How to make Haggis Lasagne

How to make a Haggis Lasagne: 

An Illustrated Guide. 

This blog post contains my first ever stab at a recipe of sorts, but you'll have to ready the story first!

I've had a good weekend. It was really busy, but did me some good, I think. I'd been feeling a bit crap for about a week, maybe two, but I now seem to be out the other end and feeling a bit stronger. 

Which is all a good thing because this weekend I... (now please keep up)

Left work and walked to the car hire place and picked up a shiny hire car. Drove home and picked up a friend and lots of things. Went to the University to teach a dance workshop but no-one showed up. Drove out of town, including a big loop back home again because we forgot the neeps* the first time round. I went to a Burns Supper, ate lots of Haggis, Neeps and Tatties, listened to a particularly bizarre Toast to the Lasses about how we can all pee in the sink if we really want to, and played in a ceilidh band.

This one. Here's us playing at a lovely little wedding in a cow shed.

I had a Saturday lie in, and then an exam for which I may well be awarded a certificate to teach Scottish Country Dancing. I filled a hire car with house plants and drove some more. I ate some tasty shepherds pie, unloaded some plants, built a wardrobe and drove some more. I went to church, went to the beach**, drove out in to the snow and nearly got the hire car stuck, went for a walk in the boggy snow and got lost, but rescued by some friendly locals***. We had a swift cuppa with a friend en route home, spun around really fast and went out to do a demonstration of some more dancing for an other Burns supper. Tesco, then home. 

There is a point to this. Robert Burns. This is the weekend when we celebrate the man, his poetry and love of whisky and women, and eat a lot of haggis. We were sent home with leftover haggis. 

Which has now become a Haggis Lasagne. It's really tasty, I've had sneaky seconds out of the oven dish, and I'm fairly good at stopping once I've had enough. It's good, so you should try it if you find yourself with a surfeit of haggis, and this is how. 

Meat Sauce

The haggis is replacing the minced beef, so fry off some onions, add some mushrooms chopped up quite little, add a good heap of haggis and whole carton of chopped tomatoes. Job's a good un. 

Bechamel Sauce

I once went to a restaurant where my friend asked if the Lasagne had Bechamel sauce in, because the menu wasn't committing to anything, the waitress said yes, so she ordered it, and then there was none. Just plain mean; it's the best bit!

I've always made fairly successful sauces by putting butter, flour and a little milk in a pan, on really low and then stirring like crazy for a long time, adding milk when it looks like it'll help. 

Stir like never before!

The internet may be a better place for quantities and proper instructions, I've always been one for some, and a decent dollop and that looks about right.

See, looks saucy.

And, even if it's not in the rules, now is the time to add cheese, Edam in this instance, but cheese always makes things better.

Construct your Lasagne

First off, some haggis sauce in the bottom of the dish. Just a wee bit to get going with.

Add a layer of pasta, filling in most of the gaps. No need for absolute neatness yet.

Add about half of the meat you have left. Splodge.

If you didn't know it was haggis...

Then pasta, half the bechamel, pasta, all the meat, pasta, all the bechamel, and extra cheese for luck.

Om nom

In the oven it goes, somewhere around 180, for about 40 minutes, or until you can wait no longer. 

Not about to win any photograpy competitions, but it was tasty.

Ta-Daa! Food. Serve with multi-coloured vegetables in a nice big bowl. Tasted surprisingly like slightly spicier normal beef lasagne. Mixing haggis with tomatoes makes the haggis less instantly identifiable and the end taste is meaty and spicy and pretty darn good. Enjoy!

We have enough left for another 4 decent portions, I reckon. 

Thanks for the free haggis!

*Neeps = Turnips = Swede, mashed with too much butter and actually quite tasty, unless you're my mother.

**Where we ate some tasty food at Chiquitos where they read the menu for you and will probably cut your food up and show you how to eat it if you give them half a chance. 

***Sorry, too busy being the annoying city-kid-using-phone-map-app-when-lost-in-countryside to  remember to take photos of the really pretty stuff around us.