So in case you don’t happen to be Scottish (or partly so), I’ll bring you up to speed: the poet Robert Burns’s birthday is January 25th and is usually celebrated among Scots with the eating of haggis (if you don’t know what all that ent[r]ails, it’s probably best not to Google it) and the drinking of a lot of whisky. We didn’t drink a lot of whisky, but we did eat a simplified version of haggis (the real thing is illegal in the US) stuffed into a chicken breast wrapped in bacon—something the original recipe developer called “Chicken Balmoral” and I redubbed “Chicken Cordon Baa-aa-aa-aa.”
My friend Ian blessed the “great chieftain o the puddin’ race” with a fabulous performance of Burns’s “Address To a Haggis,” as is customary, and we gobbled it down with whiskey sauce and bashed neeps (mashed turnips) with butter-fried seeds. The mixed greens gratin with hazelnuts was a standout, and the calvados syllabub—garnished with a bar of Walker’s shortbread instead of the original cinnamon stick—lent the perfect, airy finish to a solid celebration.
The Rookery 