nigel haworth’s lancashire hotpot

I have a “go to” Lancashire hot pot recipe that I like very much, cribbed from Rick Stein some years ago. It’s very tasty, but like many others I was bowled over with Nigel Haworth on the Great British Menu this year, who blew the competition away with his hot pot. (One word or two? I just don’t know. His recipe is here.

I’ve simplified it slightly for home cookery – cut down on the varieties of lamb and reduced it down to just the neck fillet. I also used a jar of pickled cabbage – I can’t better those results. No herbs either, which is a big surprise. I also worried about the lack of liquid in the meal so bunged together an easy gravy of roast vegetables deglazed with lamb stock.

It was very tasty, and I can see why it was such a winner. Rich, gamey lamb, sweet onions with a crunchy potato topping – what’s not to like? My only slight concern was that the recipe isn’t clear about when to use a new pan for frying off the different parts. I browned the lamb in the same pan as it eventually baked in, and it caught round the edges, making it black and sticky. These bits were nice but a touch over. Doing it again I’d use two pans for frying lamb and onions, then put the part cooked elements back into a separate casserole dish for baking. Starting off from cold it will have less chance to blacken. That said, it’s delightful. Pair it with pickled cabbage for a tart contrast.

Nigel Haworth’s Lancashire Hotpot:

500g lamb neck fillet

1 tablespoon flour, seasoned

1 large onion, sliced

25g butter

1 large potato, sliced into 2mm rounds

Preheat the oven to 160C.

Toss the lamb in seasoned flour and fry in a pan to brown all over.

Fry the onions in butter and a large pinch of salt until softened.

Toss the potato slices in a little olive oil with salt and pepper until well coated.

Lay the lamb in a casserole dish, put the onions on that and top with the potato slices. Bake in the oven for 2 hours.

After 2 hours, brush the potato top with melted butter and bake in the oven uncovered for a further 30 mins or until the potato is golden brown. Serve with pickled cabbage.

carmela soprano’s basil lasagne

“Can’t Carmela make her lasagne with the layer of basil leaves in?”
-Corrado “Uncle Junior” Soprano

I came to The Sopranosfar too late. Early 2008 More4 ran every episode back-to-back and I devoured them all. I was utterly gripped by the boyish yet chilling Tony, the larger-than-life Paulie, sly yet affable Uncle June, the big mouth braggadocio Christopher, and the delicate balance of family life with ‘mafia’ life. It’s easily one of the finest series every created, a masterpiece of character study and beautiful dialogue. If you haven’t tried it, I heartily recommend it.

I also got given the Sopranos cookbooksfor a birthday. It’s a little cheesy, part-written in character, but the heart and soul of Italian-American cookery is there, with it’s hearty and rib-sticking fare. As an existing fan of lasagne, I was keen to try the lasagne-with-layer-of-basil as mentioned in the show (it can be found in this volume).

Like many Italian-American dishes, it requires a ‘gravy’ which is not the meat juice we might expect. Here it’s a meaty, tomatoey sauce that forms the base of lasagne. This takes a good couple of hours so it’s not a dish you can just bash out on a whim, because after that you’ve got lots of layers and another 45 minutes in the oven to finish it off. The gravy is superb though, rich and flavoursome. I’ve kept some back for something else another day.

It was very nice, though for me the ricotta was overpowering, allowing a bitterness into it that wasn’t completely welcome. The basil was nice though, a cleansing aroma that carries through the mouth. But I can’t help missing a bechamel while I was eating it… next time.

Carmela Soprano’s Basil Lasagne:

For the gravy:

6 sausages (if you can get them, Waitrose have incredible ‘Italian’ style sausages)

500g mince

1 onion, diced

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 tablespoon tomato puree

1 litre passata

For the lasagne:

Lasagne sheets

A large bunch of basil

500g ricotta

500g mozzarella, sliced

50g parmesan, grated

To make the gravy, fry the onion and garlic until soft in a large pan with a little oil.

Skin the sausages and squish into hazelnut size pieces. Add these to the pan and brown all over.

Add the mince and continue to cook until browned all over.

Add the puree and passata and bring to a simmer. Cook partially covered for 1½ - 2 hours until rich and thickened. At this point check for seasoning – plenty of pepper is welcome here.

Beat the ricotta with salt and pepper to taste (you may want to add a splash of milk or cream to help loosen it, as you’re going to spread it in a minute). Preheat the oven to 180°C.

In a 6cm deep oven dish put a thin layer of meat sauce on the bottom. Cover with lasagne sheets, then another layer of meat sauce.

Top this with ricotta and some parmesan, then a layer of basil leaves. Top this with mozzrella, then lasagne. Start the layering all over again until you reach the top of the dish.

