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Saturday, June 11, 2016

Dinner with Anne and Graeme Nelson

Hi Everyone,
Back again.

The highlight of the trip was dinner with a Scottish couple who are good friends with Alison, Anne and Graeme Nelson of Helensburgh, Scotland.

Helensburgh is a lovely town on the west coast of Scotland. According to Wikipedia, it had about 14,000+ residents in 2000. It has a beach front and an esplanade and a town square that has won some design awards.

Dinner was really good as Anne is a terrific cook. The main dish was a genuine haggis which Anne's butcher made especially for this dinner. Here are the photos:

This is a photo of Anne and Graeme and their lovely dog Daisy, who shows up in many a social media post:

Here is the first course-scallops with black pudding layered over a pea and mint puree. It was every bit as delicious as it looked:


And here it is everyone-the haggis! It was probably 10 or 11 inches long and about 6 inches wide. This is usually a holiday meal but Anne's butcher made it just for us. As we went through the meal, I kept asking about ingredients, cooking, etc, but when it came to the haggis, the recipe was kept a secret so no, I don't know what was in it but it was delicious and I had seconds:


Here it is being sliced open:

We also had neeps and tatties, which are mashed turnips and potatoes and were served with the haggis. The potatoes tasted different than American potatoes - the flavor reminded me of mashed potatoes I ate as a child. Anyway, I had several helpings of both:


This is the main dish-the haggis had a whiskey sauce on it. Very good:


Here is the poor haggis about 20 minutes later, demolished:

Ahhh, desert. This is cranachan, a whipped cream, honey, scotch whiskey, oatmeal, and raspberry dessert. It was really good. I could have eaten probably 20 of these easily. I am going to attempt to re-create this tomorrow evening by using this recipe- Cranachan recipe:



We spent the evening chatting and getting to know one another and I sincerely hope at some point we get to meet them again.

Thank you Anne, Graeme, and Daisy for a terrific meal and evening.

VW

7 comments:

  1. It was an absolutely brill night, and what are the ingredients of a haggis ? Just catch it fresh around/after 5 o'clock in the morning and they are tender , if you catch them too late in the day they are a wee bittie tough and chewy !

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  2. So these are Daisy's humans and home. I feel as if I already know Daisy from Ali's photos.

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    1. That's them Sandi, It would have been better, even more bettered , the pure bestest if yo and Judy and Shazzle had been there

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  3. That's so kind of you Vicki, I'm so glad you enjoyed you visit and your meal with us, Bob's ingredients (the haggis) are a closely guarded secret & even I don't know everything that's in there! I hope the childhood memories of the mashed potato are good ones? I guess so, otherwise you probably wouldn't have gone back for more! I enjoyed cooking it all as much as you enjoyed eating it, & I hope your Cranachan turned out well?! Looking forward to seeing you both again soon, lots of love from Helensburgh xxx

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    1. Anne, I really enjoyed the food. American food is very sweet and very salty and basically unedible. With Scottish food you can actually taste the ingredients. Refreshing.

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