Powsowdie is a traditional Scottish recipe for a cake-topped fruit pudding. The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic Scottish version of:Powsowdie.
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Powsowdie is a classic Scottish stew traditionally made with a sheep’s or deer’s head, but which works well with other cuts of meat... typically offcuts.
Powsowdie is a centuries-old dish, a stew for the poor and middle class that uses humble ingredients with dried split green peas to thicken the stock and pearl barley to give body.
This is slow cooking at its very finest. I didn't have a sheep or hart head to make this, but approximated this with tongues, a couple of shanks for meat and pig's trotters for the essential gelatine
Ingredients:
500g lamb or deer tongues
2 lamb or deer shanks
2 pig's trotters
115g dried green peas
1 swede (rutabaga), peeled and cut into chunks
225g pearl barley
2 leeks, white and light green parts, sliced thinly
2 celery sticks, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
8g flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Salt and freshly-ground black pepper, to taste
Method:
Combine all the meats in a large pan cover with water and bring to a boil then continue cooking for a minute or two. Pour off and discard the water, then rinse the meats under cold water and clean the pan. This process eliminates the soluble fats and phosphates from the meat, which are mainly responsible for the scum that you get in stocks.
Transfer the meats back in the pan and cover with about a 6cm depth of water. Bring to a simmer and skim of any froth that appears on the surface. Pour in the dried green peas, add a tablespoon or two of salt and let this simmer gently until the meats is really tender and the peas have broken down to thicken the stock, which will take about 3 to 4 hours.
Carefully remove the meats from the stock, making sure you capture any bones. Set them on a baking tray and allow them to cool until the tongues can be handled. At this point peel the rough skin from the tongues (discard this) and strip the other meats from their bones. Chop the meat into bite-sized pieces and return to the stew. For the trotters, remove and discard the bones then finely mince the meat, skins and sinews.
Now add the barley along with the swede, leeks, carrots and celery to the pan. Bring b ack to a simmer and cook for about 40 minutes, or until the barley and the swede pieces are tender.
Adjust the seasonings to taste with salt and black pepper. Stir through the parsley and serve with crusty bread and beer.
Like many similar stews this tastes even better the following day. Note the on cooling the peas and gelatine will make the soup go hard. It will soften and turn liquid when you re-heat it, but you might want to add a splash of boiling water, stock or beer to thin it down before cooking to re-heat.
