Stovies and other happy food memories

[Heelancoo]

Making some stovies this evening-haven’t had them since I was a kid! What food have you not had for ages but love?

when i was wee we'd visit an elderly relative on Sundays and she'd often give us cold mince on a piece - sounds horrible but it was absolutely amazing (in my memory anyway). .

other childhood thing I sometimes hanker for is chapped egg in a cup. Bit of salt and butter..mmhhh

[quote Heelancoo]@iloverainandrainbows what’s skirlie?

Really want some drop scones and rice pudding 🤗[/quote]
Sorry @Heelancoo, I missed this. This is skirlie:-

www.google.com/amp/s/www.greatbritishchefs.com/recipes/skirlie-recipe/amp

Tastes amazing, just slightly burnt, all toasted and yummy. I make mine with just butter, but you can use half butter/half beef dripping.

I'd like to add tablet to my list!

what exactly IS a stovie? I don't think I've ever had one, unless we called it another name?

I do love a bowl of lentil soup

And steak pie. Not steak and sausage - STEAK pie

To be honest before I joined that Scottish Recipe Facebook page I thought there was little variety in a plate of stovies but seems I was wrong...

Anyway to me it's basically: onion, potato and either left over roast, square sausage, chopped up link sausage or corned beef all cooked up (in water/stock) until potatoes are half disintegrated with some lumps left. It's supposed to be (in my book) fairly dry but mine is always a bit more runny as we like it like that and scoop it up with bread. Usually it's served with oatcakes and sometimes with beetroot. You can have white stovies (no meat) and I think traditionally flavour would also come from using dripping/the fat from the roast pan.

However it seems that people make all sorts of stews/mince/put carrots/turnip/peas in it etc etc which, without wanting to cause an argument, isn't stovies in my book. I mean I've had my mums, had it at weddings and late at night at fancy events, from vans at rugby etc etc and it always looks pretty much the same and as I've described....

@iloverainandrainbows thank you-will have to give that a try-looks lovely

@amazeandastonish I think you can put whatever you like into stovies-my mum made them with leftover roast beef when we had it and added sausages to eek it out, lots of carrots, potatoes and gravy all cooked down slowly

@happygolurkey never tried mince on a piece but I do love cold (or hot) haggis on a piece of buttered bread-has to be the white cheap bread tho 🤗

I was on holiday in Scotland just 10 days ago and managed visits to enough family to have eaten enough of my favourite foods to last quite a few months worth of memories. Every single mouthful of everything I had was delicious apart from what I’m convinced was mashed up fruit pudding mistakenly served up instead of haggis one day with a hotel breakfast. It was a strange sweet taste and my brother who had breakfast earlier than me that day said the same thing about it.

Yesterday I arrived home to the ME and last night we sat down to pehs and white puddings with beans for dinner whilst the two oddballs in the family had something else instead.

Today it’s mince and white pudding and white pudding will be a theme for some of us for the next few days.

@JamMakingWannaBe

Did anyone else have picked beetroot with their stovies (rural NE Scotland)?

Not whilst growing up. It was always bread and butter. Last week though I had them them with beetroot at the Christmas market in Edinburgh. I think it’s similar to having pickled red cabbage with potato pie in some areas of England. I don’t think I’ll have stovies and beetroot again though as it overpowered the toast a bit. It wasn’t bad though.

right I've definitely never had a stovie

Mince and tatties all the time though!

[quote Heelancoo]@iloverainandrainbows thank you-will have to give that a try-looks lovely

@amazeandastonish I think you can put whatever you like into stovies-my mum made them with leftover roast beef when we had it and added sausages to eek it out, lots of carrots, potatoes and gravy all cooked down slowly

@happygolurkey never tried mince on a piece but I do love cold (or hot) haggis on a piece of buttered bread-has to be the white cheap bread tho 🤗[/quote]
agreed Heelancoo. cheap white bread for that sort of thing all the way. I'll need to try a haggis piece.

amazeandastonish - stovies are sort of between a really thick soup and a stew, most commonly made with sliced up link sausage, onion and potatoes. you let it cook really slow all together in a pan till all the tattie has more or less all broken down. I've heard tale of folk using corned beef instead of sausage but i've never been swayed along that path.