Cut 500gms of braising beef eg. chuck steak or shin of beef, into large squares and dust with flour. Heat olive oil in a heavy frying pan and soften two large sliced onions, when just beginning to brown transfer to a casserole dish. Fry the meat quickly in batches giving the pan time to heat up between each batch. Place the meat in the casserole, add 500gms carrots cut into sticks, *a bouquet garni and salt and freshly ground black pepper. Sprinkle over a spoonful of flour

Deglaze the frying pan with 750ml of stock or 300ml water and 450ml stout. Bring to the boil and pour over the meat making sure it is covered. Cover and cook for 2 hours in the preheated oven 170C/gas3 or until the meat is tender.

* traditionally bouquet garni is made up of a bay leaf, and two or three sprigs of parsley and thyme.

To make the dumplings sift 100gms of self raising flour and mix with ½ teaspoon backing powder, ½ teaspoon salt, 50gms shredded suet and 2 tablespoons chopped parsley. Add enough water to make a sticky dough. On a floured board, roll the dough into small balls. When the meat is nearly cooked put the dumplings on top of the stew and cook a further ½ hour until they are double the size and cooked right through. It helps to baste them a couple of times during cooking. Serve the stew with a crisp green salad.

This is the basic principle for all stews and ragouts. Ring the changes with your choice of vegetables, herbs and liquid. Red wine, garlic, bacon, tomatoes and orange rind will take you to a French Daube. Kidney, mushrooms and oysters will bring you back to Britain with Steak and Kidney and Oyster Pie or Pudding. Juniper berries, peppercorns, Parma Ham and white wine will give you Italian Stracotto.

The pasty question is a vexing one! Should pasties be crimped along the top or flat like a fat bolster. Is the beef minced or chopped - must it be beef? Does carrot go into the filling or just turnip and onion?
Mrs Beeton, 1926, adds baking powder to her pastry and gravy to the filling! “ Farmhouse Fare” 5/- 1956 slices the beef and makes pastry with butter. Even Jane Grigson finishes the pasty with a frill on the top. She does makes the pastry with lard though. A minefield!
My Cornish mother-in-law’s son is quite adamant: you cannot get a proper pasty in Devon, not even Widecombe!
His mother remembered, as a child at the beginning of the last century, pasties, big and bolster shaped, being made very early in the morning. They were wrapped in newspaper and packed into an old suitcase or box and carried to the fields by the farm workers. When it was time to rest and eat, the pasties were still warm, comforting to cold hands and empty stomachs. If times were hard the filling was more potato and turnip than meat. One end was often jam-filled for pudding, all washed down with a bottle of cold tea, then back to work.
Make a short crust pastry with 12 oz plain flour, 6 oz lard, ¼ tsp of salt and a little water, put it into the fridge to rest. Chop 1 lb of chuck steak, 4-5oz onion, 3oz turnip, 8oz potato. Mix together with salt and plenty of pepper. Roll out the pastry and cut out two large circles, divide the meat mixture between the two. Brush the rim of the pastry with beaten egg then fold in half and roll over the edge to form a crescent.. Place the pasties on a baking tray, brush them with beaten egg and bake in a hot oven ( 6/400) for 20 minutes, lower the heat and continue cooking for approximately another 40 minutes. Eat hot or cold.

We have two hogs coming back from the butcher on Monday. Maybe that is why my mind drifts back to those old books. Mutton is not on the menu very often now and has definitely fallen from grace until a very recent revival. I think of mutton chops and Lancashire Hotpot. How the methods vary. Dorothy Hartley flours and browns her mutton chops before standing then on end in an earthenware pot. She packs in an onion per chop, large pieces of carrot, then “some oysters”. Next she covers the lot with sliced potato overlapping like “tiles on the roof” She makes a thick, and to my taste, rather heavy gravy with flour, boiling water and the fat from the fried meat. To this she adds salt, pepper and, she insists, a sprinkling of sugar. Most important, she says, no, no, I say! Then in goes a dash of Yorkshire relish or anchovy essence. All this is poured over the meat and vegetables and the whole is covered with a lid and baked “with a good fire” for two hours.