Make the top layer meat sauce and a sprinkle of parmesan. Bung in the oven until you can push a knife through with little resistance.

Leave the lasagna out for five minutes to allow it all to meld together – this makes it easier to cut up.

chicken tikka masala

Every couple of months I get the urge to make another curry, and I’ve made plenty in the last year. It was a Saturday dish, so I had to time to put a little effort in. After a little research I settled on Jamie Oliver’s chicken tikka masala from Jamie’s Dinners. I still had some garam masala left over from a Heston-inspired blend some months ago so that was going to be my main spice base. Also with recent experiments in brining being met with a great deal of success I had to stick some brining in as the first stage. You could skip this bit if you wanted to, but I love the moistness and depth of flavour this imparts.

I wanted a vegetable side-dish and love the way cauliflower absorbs curry flavours. The key for me is to almost overcook it – a soft, squishy floret bursting with spice is the way to go here.

Plain rice is always sniffed at in my house so I have to be creative with it. I remembered a delicious rice dish by the cuddly Nigel Slater, from my most favourite of his books Appetite. I’ve eaten it before just on it’s own, but gently pared down it makes a tasty – yet interesting – bowl of rice.

The curry itself was time-consuming (aren’t they all?) but thankfully very, very tasty. In fact about the most ‘authentic’ (yes, of course I mean authentic to that you find in a takeaway) tikka masala recipe I’ve eaten. Creamy, nutty and boasting spice from within. The cauliflower was a tasty foil for the curry, with aromatic rice to back it up. (On a side note, both Jamie’s and Nigel’s recipe called for at least 1 chilli in each – we’re not so crazy about super-hot things in our house, so I’ve omitted them to let the spices speak for themselves. By all means chuck some in if they’re your thing).

A dead tasty nottakeaway.

Chicken tikka masala (serves 3):

For the brine:

1 litre water

2 tablespoons sea salt

5 tablespoons honey

2 cloves garlic, crushed

2 cardamom pods, cracked

3 cloves

2 chicken breasts, diced

For the tikka marinade:

6 cloves garlic, grated

3 inches fresh ginger, grated

1 tablespoon mustard seeds

1 tablespoon paprika

2 teaspoons ground cumin

2 teaspoons ground coriander

2 tablespoons garam masala

200g natural yoghurt

For the masala sauce:

2 onions, sliced

2 tablespoons garam masala

2 tablespoons tomato puree

2 tablespoons ground almonds

120ml double cream

Handful parsley, chopped

Mix the brine ingredients together and soak the chicken in the water for at least 2 hours, anywhere up to 8 hours.

Drain and rinse the chicken well. Discard the liquid.

Heat the mustard seeds in a splash of oil until they start to pop (about 2 minutes). Remove the seeds from the pan and stir into the other ingredients. Coat the chicken with the yoghurt mix and leave to marinate for half an hour.

In the same pan the mustard seeds were warmed in, add some butter and fry the onions gently with the garam masala. Leave to sweat and soften for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, grill the chicken pieces on both sides until cooked through.

Back at the onions, ad the tomato puree, almonds, 1 litre water and a good sprinkle of salt. Allow to bubble and reduce until thick.

Add the cream and check the seasoning. Add the chicken into the sauce and stir well to coat the meat and let the flavours mingle.

Stir in the parsley and serve.

Gobi masala:

1 head of cauliflower, cut into small florets to cook evenly

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon garam masala

200ml vegetable stock

Heat the butter in a small saucepan until foaming. Add the spice and cook for a minute.

Add the florets and toss well to coat in the spice butter. Cook for another minute.

Add the stock and boil fairly fast until the cauliflower is knife-tender.

Turn off the heat and put a lid on it for about ten minutes. The cauliflower will soak up some of the excess fluid.

Aromatic rice:

1 onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, peeled and bashed

1 cinnamon stick

3 cloves

4 cardamom pods

1 cupful rice per person

Fry the onion gently until softened, then add the garlic.

Add the spices and stir, allowing them to warm.

Add the rice and a generous sprinkle of salt, stir will to coat the rice in the spiced oil. Top up the pan with three times the amount of water to rice. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer.

Cover the pan and allow to simmer for ten minutes – do not lift the lid.

Turn off the heat and leave for a further ten minutes, leaving the lid on.

Stir through with a fork and grind over plenty of black pepper. If you have any left over from the curry, throw in some parsley too.

gammon and leek risotto

Thanks to this wonderful example of a roast chicken, I was of course left with a superb chicken stock to use up. Whenever I have spare stock floating about, my default dish is risotto. With some spare gammon and always keeping arborio in the cupboard, all this dinner requires is buying a leek. Quite a powerful flavour here – the gammon is of course quite strong, and the leeks quite sweet, so there’s a lot going on. The stock came through though, rich and meaty.

