ADDRESS TAE A VEGGIE HAGGIS

WORDS BY KAT BETTS

Haggis is as Scottish as it comes, but even beyond that, Scottish cuisine is a meat-filled affair. What happens, then, when one of Scotland’s daughters becomes vegetarian? How do you keep traditions alive while embracing the new?

Fair fa’ yer putrid, reeking face. Great minger o’ the puddin-race!

Ower there wid ye tak’ yer place,

Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye wordy o’ na grace

Fur ye dae me pure harm.

In steed o’ yer meaty trace Gie her a veggie Haggis!

I distinctly remember the first time I tried haggis. It remains one of the few memories that swim among what I can recall of living in Scotland. As a kid I could barely stomach minced beef yet there I was—six years old, dressed in tartan and watching a schoolteacher pile haggis, neeps and tatties on my plate. I just about swallowed my way through the mashed turnip and then devoured the potato, leaving the pile of ‘painch, tripe, or thairm,’ as Rabbie Burns puts it. I picked at it sheepishly, wondering what it was. Since then, I’ve loved haggis, eating it up year after year on Burns Day, St Andrew’s Day and New Year’s Eve. Probably because, despite its reputation, haggis is mainly oats, herbs and onion.

Along with bagpipes and kilts, few things are more Scottish than haggis. Although its exact origins are murky, the first known recipe dates to the early 1400s. A savoury pudding of sorts, these days it is usually made with sheep offal—liver, kidney, heart—although originally the offal from any animal would have been used. As befits the ingredients, it was a dish borne of necessity, a way to use all the cuts of meat in a time when such things were still considered a luxury. Traditionally, the minced offal would be mixed with oats, herbs and onion, stuffed inside the lining of the animal’s stomach and then boiled for hours. These days, haggis in Scotland is sold in tins at the supermarket, or available in restaurants in sausage form, as a patty in a burger, or even pakora-style in the Indian restaurants popular across Scotland!

Undoubtedly the most famous ode to haggis comes in the form of the poem written by Rabbie Burns in the 1700s—the namesake of this article. ‘Address tae a haggis’, praising the mixture of sheep’s stomach and intestines, is still read aloud at Burns Day dinners. A most grandiose celebration of such a humble food.

Long after moving to the other side of the world, this little vegetarian-to-be would continue eating haggis. Despite being the most Scottish person I know, my mum refused and still refuses to eat haggis. Yet she would diligently buy it for her English husband and her mixed nationality daughter from one of the Specialist Scottish butchers that can be found in Melbourne. She may not eat haggis, but one of the things my family missed the most about our home country after moving to Australia was meat in Scottish cuisine.

Now I’m twenty-one and I’ve been a vegetarian for almost six years. When I first hinted at going vegetarian to my mother, we argued extensively. It didn’t and still doesn’t make sense to her. ‘A meal should include meat,’ my mum and sister constantly remind me. Interestingly, the influence of British cuisine is still lingering in much of the contemporary Australian mindset. Many of my friends’ parents grew up on the ‘meat and three veg’ mantra and although vegetarianism and veganism are growing lifestyle and ethical choices, they are still not the standard beyond the inner-city suburbs.

I’ve been back home to Scotland three times since we immigrated—for one of those trips I was a ‘transitioning’ vegetarian and during the most recent voyage home, a fully-fledged herbivore. The last time I went home my Granny Murray was sick. I cooked for her most nights—meat and potatoes. Every night. My thoughts would often flit back to the old Scots, imagining them cooking potatoes and vegetables on a wood fire while someone hacked apart the carcass of a sheep, stringing out the intestines ready for haggis. How much has really changed?

Don’t get me wrong, eating vegetarian in the United Kingdom is fairly easy—they have a much wider variety of vegetarian food in the supermarkets than we do in Australia. But I still find the balance between appreciating the traditional foods of my homeland and my vegetarian philosophy extremely difficult. Of course, vegetarianism is a growing movement in Scotland, just like Australia, and much of modern Scottish cuisine is based on a variety of cultures’ food.

But can I appreciate the ‘traditionally Scottish’ food of my culture if I don’t eat meat? I’ve been exploring the likelihood of having a traditional Scottish meal in Melbourne—outside of my mum’s cooking of mince and tatties, of course. There is a smattering of options to choose from, including the Highlander Bar in the CBD and Wee Man’s Kitchen out in Preston. You can also join the Melbourne Scots Society if you’re really keen on wearing a kilt or travel up to Bendigo for the annual Scots Day Out which happens in February every year. Knowing where to get some good Scottish scran, however, is only half the problem in my case.

The Highlander Bar offers a variety of Scottish and non-Scottish foods with a couple of vegetarian options thrown into the mix, including vegetarian haggis, neeps and tatties—something you’ve got to try. The veggie haggis’ mixture of vegemite and kidney beans is honestly ‘pure dead brilliant’. I was told by the staff that they make their own vegetarian haggis as it’s too tricky to source. The bar’s warm interior and low-level lighting reminds me of a weary rainy day in Scotland, and the ritual of sneaking into the pub for a couple of drinks before bracing the cold outside again. The mixture of Scots and Aussies alike, enjoying the Scottish memorabilia, proves that not only the Scottish can enjoy haggis, vegetarian or otherwise, with a side of Irn Bru or whisky. Pure dead brilliant.

The Wee Man’s Kitchen—a fusion of Indian and Scottish cuisine, think: haggis pakora—offers again a few options for the veggie minded. However, most of their vegetarian cuisine is either Indian or chips with curry sauce or cheese, or both. This makes a little more sense when you consider that Indian curry is now considered the national dish of Scotland. The Scots I know will eat a chicken tikka masala, claimed to be invented in Glasgow among other places, over a traditional Scottish dish any day. For those of us skipping out on meat, the new tradition of Scottish food—eating a curry—might be a much better option after all.

Scotland’s multiculturalism is like that of Australia’s fusion of foods from across the world. And so, it’s not always getting vegetarian food that is a problem either here, in Scottish themed restaurants, or in Scotland itself. Rather, it’s the difficulty I have embracing the traditions of my homeland when those culinary traditions are steeped in eating meat. Food is such an important part of any culture and my vegetarianism is a source of conflict when it comes to embracing my Scottish heritage through its cuisine. Scottish food is so heavily based on meat it’s near impossible to eat anything traditionally Scottish as a vegetarian. My mum makes delicious tattie soup and tattie scones but that’s about as far as we get. Despite owning a kilt, I often feel little connection to my Scottish heritage.

So, if the old Scotland doesn’t support my vegetarian diet, if those traditions counter my own philosophies, then I suppose we’ll just have to agree to disagree—much to the dismay of my fiercely Scottish mother. I’ll have to turn to the new Scotland, the one with a variety of food from across the world to satisfy my vegetarian palette. And of course, there’s always vegetarian haggis.