Thursday’s Burns Supper in Walpole will feature a menu of Scottish dishes including Tattie Drottle (leek and potato stew), Tweed kettle with bannocks (poached salmon with oat cakes), seared venison chop, and Haggis with stovied tatties (the Scottish national dish with sautéed brunoise onion and potatoes). Dessert is whisky cake with clotted cream and strawberries. Each course will be matched with a dram of a single malt Scotch whisky chosen and paired with it by Merv Stevens and Larry Burdick.
The Supper will also feature readings of Burns peotry by town volunteers, and participants will go home with a bag of special Scotch whisky chocolate truffles made for the occasion, Scottish shortbread cookies and a pocket verions of Burns' poems and songs.
From the mid-1600s to the late 1900s, Scotland gradually lost population as ambitious Scots sought better economic opportunities throughout the English-speaking world, especially in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. But they took their Scottish heritage with them, including their love of Burns’ poetry and songs. And their Scotch whisky. A great many churches in Scotland, as well as restaurants, will celebrate Burns’ 248th birthday on Thursday, as will Scottish heritage groups worldwide. Burns Suppers range from starchy, highly formal affairs to riotous, even drunken, hilarity (the latter of which would probably have been most closely tied to Burns’ tastes!). But they all have in common the proposing of toasts in Burns’ name and his respect for the “common man”, his “love of the ladies”, recitations of Burns’ favorite poems and songs, and traditional Scottish food.
Burdick's Supper will be informal fun if not riotous! For more information and reservations, call Burdick's at 756-2882.