Gammon and leek risotto (serves 2):

2 gammon steaks, diced

1 large leek, cut into matchsticks

4 handfuls arborio rice

Glass of white wine

Chicken stock on the boil

Large knob of butter

Chopped parsley, to serve

Fry the gammon in a little oil until coloured. Remove to one side.

In the same pan, fry the leeks until softened. Add the rice and toast for a couple of minutes.

Add the wine and bubble quickly until reduced to almost nothing.

Add the stock a ladelful at a time, allowing the rice to absorb it all before adding the next. Stir frequently. This process will take at least 20 minutes. Taste often after this, to check how done the rice is.

When the rice is ready, check for seasoning and add the butter, stirring and shaking it furiously.

Add the gammon and parsley, warm both through and serve.

gammon with champ

Not terribly sophisticated but you can’t beat a piece of gammon. I rubbed the steaks first in a little fennel and black pepper before griddling both sides. This gave the outside of the meat a lovely charred finish, with the perfume of fennel and spike of pepper lingering amid the meaty saltiness.

When it comes to mash I prefer to bake – you don’t get any of that wateriness and I find you need to add less other stuff to take away from the potato flavour. A little charred spring onion added to it and hey presto – it’s champ.

lamb and potato pie

A savoury pie topped with potato, just the ticket. Pieces of lamb neck sweated with onions, tomato puree and lamb stock, then topped with sliced potatoes for a topping.

duck confit

“How easy is it to make duck confit?”

This was the question thrown at me from over the desk. I paused for a moment, trying to decide how to answer.

“It’s fairly easy technique, though you are dealing with a face-meltingly hot bowl of fat.”

I’m not sure whether that’s encouragement or not, but it was too late for me. I had the idea in my head and I wanted to make it for myself. Can’t remember the last time I did it.

When I approached it this time, I didn’t have a recipe in mind, only a direction I wanted it to go in… aromatic, though not quite Asian, herby, but not fresh… I was pulled in a few directions. In the end I went with a sweet-spiced curing, serving the breast on the side, partnered with sauté potatoes, steamed carrots, plus a salad of pickled cucumber and carrot. Rich duck leg, meaty breast, tender and sweet carrots, crunchy, comforting potatoes, a sharp, piquant salad on the side, all topped with a savoury port jus…. I was extremely pleased with this one. Towards the end it was a real pot-juggler, with potatoes, stock, carrots, etc. but for a Saturday treat it’s worth the extra sweat.

When it comes to which fat it should be confited in, duck is best though really anything will do. In this instance I had a small bit of bacon fat left over from breakfast, plus I rendered the fat down from the spare skin of the remaining duck carcass. It’s just natural and right that the fat from the bird goes back into the dish. Indulgent, tasty and moreish.

Confit duck

For the confit legs:

2 duck legs

50g sea salt

25g demerera sugar

8 juniper berries, squashed

1 cardamom pod, cracked

Enough fat to cover the legs in your baking dish

Mix the salt, sugar, juniper and cardamom together with plenty of black pepper in sealable container. Coat the legs thoroughly and leave in the container overnight in the fridge.

The next day wash the salt mixture off with running cold water. Gently warm the fat of your choice and preheat the oven to 160°C.

Place the duck legs in a baking dish (make sure you have enough room to let the fat come over the legs) and cover with fat. Cover and bake for 3 hours.

When cool, shred the leg meat from the bones (I find two forks ideal for this). You can discard the skin. Save the cooled fat for another dish (such as the potatoes).

For the pickled cucumber and carrot:

3 inches of cucumber, diced

1 carrot, diced

100ml white wine vinegar

25g sea salt

3 tablespoons demerera sugar

Heat the vinegar gently and add the sugar and salt, stirring until dissolved. remove from the heat.

Combine the vinegar solution with the diced veg and keep in a sealable container in the fridge until needed, though at least 4 hours. Allow to come to room temperature before serving.

For the duck breasts:

2 duck breasts

Preheat the oven to 200°C and get a griddle pan dead hot. When smoking place the duck breasts skin-side down on the pan. Season the fleshy side.

Leave for 3-4 mins or until the skin lifts away from the pan easily. If you want luvverly cross-hatching, rotate the breasts 45° and leave for a further minute.

Flip the breasts over, season the skin and then put in the oven for 8-9 minutes, or until there’s a firm ‘bounce’ when you press your finger on it.

Remove from the oven and leave to rest for 5 mins, then slice on the diagonal to serve.

