North East Delicacies

In case you haven’t already gathered, I love food. I love nutritious meals I can feel smug about, I love calorific takeaways that leave me in a food coma and I definitely love desserts.

One of the things I’m really enjoying about getting to know the North East is discovering the regional delicacies.

Sometimes I’m eating my way around Newcastle’s fabulous restaurants as part of my North East Date Ideas series but more often than not, I’m scoffing my face at my boyfriend’s Nanna’s house.

Why are nannas so good at cooking comfort food that sticks to your ribs?

No, it’s not just Gregg’s sausage rolls I’ve been gorging on since I moved here. In between learning the flexibility of the word ‘canny’, the correct pronunciation of Tyne and Wear (turns out it’s ‘weyre’ not ‘ware’) and walking past my own house in a daydream approximately 5 times since I moved to the city; I’ve been eating some ‘canny’ nice scran.

North East Delicacies you have to try

I think I’d puke if I tried to eat Saveloy Dip, a dish which my friends assure me is lovely, but I do really love stotties.

Stotties

I think that how you refer to a bread roll depends largely on where you hair from. A simple sausage sandwich has so many different labels; sausage barm, sausage bap, and perhaps most perplexing of all: the ‘roll on sausage’. You can always count on Scotland to do it their own way, eh?

Anyway, stotties are sort of bigger and rounder and stodgier than your average bread roll and Greggs, the North East’s iconic bakery, serve them with ham and pease pudding. Not quite sold on that…

I was recently at a new restaurant in Sunderland and I had garlic stottie bread. Now that I could get on board with.

Panacalty

One North East favourite I’m yet to try is the tongue-twisting ‘Panacalty’. I’ve had extensive training from Tom’s Nanna on how to make the real Mackem version so I’ll be giving it a go soon.

Yep, the dish originated in Sunderland and it’s basically a casserole of  tinned corned beef, onion, sliced potatoes, stock and seasoning.

Pan Haggerty

Not the same as Panacalty, and also not a motherly character from a kids’ book, although it does sound like one. This is the Northumberland version of Dauphinoise Potatoes, which sounds delicious. Definitely need to try this!

Broon Ale

I feel like I should also mention Newcastle Brown Ale, since we’re on the topic and a lot of my blog posts heavily feature alcohol. I’m not a fan because my friends and I once found a crate of it in a lane when we were 13 and tried to get drunk off it. Oh, to be young again.

Can I have scraps on my chips?

We’ve also been having a bit of a debate in the office about asking for ‘scraps’ on your chippy chips. If you don’t know what they are, it’s probably because you’re posh. Those crispy bits of batter that build up in the chip shop fryer and would otherwise be thrown away.

I remember school friends asking for them at home, and the fact that my mum refused to request them on our chips because asking for scraps sounds like begging.

From chatting (heatedly) with my colleagues, I’ve gathered that scraps are a bit of a Northern thing and you’d get laughed out of the fish shop without any supper if you asked for them Down South.

Anyway, it turned into a heated debate about whether scraps were a real thing and whether they should be given away for free or paid for, so I’d love your help on settling the argument. Do they have scraps where you’re from? Let me know in the comments.

Can’t believe I now have a picture of a deep fat fryer on my blog. Eww.

North East readers, are there any other dishes I need to try to get integrated with my surroundings? Let me know in the comments and if you’re not from this neck of the woods, let me know if any of these foods sound appetising to you!

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