Last updated at 13:26, Friday, 01 July 2011

MANY families have a favourite dish or speciality that has been passed down from generation to generation.

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There may only be a handful of people that know how to make your granny’s famous apple crumble or your auntie’s secret recipe for the perfect Lancashire hotpot.

However, as times change, so do eating habits and the availability of ingredients.

Once you stop making it, there is a very real chance that it will get forgotten about and die out altogether.

That is why Modern History are launching The Taste of Modern History Cookbook celebrating the North West’s culinary past.

Top chef Robert Owen Brown is the man charged with collecting the region’s best recipes, and he wants to hear from you.

“The aim is to try and recover recipes from our past that might just disappear if we don’t get them written down soon,” he says.

“It is a celebration of our food history and also the family dishes that we were brought up on.

“We want to hear from people all over the North West about their special recipes, and we’ll feature the best five in the book.”

Modern History is a government-funded organisation that works to promote more than 100 key venues from the North West’s industrial past.

The book will celebrate the meals of choice that sustained the workers, mill owners and inventors, which have been put forward by the museums and attractions, alongside a few of Robert’s own.

The executive chef at the renowned Mark Addy restaurant in Salford says: “The more we dig into our food history, the more doors open.

“One of the turning points was when the North West became more affluent and we forgot about things like tripe.

“People ate it because it was cheap, but it also helped mill workers clear the cotton out of their throats, for example.

“Just in Greater Manchester alone there were 400 tripe shops 50 years ago – there is not one today, so it’s funny how much things have changed.

“I’m personally championing things like tripe and all the squidgy bits that people don’t eat anymore.

“As the recession bites, I’m in no doubt that these things will come back.”

A Lancashire lad, he is very familiar with many of the great foods that are sourced in our area.

Everyone knows about the now protected Cumberland Sausage and the high-quality lamb that can be found here, but there are some famous old foods that are going out of fashion, and Robert wants to be the man to halt the slide.

“I’d like to think of Cumbria and Lancashire as the garden of the UK because of the food that we can produce.

“I buy some fantastic lamb from Cumbria, and I even get my water from Cumbria, but it is also where I get some of my fish.

“Morecambe Bay is great for fish like whiff and dabs, which not many people know about any more.

“They taste as good as any fish, but I rarely ever see them on the menu.

“Even in Morecambe, there is only one place you can buy Morecambe Bay shrimps.

“I want to make people aware of the older recipes and rekindle the passion for the things we used to eat.”

That is where you come in.

If you have a recipe that means something to your family, or is truly representative of your local village or community, then Robert wants you to let him know.

Recipes can be submitted by emailing info@modernhistory.co.uk before next Friday, putting ‘Taste of Modern History’ in the subject header, or by post to Taste of Modern History Cookbook, Modern History, Carvers Warehouse, 77 Dale Street, Manchester, M1 2HG.

They can be sweet or savoury but should have strong links to the North West, and include a list of ingredients and step-by-step instructions of how to create the dish.

Robert says: “I’ve had some fabulous conversations with little old ladies about the meals their mothers and grandmothers passed down to them.

“It’s got to have some kind of history about why they ate it or some connection to the local area.

“We’re not looking for the prettiest dishes or anything like that, we want people to go back and think ‘why haven’t I eaten that since I was a kid?’.”

So now is the chance to get your recipes down in writing, to preserve your family favourites for generations to come, and an opportunity to share a secret with the rest of the North West.

First published at 13:12, Friday, 01 July 2011
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk