Food: Potted history

Simon Hopkinson Irish stew, meat and potato pie, like mother used to make ... Comfort food to warm you on a winter evening. Photographs by Jason Lowe

There is nothing special about Irish stew. It is made from neck of lamb - the cheapest cut after the breast - water, carrots, onions, potatoes, barley, parsley and salt and pepper. Some purists would say that even the barley is too sophisticated an ingredient in what is, essentially, a robust quantity of meat gravy to eat with good potatoes. But, my word, a more tasty thing I cannot think of eating on a windy winter's night.

I guess my point is that all delicious food is special. Though, curiously, the most special things to eat rarely need to be cooked: caviare, freshly picked raspberries, thinly shaved black truffles over warm potatoes (the latter cooked, of course), or a plate of sliced raw tuna belly, lightly dressed with superior soy and smeared with freshly grated wasabi.

Irish stew is simply lovely food, intelligent in its collection of components, its origins respected and treasured.

I grew up with something similar. My mother's meat and 'tatie pie, served up at least three times a month in our house near Bury, Lancashire (as it was then, rather than the more prosaic Greater Manchester that it is now), was as simple a thing as any self-respecting mother might put together for the family for tea.

This was not a dinner dish - dinner was eaten at table; tea was eaten on knees in front of Corrie. Rissoles on Mondays made from the Sunday roast was another balancing act, usually eaten with potato fritters. These magical, crisp golden slices were made from slices of raw potato dipped in batter and fried in the chip pan. They take less time to cook than oven chips.

Meat and 'tatie pie is made from seasoned stewed meat and potatoes ('taties is Lancashire dialect), with some chopped onion and water. It is then covered with a thick sheet of simple pastry and baked until the crust is sort of just right - which is not necessarily golden brown and crisp, but more beige, really, and a bit soggy underneath.

Mum used to use beef, but it would be equally good made with lamb. In the North-east I think they make one using leeks and belly pork, and even if they don't, I think it might be very good indeed.

All these one-pot dishes seem so absurdly simple to make, you wonder why more of them are not thrown together, day in, day out, in homes up and down the country. And they can be "thrown together"; they are meant to be, for heaven's sake. These stews are not layered, or built, they are just "put". However much some folk pontificate over the correct way with cassoulet, in the final analysis, it is meat and beans. It might contain salted duck or goose, their rendered fats, sausage and belly pork (the latter often cured), but it is simply because they are indigenous to the region that these components are used: traditional, available in plenty, buried with some beans in a pot and cooked with liquid of some sort until ready to eat. Et voila!

Irish stew, serves 4

"An Irish stew done properly will always be a masterpiece," says Michel Bourdin, chef de cuisine at The Connaught Hotel in London.

1kg best end of neck of lamb (or mutton if you can get it)

salt and freshly ground white pepper

flour

400g onions, peeled and thickly sliced

250g small carrots, peeled and sliced in half lengthways

6 medium-sized red-skinned Desiree potatoes, peeled and cut in half

2 tbsp chopped parsley, plus more for sprinkling

2 bay leaves

1tbsp pearl barley

water

Pre-heat the oven to 275F/140C/gas mark 1. Have the butcher cut the best end of neck into neat chops (you want about three chops per person). Season them generously and dredge with the flour. Arrange half of the onions, carrots and potatoes in the bottom of a solid casserole (one that will both sit on a flame and is oven-proof, and that also has a lid) and put the chops on top. Sprinkle with the parsley and tuck in the bay leaves. Add the rest of the vegetables and the pearl barley. Pour over enough water to just about cover everything and set on to a medium light. Gently bring to a simmer, making sure that all the ingredients feel free from the bottom of the pot; in other words, poke around a bit with a wooden spoon. Add a little salt and pepper, cover and put into the oven. Cook for one-and-a-half to two hours. Serve on to deep warmed plates and sprinkle with lots more chopped parsley. Eat with pleasure.

Note: the flavour of parsley in an Irish stew is much more important an ingredient than you might think.

Mrs Hopkinson's meat and 'tatie pie, serves 4

In a proper ironmongers - you know, the sort that always smells of paraffin and sells kitchen knives and very small tents - it may still be possible to find a similar type of pot that

Mum used for making her 'tatie pie. I think the one she had belonged to her mother (nicely crazed and burnished but not a chip in sight) and was possibly her mother's before that. Its shape was decidedly deep with slanted sides, dark brown on the outside and a sort of creamy colour within. It was fashioned from glazed earthenware, which also allowed all the ingredients within to stew gently, in the bottom oven of our ancient, solid-fuel Aga. Jugged hare and wild rabbit (in those days, there was only wild rabbit to be had on Bury market) also muttered away in the very same pot down there from time to time.

Assuming that you may not be able to find the correct pot for your pie, any deep-sided casserole dish will, of course, be just fine.

250g onions, peeled and chopped

500g stewing beef, cut into small pieces

salt and pepper

water

1kg potatoes, peeled and chopped into small chunks

for the pastry

125g lard or, even better, beef dripping

200g self-raising flour

good pinch of salt

cold water

Pre-heat the oven to 400F/200C/gas mark 6. Put the meat and onions into your chosen pot. Add enough water to cover the meat by at least 5cm. Add a generous seasoning of salt and pepper and stir in. Cover with a lid, or foil, and cook for 20 minutes. Lift off the cover and check that all is simmering nicely. If so, replace the cover, turn the temperature down to 300F/150C/gas mark 2, and continue to cook for another hour.

Meanwhile, make the pastry. Blend the fat, flour and salt together in a bowl with your hands until crumbly. Incorporate enough cold water to bind the mixture so that it comes together in a stiff mass; don't let it become too sticky. Leave to rest in the fridge until ready to use.

Remove the pot of meat and onions from the oven and stir in the potatoes. Turn the temperature up to 350F/180C/gas mark 4. Continue to cook for another 40 minutes or so, or until the potatoes are tender. Roll out the pastry into a circle slightly larger than the top of the pot. You don't want the dough to be too thin: this is a proper pie-crust, remember, not a fiddly bit of filo nonsense.

Once the meat and 'taties are ready, take from the oven and leave to cool for 15 minutes or so. Drape the pastry over the stewed meat, tuck the edges down the sides of the pot - as neatly as you see fit - and press against the sides of the pot. Puncture the surface of the pastry in two or three places with a small knife and put back into the oven. Bake for a final 30 minutes until the pastry looks a little puffed up and has taken on a little colour. Eat with pickled red cabbage and ketchup. Traditionally, the pie is most enjoyed when generously doused with malt vinegar. Sarson's, naturally