds like some kind of mutant quesadilla. Also good, and yours very possibly tastes good, but it ain't huevos rancheros. What rancher would have time to do all that? (The green chile gets made in batches; it improves in cold storage.)
Agree more or less - whenever I've been in the southwest its always been tortillas, eggs, beans, chile. The options seem to be kinds of chile, kinds of beans, kinds of eggs, kinds of tortilla, something salad-like (optional), rice (optional), other stuff (optional). I can't imagine it without beans.
..........Is undoubtedly a Mixed Kebab Calzone from Errol's Kebabs in Peterhead.
A skewer of lamb, skewer of chicken, donner meat, sweetcorn, mushrooms, garlic sauce and chilli sauce wrapped in a folded pizza with a little cheese and tomato smeared on top. All the meat juices are retained within the calzone and it is absolutely lush. Half for when you stagger in at whatever time, and half to be eaten cold the next day as a hangover cure. It's only drawback is the sheer weight of the box. You really need to take it home in a taxi - fortunately, there is a taxi office next door to Errol's
Now that is a true culinary masterpiece!
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