Burns Dinner

What on earth is a Cock-a-leeky soup? Now, for that you need to be Scottish because today is Burns day. Burns was a Scottish poet and in his honor there is a very special dinner served on January 25. I am not going more into the man himself, because I am no great fan of poetry and have to admit, I never read one of his poems.

I can tell you more about the dinner, that is no problem, being a chef, that is the interesting part for me. It is actually a very simple 3 course menu, so we just incorporated it in our evening menu especially for the main course, it is a Haggis......now that is really not every-bodies favorite. It is a filled sheep stomach and the filling has all the intestines of the sheep.....like I said, not everybody would go for it. So we actually changed the main course a bit and de-boned a leg of lamb and filled it with a liver stuffing, much nicer and everybody who chose it enjoyed it very much.

Dessert is then a traditional Sherry Trifle, something everybody likes very much.

But now to the soup, as I have the recipe for it, it is really a lovely soup, not too refined, chunky pieces of chicken and cut leeks, these are the main ingredients. So here we go

1 ea Chicken whole

2 ea Leeks

3 ea Onions

3 ea Tomatoes

1 clove Garlic

2 ea Bay leaves

1 ea Cloves

Salt

Peppercorns

50 g Butter

Make a chicken stock with the whole chicken, the leek off cuts, onions, tomatoes, garlic and spices. Simmer for about 2 hours very slow.

Take the chicken out and strain the stock. Pull the meat off the chicken, that will be going back into the soup at the end.

Cut the leeks in fine slices, wash well as often there is still plenty of sand between the leaves

Fry the leeks in a little butter, without color, then add the chicken stock. Simmer till the leeks is tender, season to taste and add the pulled chicken just before serving