Home Cook Liverpool 8: More Liverpool Chefs hand over their famous restaurant recipes

Can you imagine that feeling when you first sit down in one of Liverpool’s many restaurants after lockdown? Until then we are bringing those restaurants to your  house with our Home Cook Liverpool series.

We certainly can’t compete with the great chefs at the heart of Liverpool’s fabulous restaurants but, with our Home Cook Series, we can put our own cooking skills to the test – and get a taste of some of the amazing dishes we’ve been missing.

Each week we have been getting Liverpool’s best chefs to send us the recipes to the dishes that we all know and love! Check out over 40 different recipes from Liverpool restaurants in our full Home Cook Liverpool series here.

Don’t forget you can also tuck into our Delivery Directory which now has over 650 local restaurants, bars and more featured with 90% of them delivering to your door. Choose your next meal here.

Skaus – 24-hour-cooked beef scouse

“This has consistently been our best-selling dish since we started the company in 2017, and we’ve had so many customers tell us it’s the best Scouse they’ve ever had. All Scousers love Scouse, and we’ve spent a lot of time perfecting our recipe so the flavours are all on point.”

Makes 8

1kg diced brisket

1kg carrots

1kg onion

1kg new potatoes

1 can Guinness

1 tbsp beef fat

1tsp vegetable oil

1 tbsp marmite

1 ltr beef stock or water

Salt

Sweat off carrots and onions in beef fat and veg oil until soft and slightly caramelised.

In a separate hot pan seal off diced brisket.

Add brisket to vegetables and add the rest of the ingredients and a good pinch of salt.

Simmer in a medium low heat with lid on, stirring occasionally until beef is tender and beginning to fall apart.

Give the finished Scouse a good stir, breaking up the veg a little and add more seasoning if necessary.

Serve with pickled beetroot or red cabbage and home baked soda bread.

Free State Kitchen – Boston Clam Chowder

“Having sampled some delicious chowders during our travels to the US we had to put one on our menu. The Boston Clam Chowder is a firm favourite with our regulars, particularly on a cold winter’s day. We always serve it at Food & Drink festivals and it sells out fast.”

Serves: 4 as a main or 6 – 8 as a starter.

Ingredients:

1 large onion

Four sticks of celery

8 medium white potatoes (approximately 1 kilo), peeled and cut into ¼ inch cubes.

200ml fish stock (we make a fresh fish stock in advance with fish bones, carrot, celery, bay leaves, onions and flat leaf parsley but you can use a pot of shop bought stock if a fresh stock is not available)

200g smoked streaky bacon

1 litre of whole milk

150ml double cream

250g cooked frozen clams defrost for two hours before required (alternatively you could use fresh clams if they are available)

2 tablespoons of chopped fresh flat leaf parsley

Slices of fresh rye bread and butter (to serve).

Method:

Finely dice the celery and onion and sweat in a pan with vegetable oil and butter for 10 -15 minutes until well softened and beginning to colour. Add diced potatoes and cover with whole milk and bring to a gentle simmer, being careful not to split the milk. This should take around 20 minutes.

Add fish stock, and simmer until potatoes are soft and beginning to collapse.  In a frying pan, fry the finely chopped bacon until brown and crisp. Finish by blending half the soup and adding double cream and parsley to the whole batch.  Add in bacon pieces and adjust seasoning if needed. At this point you can add the clams so they take on the residual heat of the soup. If you add the clams too soon they will become tough.

If you are using fresh clams you can cook them with the onion and celery. Once the onions and celery are softened add the washed clams into the pot with 150ml of water, cover the pan and shake the pan occasionally. The clams should begin to open after 5 minutes of cooking. Remove the clams from the shells, pouring any broth in the shells into the chowder. Discard the shells that haven’t opened. Cover the clams and set aside until the chowder broth is finished.

Pour the hot chowder into bowls and serve with rye bread and butter.

If you wish to make the chowder in advance for a dinner party you can prepare it up to three days ahead and refrigerate until needed. Just make the soup without adding the clams. When you want to serve just re-heat the chowder until it is piping hot and add the cooked clams at the end just before serving.

Chef’s tip: You don’t have to limit the chowder to just clams. You could add fish such as salmon, haddock or other shellfish like prawns.

Marco Pierre White – Chicken a la Forestiere

Looking after your dad and showing him how much you care on June 21 will mean a lot and, despite not being able to take him out for a meal at the moment, you copuld cook him a lunch or dinner that’s packed with flavour. This simple sharing roast, served at the Marco Pierre White Steakhouse Bar & Grill, Liverpool, is perfect.

According to the famed chef, when anyone makes a meal, the job is to cook the food and allow it to present itself while allowing Mother Nature to be the artist. He also believes that being generous and honest with the food we serve is also key to any family meal.

Ingredients:

Free range chicken (1.5kg) – for four people

Woodland mushrooms – approx. 500 gms

Thyme

Micro Parsley

Maldon salt

Olive oil

Vegetables

Use what’s in season or a selection of the following:

Braised red cabbage

Yorkshire Pudding

Roast potatoes

Chanterney Carrots

Buttered leaf spinach

Cauliflower Cheese

Pigs in blankets

Method:

Oil and season chicken, covering the whole of the skin and roast on a bed (trivet) of vegetables until juices run clear. Roast for approx. 1.5 hours at 180 degrees.

