Scottish Food

University years are the most crucial years of our lives, it plays a major role in forming ones personality and way of thinking. God how I miss Scotland, although I've been to England some 4 months ago, I didn't feel at home as much as I did at Scotland ! No offense to my English friends, is it because I consider Scotland (Edinburgh in particular) as my second home ? I am not sure really.

I was meaning for a while to do a post on Scottish food and a post on tooners blog on comfort food fueled the urge to post regarding the matter.

Anyway here is my list of foods I miss from my Uni years:

1- Haggis and Chips:

This is the most famous Scottish meal, every Scottish (British) meal has two version, the homemade which is usually dull and yuckie and the chippie (Chips Shop) version which is deliciously unhealthy ! Anyway when I first asked what a haggis was, a friend of mine replyed with a grin:

"A haggis is a small four-legged Scottish Highland creature, which has the limbs on one side shorter than the other side. Which means that it is well adapted to run around the hills at a steady altitude, without either ascending or descending? Haggises can easily be caught by running around the hill in the opposite direction."

Didn't believe a word of what he said though :D (hope you are reading this Paul) but at least it encouraged me to eat it.

While in reality haggis is made of:

Sheep's heart, liver, and lungs, minced with onion, oatmeal, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and boiled in the animal's stomach for approximately an hour.

All this is battered and deep fried later on. Add salt, vinegar and chips and you'll have one of the most heavenly junk food meals.


2-Scottish Pie:

This was my favorite late night (early morning) snack at the weekend :P;) used to go to the bakers with the lads at around 3 – 4 am just to get them fresh (Not a good idea, especially with the horrid Scottish weather) but still it was worth it ! ;)


3- Chips and Cheese:

This is the No. 1 snack/meal for students in Scotland, Go to any chippie and you'll find most of the orders set by students (Bahrainis espcially) are chips with extra cheese and salt and vinigar !


4- Chicken Tikka Masalla:

Is an Indian meal with a twist, supposed to be invented by an Indian takeaway (restaurant) in Glasgow ! So this makes it an Indo/Glaswegian Meal :P

The main ingredient of this dish are variants of a tomato gravy (using puree or even ketchup) with cream or coconut cream and various common spices.

This sounds like a meal created in a haste with no thought, still this is the best Indian dish I ever had (beats baryannis in my opinion) :D


5- Pepperoni Pizzas: not really a Scottish meal but nothing beats this while watching a DVD or even better, a Champions League (Usually involving Liverpool) match.

6- Scottish Tablet:

These are the most traditional Scottish sweeties. Used to go to the Sunday market especially for those babies, I used to love 'em and no matter how much weight I gained I just didn't dare to stop eating them ! :D


7- California Lemon Chicken with rice:

Again not exactly Scottish, but a friend of mine discovered the sauce at ASDA supermarket and I added the rice to the meal ;) We started to have this meal every time we felt like having chicken (usually 3 times a week :P)

8- Fish & Chips:

Wasn't a huge fan but while I was doing a course at the midlands last April, I had the best ever fish and chips at the Black county museum, the trick was that it was deep fried in beef lard ! :o But man oh man what a beauty :)

9- Deep Fried Mars Bars:

Yup ! This is not a typo, this was created in Edinburgh where most of the chip shops serve this strange pudding if we may call it. It's made of normal mars bars dipped into batter and then deep fried. It's amazing when you eat it right out of the fryer (in the cold weather) not everybody's cup of tea though :P


10- Doner Kebab:

Not a big fan of this. NOT as much as many of the guys who studied at Scotland, but I get cravings for this every now and then (it seems that the "you don't know what you had until it's gone" thing going on :P)

Generally a doner kebab sandwich is served with a salad made from shredded lettuce. Usually there is a choice between a hot sauce, a yoghurt sauce containing garlic and a yoghurt sauce.
The only reason for me eating this was because it made a good Shawarma substitute

Very popular with party-goers and evening revellers in the vibrant of Edinburgh and Glasgow city centres.