Eco-friendly Northumberland hotel and restaurant Batlesteads is offering an evening of Burns Night celebrations in the most traditional Scottish style.

On Saturday 26 January, the Wark hotel will host a traditional four-course dinner, with an original 19th century menu by Scottish chef Meg Dodds that was prepared for the first ever Edinburgh Burns Club meeting in the early 1800s.

Known as 'the Scottish Mrs Beeton', Meg Dodds was the 19th century version of a celebrity chef, acclaimed for her Cooks and Housewives Manual of 1826.

Dinner will begin with King James' recipe for 'het kail cock-a-leekie soup', followed by the Scottish staple of rarebit haggis, served with 'neep purry' – a puree of swede, carrot and ginger.

The main course will be a het joint striploin with whole caramelised roast onion and rumbledethumps, a traditional side dish of crushed potatoes with onion, cabbage and leeks. For dessert, guests will enjoy 'ither – orra eattocks cranachan', a classic Scottish dish of raspberries with toasted oatmeal, honey and whisky cream.  

Traditional entertainment for the evening will come courtesy of Burns Night toasts and speeches, and a Northumbrian piper.

The Wark/Hexham area of Northumberland is closely associated with Burns Night – it was part of Scotland up until 1296, and Robbie Burns himself visited Hexham on his tour of the Borders in May 1787.

Battlesteads' Burns Night Dinner costs £30 per person, and starts at 7pm.

Award-winning eco-hotel Battlesteads Hotel & Restaurant is increasing its sustainability credentials even further with the addition of a new wild mushroom farm on site.

Housed in a converted shipping container in the hotel’s gardens, the temperature and humidity-controlled farm allows the hotel to create the perfect conditions for growing wild mushrooms all year round.

Battlesteads has worked with Snowdonia-based Yr Ardd Fadarch (Welsh for "The Mushroom Garden") to create the mushroom farm, which maintains a steady temperature of 13ºC and humidity level of 85% to provide optimum growing conditions for the mushrooms.

Built in March, Battlesteads trialled growing grey oyster and shitake mushrooms first, and, after that proved a success, has moved onto growing both yellow and pink oyster mushrooms.

The home-grown mushrooms are now being used by head chef Eddie Shilton in the Battllesteads restaurant, featuring in dishes such as a demitasse of wild mushroom soup and a shitake and oyster mushroom tagliatelle with wild garlic pesto.

Richard Slade, owner of Battlesteads, said: "Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do, and we are always looking for new ways to produce more of our own home-grown ingredients on-site and reduce the food miles of our restaurant. We already grow 95% of the herbs, salads and green vegetables used in the restaurant in the Battlesteads gardens and polytunnels, and now with the mushroom farm we are able to offer the types of wild mushrooms usually only harvested in the autumn all year-round. It makes a big difference to the quality of our restaurant dishes too – fresh ingredients always taste the best, and it doesn’t get much fresher than coming from 30 seconds outside your door!"

Battlesteads is widely recognised as one of the most eco-friendly hotels in the country, having won numerous awards for its sustainability and reducing its carbon footprint to just one fifth of the industry average.