For the sauté potatoes:

500g waxy potatoes (e.g. Charlotte), in 1cm slices

Enough fat to cover the bottom of your frying pan (preferably the reserved duck fat from earlier)

Sprig of rosemary

Heat the oil in a wide pan over a medium heat and spread the potatoes out in one thin layer.

When crisp on one side flip the slices over (it’s tedious but one at a time works best). Season and add the rosemary whole.

Keep cooking until the undersides brown and crisp.

For the port jus:

Duck wingtips

500ml Good stock (preferably duck stock made from the leftover carcass)

1 tablespoon flour

3 tablespoons Port

Butter

Fry the wingtips in a little butter until they start to turn brown and crispy. Discard the wingtips.

Keeping the heat high, add the flour and mix thoroughly.

Add the port and scrape to deglaze the pan. When this has bubbled and reduced but half, add the stock.

Let the stock bubble for a couple of minutes, then adjust the seasoning. Add a small knob of butter at the last minute and stir thoroughly to add richness and shine.

pork escalope milanese

You can’t beat a piece of meat in breadcrumbs. That feeling as you sink your teeth into the crunchy coating and it gives way to tender, juicy meat… A little flavouring in the breading and it’s slightly different every time. I always try to blitz a leftover loaf and chuck them in the freezer so I’ve always got a bag of breadcrumbs ready to shake over a piece of meat.

Pork escalope milanese (serves 3):

3 pork shoulder steaks, bashed to about the thickness of a pound coin with a rolling pin

Zest of 1 lemon

50g breadcrumbs

2 eggs, beaten

3 tablespoons seasoned flour

Mix the breadcrumbs with zest and plenty of black pepper.

Dip the pork steaks in flour on both sides, shaking off the excess. Then dip them in egg, then the breadcrumbs. Ensure they’re well coated.

Fry in oil over a medium heat for about 4 minutes or until browned. Turn the steaks over and dot the gaps with butter.

Fry on the other side until browned and serve with lemon wedges.

chorizo, kale and chickpea stew

A straightforward, simple and tasty stew. Ready in under ten minutes and perfect for midweek meals. Juicy, meaty sausage with the umami tang of kale, bolstered by the satisfying bite of chickpea.

Chorizo, kale and chickpea stew:

130g chorizo, diced

1 onion, diced

150g kale, chopped

500ml chicken stock

1 tin chickpeas, drained

Fry the chorizo in a pan until starting to brown. Put to one side.

In the same pan fry the onion. When starting to soften put the chorizo back in, then add the stock.

When the stock starts to simmer add the chickpeas and the kale.

Simmer for ten minutes or until the chickpeas are tender. Season as necessary.

chorizo and chestnut soup

A stomping Winter warmer here, inspired by a posting by Food Urchin, in turn plucked from the pages of the Moro Cookbook.

Food Urchin is a jolly good blogger. Very entertaining, passionate about his food and nothing if not pragmatically resourceful, as he attempts to be fed daily by generous foodsters A post of his popped up containing Two Soups, and one in particular caught my eye. It’s earthy, it’s Wintry, it’s warm and has two of my favourite things in: chorizo and chestnuts. Reminds me a little of another chorizo soup I did, though it sounds a little more interesting.

It’s a fairly simple (and quick) soup, of the bung-it-in-a-pot-and-simmer variety, which is endearing. A couple of tweaks I made though: not so fussed about chilli in my house so left that aside and instead added a measure of smoky sweet paprika. Then as I was about to serve I thought a couple of dressings would really lift the final bowl: a swirl of seasame oil to remind of the rich nuttiness, and a drizzle of sweetest balsamic vinegar to give a nice acid finish. It’s a really lovely bowl of soup, and served with some brown bread it’s perfect for these dark October evenings. Thanks Food Urchin

Chestnut and chorizo soup:

1 large onion, diced

1 medium carrot, diced

1 celery stick, thinly sliced

120g chorizo, diced

2 garlic gloves, thinly sliced

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 teaspoon paprika

1 tin tomatoes

500g cooked peeled chestnuts (fresh or vacuum-packed), roughly chopped

20 saffron threads, infused in 3-4 tbs boiling water

1 ltr water

sesame oil and balsamic vinegar to serve

Fry the onion, garlic, carrot, celery, chorizo and a pinch of salt for about 10 minutesuntil browned.

Add the cumin, thyme and paprika and cook for 1 more minute, followed by the tomato and chestnuts.

Give everything a stir and then add the saffron-infused liquid, the water and simmer for about 10 minutes.

Season well with salt and pepper and lightly pulse it with a hand blender. Serve with a drizzle each of oil and vinegar, with breadsticks or bread on the side.