HEAD BLOG

And so it seems that these days the big pan is hardly put away. Its thick steel sides show the weathering of the kitchen as gas flames replace the summer sun in our lives. The weight of it upon the hob offers some comfort and a promise that we’ll get through the winter with the aid of root vegetables and thick cuts of meat. Marrying the two comes in no better form than the Lancashire Hotpot.

For me, hotpot is the meal of childhood. It was the meal mum would bring out to satisfy all seven of us, ladled out at times to suit the comings and goings of a family growing up. Roughly cut potatoes bulked out the meal and the prized joy of dumplings were fought over far more than more meat. Hotpot was the meal that seemed to just appear when needed and even today I’m surprised at how quickly it seems to appear on the table. As though mum was some sort of Northern Soup Dragon, ready for winter siege or surprise visitors.

Hotpot is a slow-cooked dish. Its meat needs to be coaxed into submission, tenderised by time rather than the threat of the flame. It took me years to pluck up the courage to try this one, as simple as I knew it would be to cook it seemed to represent a line to step over. Once cooked I’d be judging the dish I measured my childhood by against the one I would put in front of my own family.

Mine is different to the one cooked by mum. Mine is perhaps meatier, richer; cooked without the pressure of a large family it should be better. But of course it isn’t. It could never be. But it is mine. And that’s the trick with any sort of cooking: make it your own way. Purists will scream about my inclusion of mushrooms, throwing in the potatoes rather than having a sliced potato lid (which is nice) and all the other bits that make this mine. I don’t use chicken livers either but that’s down to who I cook it for rather than my own personal tastes.

Ingredients:

• 500g beef steak
• 2-3 large potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
• 2 carrots
• Handful of mushrooms roughly but thickly chopped
• Pearl Barley
• Thyme
• Worcestershire sauce
• 1 pint beef stock
• 1 large onion
• Flour (seasoned with thyme added)

Prepare the meat by cutting into bite-sized chunks and mixing into the seasoned flour to coat thoroughly.

Quarter the onion (don’t dice it, beauty is in tasting slices of onion softened by the cooking process).

Slice the carrots and mushrooms into chunks.

Chop your potato into chunks as well.

Get the oven on to about 170C.

In a measuring jug, add some worcestershire sauce and a beef stock cube. Add about a pint of boiling water.

Add some oil to a heavy based saucepan and brown the meat before keeping it to one side.

Add the onion to the pan to get some colour and then add the mushroom, again to brown.

Add the carrots and the potatoes and mix thoroughly before adding the meat back in (along with any juices that would be on your plate by now). Top up with the stock until the dry ingredients are just covered.

Add plenty of thyme and sprinkle in some pearl barley. Bring to a simmer.

Cover your pan and place in the oven for around 2 hours or longer if the heat is reduced. Check after an hour to make sure you still have liquid. You don’t want this being dry.

If you are adding dumplings (which I rarely do now – preferring to save that pleasure for meal time at my mum’s) then add them about twenty minutes before you are bringing it all out of the oven.

Serve with beetroot and a couple of slices of thick, white bread to mop up that delicious, meaty gravy.

Serve this to your children and tell them they won’t be eating again until summer.