Mrs Beeton fries nothing but simply layers meat and vegetables in a fire-proof baking dish, no oysters here, just water, salt and pepper. The lid is removed twenty minutes before the end of cooking to crisp the potatoes. Constance Spry favours the oysters, mushrooms and a good stock. She covers the pot with grease proof paper instead of a lid removing it some twenty minutes before the end of cooking to crisp and brown the potatoes.. No mention, of course, of such a dish from Elizabeth David. Her mission was to encourage us to look beyond our shores.

I suspect a tour of Lancashire itself would bring as many, maybe more, variations. So I’ll steer a course through the middle, probably leaving out the oysters and cooking everything a day in advance, cooling overnight and removing the fat from the top before reheating.

Now here is a really delicious and exotic way to use up that left over turkey! And very simple too… .

Bake a ring of Cheese Choux Pastry and fill it with the turkey, warmed in a rich cream and sherry sauce.

For the pastry put 150ml of water in a small pan with 50gm of butter. Bring it to the boil and then shoot in 75gm of sifted plain flour and beat like mad with a wooden spoon having taken it off the heat. Leave it to cool then beat in two eggs. Next stir in 80gms of tiny cubes of gruyere cheese (cheddar will do!) a pinch of salt and some freshly ground black pepper. Grease an oven proof dish and pile the rich yellow paste around the edges to make a ring (with a hole in the centre for the turkey filling later). Bake at 220c ((425f or gas 7) for about 40 mins. depending on your oven. The secret with choux pastry is to cook it longer than you think you should! It smells wonderful after 20 mins. but it must have a chance to dry out inside.

Meanwhile make a sauce in the usual way: 25gm butter and 25gm flour melted and mixed to form a roux, whisk in 300ml milk, stock or left over gravy ( if you use gravy remember to cut down on the flour in the roux). Bring to the boil stirring all the time and continue to cook for a couple of minutes to cook the flour. Cheer it up with a dash of sherry, a spoonful of that cream at the back of the fridge or a dollop of crème farce. You can add mushrooms, a little blanched broccoli, left over stuffing….whatever you fancy. Season it well and pile it up into the crispy ring of Gouger.
All you need now is a green salad and a glass of wine.

As far as roasted meat goes, this is extremely fast and simple, yet decadently rich.

Serves 4:

12 – 18 slices prosciutto or Parma ham.
3 cloves of garlic, peeled.
1 good handful of dried porcini, soaked in around 285ml / ½ pint boiling water.
3 good knobs of butter.
Juice of ½ lemon.
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.
900g / 2lb fillet of beef (preferably from the middle, left whole).
3 good handfuls of fresh rosemary and thyme, leaves picked and chopped.
2 glasses of red wine.

Preheat your oven and an appropriately sized roasting tray to 230°C / 450°F / gas mark 8. Make sure there are no gaps in between the laid-out slices of prosciutto. Chop one of the garlic cloves and fry it with the soaked porcini in 1 knob of butter for a minute. Then add half of the soaking water (make sure it is grit-free). Simmer slowly and reduce for around 5 minutes before stirring in a squeeze of lemon, the remaining 2 knobs of butter and seasoning.

Rub your tasty and moist mushrooms over half of the laid-out prosciutto. Season your fillet of beef and roll it in the herbs. Place it on the mushroomy end of the prosciutto and slowly roll up the meat. Once the beef is rolled up, pull off the paper and push in the ends of the prosciutto to neaten. Lightly secure with 4 pieces of string.

Place the fillet in the hot roasting tray with a couple of cloves of garlic and cook for 25 – 30 minutes (rare), 40 minutes (medium), 50 minutes (well done). Half way through, add the wine to the tray. When the meat is done, remove it to a chopping board and leave to rest for 5 minutes. Pour any juices back into the roasting tray. Simmer the juices on the hob, scraping all the goodness from the sides of the tray. Remove from the heat and serve as light red wine gravy. Slice the fillet as thick or as thin as you like and serve with some potatoes and greens. Reserve a little of the porcini to serve with the greens.

