Still a bit cold; more comfort food required! Beef stew with thyme and mustard dumplings

Last week's cold snap had me craving tasty stodge once again and this gorgeous stew more than satisfies any cravings. It's a Tamasin Day Lewis recipe once again with a small amount of tweaking. Her original recipe is Beef in Barolo, but unfortunately the contents of my purse won't stretch that far, so this is Beef in Gutsy Cabernet Sauvignon instead.

Dumplings are glorious things. Soft and fluffy, and flavoured with something with a little oomph they are the most amazing and (indeed necessary if you ask me) to any stew. I elected to go down the mustard and thyme route rather than horseradish and parsley and was not disappointed. The hit of heat married fabulously with the unctuous, beefy gravy and soft, yielding meat and vegetables. Utterly delicious.

I halved the recipe you see here, but doubled the dumplings, because Phill and I, frankly, adore them. The stew is amazingly good the next day, should you be in the unlikely situation that you actually have leftovers. We drank the remainder of the bottle of cab and then slumped in front of the roaring fire, the cold snap firmly banished from our minds.

Beef in Barolo (or Cabernet Sauvignon) stew with thyme and mustard dumplings, adapted from Tamasin's Kitchen Classics by Tamasin Day Lewis

Serves 8

For the stew:

2kg braising steak (or suitable stewing cut) cut into large cubes

seasoned flour

2 large onions, sliced

olive oil

4 sticks of celery (which I omitted)

4 large carrots cut into chunks

6 cloves garlic

2 leeks, whites cut into thick discs

1 swede, peeled and cut into cubes (which I omitted)

1 bottle of robust red wine

2 x 400g tins of tomatoes

sea salt and black pepper

a bouquet made with a large sprig of parsley, rosemary, thyme and two bay leaves with two strips of orange peel, tied together, (though I just chopped up some parsley stalks, put in about two teaspoons of thyme with one bay leaf)

For the dumplings:

110g self raising flour

55g suet (I prefer vegetable)

1 1/2 tsp chopped thyme

1 heaped dsrtsp mustard powder

sea salt and black pepper

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 150c/300f/Gas 2

Put the seasoned flour in a bowl or a zip loc bag and then add the meat, shaking or stirring to ensure that each piece is well covered.

Begin to fry off the meat in the olive oil. I use a cast iron casserole pot. Fry in batches, ensuring each piece is well browned. Once browned, remove to a plate. You may need to add more oil.

If there is any seasoned flour left, coat the sliced onions in it and then put them into the pot. Allow them to release their juices. Add the vegetables to the pot in the order that they are listed in the ingredients. When the onions are soft and have turned translucent, return the meat and their juices to the pot.

Stir the meat and vegetables, then begin to add the wine. Add the wine in two or three bursts, ensuring that it bubbles up before you add the next burst.

When the wine is simmering, add the tomatoes. If they are whole tomatoes, then squash them into the stew.

Season with salt and pepper, and then add the bouquet garni, or the chopped herbs and bay leaf if you are me.

Cover the stew and place in the oven for about three hours, checking occasionally to ensure it isn't drying up. You could also cook this on top of the stove on a low heat, but check it regularly and stir it to ensure nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pot.

About half an hour before the end of cooking, prepare the dumplings. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and then add a little cold water to bind the ingredients. Be careful with how much you add. You want the mixture to be combined and pliable but not wet and sticky.

Using floured hands, break off bits of the dough and roll into balls about the size of a walnut.

About 20 minutes before the end of the stew cooking time, put the dumplings onto the top of the stew, part submerging into the stew. Replace the lid and allow to cook for the remaining of the stew cooking time. By then they should have swollen and become fluffy.

Serve the stew in warmed bowls with a generous helping of dumplings and a liberal sprinkling of parsley. And if you have wine left, then treat yourself to a glass.

Lancastrian and proud! Lancashire Hot Pot

And proud I am, as this is one of the meals that makes me all fuzzily sentimental for my youth. Lancashire Hot Pot, the banquet of the masses, designed to feed a crowd cheaply and healthily after a long day in the fields, or down a pit, or up a chimney or any other places that grainy pictures of the industrial north might take you to. However, it is not as grim up north as people might think when you have this to come home to. For me, hot pot goes hand in hand with winter, the fire in the grate, a table full of chattering hungry mouths.

Whilst teaching might be my industry now, I am as happy to see the scalloped, pretty top of a hot pot as my ancestors probably were. Indeed when I was small, this was the best bit, the thin potato, crisped at the edges by the heat of the oven, their soft underbellies braised and flavoured by lamb stock. And unbelievably once upon a time it used to be usual to put oysters in a hot pot, when oysters were a food of the poor. How times change.

