A true taste of home - A pan of scouse

With global scouse day coming up on the 28th of February I thought It was about time that I got cooking and put my recipe for scouse on my blog. I am not going to offend my fellow scouser on here and tell you that this is the best scouse in the world, everyone knows “yer ma’s” scouse is the best you have ever tasted, but having been a chef for many years this has to be the best recipe that I have found that was not made by me ma’. I never actually cooked scouse up until a couple of years ago when I did a short stint working for the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool where scouse is a staple of all those that both work and visit the place, selling hundreds of bowls of the stuff each day you can become pretty good at making it.

For those that don’t know, this dish is where we scousers (people from Liverpool) get there name. It is a much loved, traditional dish of Liverpool whose origins go back to the day of Liverpool’s shipping heritage when we had a large intake of norwegians into the city. They brought with them a dish known as “lobscouse”, this is why it is always served with either pickled cabbage or pickled beetroot, but never both (in Liverpool anyway). Ask 10 Liverpudlians for there scouse recipe and you will have 10 very different recipes, the one thing that they will all have in common is that they are all made from cheep cuts of meat and have potatoes and root veg in it and a chunk of crusty bread on the side. This is my recipe and it will serve a family of 4..

400g diced lamb

½ swede

½ celeriac

2 large carrots

3 medium potatoes

1 white onion diced

a sprig of rosemary finely chopped

2lts of water

1 lamb stock cube

1 tblsp black treacle

1tsp whole grain mustard

1 tblsp tomato paste

salt and pepper to taste

Take all of the root veg and potatoes, peel them a chop them roughly into 2cm squared chunks. Place all of the ingredients except the potatoes into a large, heavy based pan and bring them to the boil and simmer for 30 minuets, then add the potatoes into the pan, this will help the potatoes hold their shape when cooked. Simmer for a further 2 hrs and serve in a bowl with pickled red cabbage and some crusty bread.