25 January 2025

Not the haggis.
I’m really not up to haggis this year, or any year. I’d rather have guts than eat them!
I offer instead a Sunday dinner that ought to get the Scots blood up and fighting — because the English came up with this perfectly wonderful provision.
Sunday dinner, or for the Scots, Sunday supper, is a special treat in my household. It’s a flavor-filled celebration of Sunday, and dinner, and the blessings from our Maker.
The Milligan residence, regardless of where it is, doesn’t put up for long with the spoiled brats of life and their non-stop beefs about Where’s The Beef? A litany of groans and gripes comprises the steady noxious diet of The Malcontents.
As a productive hunter-gatherer, I focus on finding some protein, packed with nutrients. For me, “Here’s the Beef” is a steak dinner, served to loved ones on a cold winter night.
The traditional Sunday Roast/Roast Dinner is British in origin, and I doff my cap to the Mother Country for this culinary and cultural gift. Over There, the main components are roasted meat, roasted potatoes, or mashed potatoes.

If you’re a meat-and-potato person, this fare is right up your supper alley!
Where the dietary direction goes all wrong for me is The Sides: Yorkshire pudding, stuffing, gravy. They are, in my opinion, completely inedible. I have never made gravy, or eaten it, and likely never will.
The conventional condiments for the English full roast, or Sunday dinner, are apple sauce, mint sauce, and red currant sauce. I’m okay with the apple sauce, but I deem those other ones gaggable. I’m no fan either of bar-b-que sauce, also called Horsey Sauce.
I know how much the French love their sauces; they invented so many of them. And the “coulis” is, in itself, a work of art. I nonetheless think of sauces as cover-ups for something that tastes really bad. There’s also the Universal Antidote, ketchup, or, for the hoity-toity, catsup. Whenever I’ve been served broccoli, smothered in Hollandaise sauce, my silent responses were:
That poor vegetable. It can’t breathe!
Why can’t they let the victual be itself?
and
They’re hiding something underneath all of that goop.

I serve my broccoli au naturel, with a bit of butter, salt and pepper. (When I cook an entire head of the cruciferous veggie for myself, I add some freshly squeezed lemon juice.)
We in the States, aka Americans, are roundly and rightly, accused of a “lack of taste” by the English and by the Europeans. I completely concur. The American definition of “taste” is worlds away from that in the Old Country. Our civilizational cuisine customs in the New World much more mimic the time-honored preparation of The Haggis!
The Yanks, especially the Westerners, prepare protein in ways that must appall the refined palettes of Parisians.
For my patriotic taste buds, though, the naked steak is the essence of elegance. It makes the meal.
My Sunday steak is prepared efficiently, and it’s delicious!
This corn-fed beef is the glorious centerpiece of an authentically American square meal. The sides are freshly boiled broccoli, with a dab of butter, salt & pepper; and a freshly baked potato. Condiments for the spud are butter spread (butter & olive oil), sour cream, salt & pepper. Chives are seasonal and optional, but I think they can add to taste-bud overload with the hearty succulent beef.
The instructions are as follows:

Take 5-6 cleaned and sliced Crimini mushrooms; sauté them in olive oil. Remove them from the pan and set them aside in a bowl. Filet a New York steak, in half. Sauté the slices in olive oil, to your preference. Mine is medium.
Saying Grace over this scrumptious repast is my way of saying thanks to a benevolent God for His merciful bounties and miracles, both big and small.
Or, to quote The Bard of Scotland:
“Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it,
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.”