This is my version, enhanced by years of Lancastrian blood, not necessarily the same as next door's version, or the one that they cook the other side of town. Like all dishes with heritage, the original has been copied, then tweaked, the re-tweaked as the years have gone by. But, it's good. Really good. And you must serve pickled red cabbage with it. And thick crusty well buttered bread. This is not a time for refined dining; just pull up a chair, dig in and fill your boots. You're most welcome.

Lancashire Hot Pot

Serves 6, or 5 plus Lola and Finn

Ingredients

Olive oil (or butter if you're so inclined)

50g well seasoned plain flour

600g stewing lamb (neck, chop, leg...) cubed or cut into bitesize chunks

two onions, sliced

4 carrots, roughly chunked

1/2 swede, chunked

8 - 12 potatoes, depending on size, some quartered for the stew, the rest sliced about half a centimetre thick to decorate the top

a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce

about 500ml lamb stock (I make a strong stock from two stock cubes)

salt and pepper

Method.

Take the lamb and cover the chunks in the seasoned flour. In a suitable pot or large frying pan fry off the lamb in batches until well browned on all sides. Remove to a plate and repeat the procedure until all the lamb has been browned. You will probably have to add a bit of oil after each batch.

Add the onions to the dish and any seasoned flour that is left. Fry off the onions briskly, scraping up any brown bits from the bottom of the pan as the onions release their juices. Cook the onions until starting to soften but only expect to see a slight browning on the edges of the onion slices.

Note: If you are using a frying pan I would suggest that you transfer the contents of the frying pan to your casserole dish at this stage, then add the stock to the frying pan to deglaze it before then pouring that into the casserole dish. If you have a dutch oven or cast iron pot then carry on using the method below. Casserole dish users: Follow the method below but don't put the stock in as indicated below, as you have already done it!

Return the meat and its juices to the pan

Add the carrots and the swede, lower the heat, mix and cook for about five minutes, then add the quartered potatoes. Mix and cook for a couple of minutes.

Add the stock. It should only come up to the level of the vegetable and meat; no more. Add a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce (I put in about 10 because I like the warmth it gives) and add salt and pepper. Give the stew a stir.

Preheat the oven to 180c

Top the stew with the remaining potatoes in a circular motion, layering each piece of potato on the one before. When you have completed the layering, season generously with salt and pepper.

Cover the casserole and place in the oven for about two hours, though check from time to time. You can usually smell it when it's done. You could obviously cook this slower at a lower temperature.

For the last 20 minutes of cooking, remove the lid and return to the oven to allow the top to colour up.

When you remove the stew from the oven, let it rest for a few minutes as it will be extremely hot.

Serve in bowls with lashings of pickled red cabbage, or beetroot, and plenty of crusty bread and butter to mop up the juices.

Glorious! And if you have leftovers, even better the next day!

Scouse - but not necessarily 'yer ma's'...

...and I use that this disclaimer because everybody's version of this Liverpool stew is different. They might have some similarities, but they'll be those here who will be horrified at the inclusion of no beef (which I can't understand; it's always been a scrag end of lamb dish for me) and the fact that I have used stock instead of good old corpy lemmo (= corporation lemonade = water, to the uninitiated) but the premise of this stew is that it is food to feed the masses, to fill you up and to be cooked on a budget with whatever you have to hand. It's feel good, comfort food. Honest and uncomplicated, if you will.

Obligatory accompaniments: Crusty bread and butter, and red cabbage.

Scouse

Ingredients (which can be varied to suit...)

A couple of tbsp of oil

Some diced lamb (I used two lamb necks, probably about 600g worth)

Three tablespoons of seasoned flour

Two onions, sliced

Three carrots, cut into medium chunks

Half a swede, diced into smallish pieces

Potatoes - I used about a kilo, peeled, chopped into mostly medium chunks, but some smaller ones (to thicken the stew as those potatoes 'fall' when cooked

800 ml lamb stock

A few drops of Worcestershire sauce

Herbs - I used thyme and parsley

Salt and freshly ground pepper

Method:

Coat the lamb in the flour and brown off in batches in a suitable pot. Remove to a plate.

Add onions and cook through until translucent

Return the lamb to the pot.

Add the carrots, swede, potatoes and thyme. Mix everything together. Cook over a gentle heat for a couple of minutes.

Add the Worcestershire sauce, then add the hot lamb stock. It should just cover the ingredients.

Either place the stew in the oven, at 180c for a couple of hours, checking from time to time, or cook on the hob, covered, over a gentle heat for a couple of hours, but keep checking to make sure the stew does not boil dry.

Check seasoning. Sprinkle with the remaining parsley.

Serve with the accompaniments I suggest.