After roasting, the pan juices and veg can be used to make the gravy.

Place the roasting tray on the stove and bring back to the boil, scrape any residue from the tray and add stock to reduce or your gravy mix with water.

Rest the chicken for at least half the cooking time – this is really important as it allows the juices to go back into the meat making it moist and succulent. Wrap it in tin foil and keep in a warm place, it will continue to cook as it rests.

For the mushrooms, pick them down by hand and grill them with little olive oil and salt and pepper, until they are crisp and nutty but not dry or burnt.

Once the chicken is rested, remove legs and cut in half through the knee joint, remove both breasts and cut in half. The rest of the carcass can be added to the stock/gravy to add more flavour.

Arrange the meat portions on a platter and top with a scattering of mushrooms, you don’t need to be too fussy with this, just generous.

Drizzle with olive oil and chopped parsley, get all your side dishes ready to serve everything at the same time.

Add the thyme to the gravy for added flavour and serve on the side with some drizzled over the chicken.

Gino D’Acampo – Cherry Tiramisu

Gino says: “If I asked you to name one Italian dessert, I guarantee the vast majority would say tiramisu. However, not everybody likes the coffee that the biscuits are traditionally soaked in, so my version – inspired by a trip to the cherry orchards of Castello, where Ciro and his family grow wonderful fruit – uses liqueur instead. If making this for children, just leave out the booze and cook the cherries in a little water.”

Ingredients:

400g cherries, pitted and halved

50g caster sugar

4 tablespoons cherry or amaretto liqueur

8 small madeleine cakes or sponge finger biscuits

2 tablespoons chopped toasted nuts

FOR THE MASCARPONE CREAM2 egg yolks

2 tablespoons caster sugar

250g mascarpone cheese

2 tablespoons cherry or amaretto liqueur

Method: Heat the cherries, sugar and 2 tablespoons of the liqueur in a saucepan until the sugar has dissolved and the cherries are slightly softened and their skin starts to burst. Set aside to cool.

For the mascarpone cream, whisk the egg yolks and sugar in a bowl until pale. Beat in the mascarpone and 2 tablespoons of the liqueur.

Place a layer of cake in the bottom of 4 individual glasses. Spoon over a little of the remaining liqueur, then add a layer of the cooked cherries and their juices. Top with a layer of the mascarpone cream. Repeat the layering until you are nearly at the top of the glass, finishing with the cream.

Sprinkle the top with chopped nuts and chill for 2 hours before serving.

The Art School Restaurant – Pan-roast Fillet of Peterhead Hake with a Risotto of Filey Crab

If you fancy a little something special, this is a fabulous dish from renowned chef Paul Askew with which he recommends you enjoy a good wine: Telmo Rodriguez, Basa, Rueda, Spain, 2016.

Serves: 4

Ingredients:

Sherry Vinegar Reduction

50ml sherry vinegar 350ml red wine
1 sprig of thyme
1 bay leaf
1 clove garlic
20g muscavado sugar

Method:  In a pan, pour the sherry vinegar, red wine, thyme, bay leaf clove and the sugar.
Bring this to the boil and reduce by half until the mixture becomes thick enough to drizzle on the plate.  Pass this through a sieve and leave it to cool.
When cool, whisk in a little olive oil to emulsify l Put this to one side ready to dress your plate

Risotto

280g of Arborio rice
500ml of fish stock
1 onion – Finely Diced
1 clove of garlic – thinly chopped
1 bunch of chives – finely chopped
1g Cheshire saffron
20g mascarpone
10g butter
100ml white wine
100g white Filey crab meat
Brunoise of vegetables – 1 carrot, 1 leek and 1 stick of celery

Method: For the risotto, heat up the stock with saffron, and then sweat down the onion, brunoise and the garlic using a knob of butter until they are soft.

Add the white wine and reduce.
Gradually add the stock, until the risotto is cooked.
Finish with mascarpone, chives and crab meat. Season to taste.

Hake

4 portions of chunky hake fillet – around 150g per portion 50ml extra virgin olive oil
fish seasoning (200g Malden salt, 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper, 3 cloves garlic, peeled, 1 tsp fennel seeds, 1 tsp espelette pepper, blitz all ingredients with 150 g of the salt, add remaining salt to mixture)
Knob of butter

1 link of morcilla

Paul Askew of Arts School

Method: Heat a frying pan to smoking point, and add olive oil.
Season the fish using The Art School Fish Seasoning , and put in the pan skin side down using a splash of olive oil and a knob of butter.
Once the fish starts colouring, finish with the morcilla in the oven for 3 minutes.
Add the butter to the pan and let it foam until it becomes nutty, and then the baste fish with butter and the juices of morcilla.

To plate this dish, we arrange the saffron risotto in the centre of the dish. On top of this, add the morcilla, finishing with showcasing the fish directly on top. For this dish, we have used some charred onions for garnish. However, you can use any vegetables of your preference that are in season.

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