Back to pigs and curing bacon. I become fussier and fussier about the bacon I buy. What is that awful, white, fishy smelling, sticky goo that emerges from each rasher as it fries, rendering the lot soggy and welded to the pan? Why doesn’t it turn crisp and fill the air with that irresistible coffee mixed smell of breakfast as I struggle back, cold and hungry from the yard?

So the pork belly will go into a dry cure: salt, bay leaves, crushed peppercorns, juniper berries and soft brown sugar. I will rub the mixture into the meat and place it in a plastic tray; wood will do to but on no account will I use metal. I will cover it with a tea towel and leave it in the fridge overnight. The next day I will pour off the liquid that has leached out of the meat and, if necessary, rub in a little more salt mixture. I will repeat this for three or four days. The longer I leave it the more salty but the more stable it will become. Finally I will take it out of the cure, rinse it well and pat it dry. I will wrap it in muslin or maybe greaseproof paper and make room in my fridge for it to hang from a shelf. It will keep for a month like this. Mild weather makes me feel the fridge is the safest option.

I would like to have it smoked but my local smoke house is now too large a concern to take tiny pieces of home cured affairs, so I’ll enjoy it “green”. Maybe one day I’ll tackle home smoking….

Delicious meals start to fill my head; petit sale with Savoy cabbage and mashed potatoes. Soak the bacon to remove the salt, rinse and bring gently to the boil, simmer for about forty minutes. Chop a Savoy cabbage, blanche in boiling water and drain well. Drain the cooked bacon and keep warm. Keep the liquor for future soup. Melt a piece of butter in a thick pan, add a tablespoon of the bacon liquor and re-heat the cabbage. Serve hot boiled bacon with cabbage and mashed potatoes.

Or how about an Anglicised Tartiflette? Fry some bacon till just beginning to crisp, add a couple of chopped onions and a left over, boiled potato or three. When the onion begins to caramelise tip the lot into and oven proof dish and pour over a little cream. No, this is not a light, slimming dish! Top with cheese, traditionally it should be Tomme de Savoie, but use up whatever you have. Bake until the cheese melts and bubbles. Delicious!

For a really quick supper just fry bacon cubes, shallot and cooked, sliced potatoes and, maybe, some mushrooms together and top with a fried egg. So simple and so nice!

But whatever you do, just remember as the winter month’s approach, to take a tip from Pieter Breuegel, the Elder’s Peasant Dancer and wear your spoon in your hat, so you may always be absolutely sure of a good meal wherever you go …….

Traditionally Cottage Pie and Shepherds Pie were made from the leftovers of the Sunday roast. The cold meat was chopped up, mixed with the leftover gravy, put in a pie dish and topped with mashed potato and reheated in the oven. It was OK but a bit dull!

But made with fresh minced beef or lamb it is quite delicious and so simple to make too. Chop a large onion and three cloves of garlic. Soften over a low heat in a little oil. Raise the heat; add 500gm of minced beef or lamb and stir till nicely browned. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of flour, stir and add 300 ml stock, homemade or made from a cube, plus 150ml wine, and a large tablespoon of tomato puree. Stir again. Add salt and pepper, cover the pan and simmer gently for 25-30 minutes.

Meanwhile boil 1kg of potatoes in their skin, drain, cool and peel. Return to the pan and add 75gms of butter and a about 200-300ml hot milk. Mash lightly. Cold milk and overworking will produce wallpaper paste!

Spoon the meat into a pie dish and cover carefully with the with mashed potato. Fork the potato up and sprinkle with grated hard cheese and bake in a hot oven 400/reg 6 for 40 minutes until potato is crisp and golden. Serve with lightly cooked, fresh vegetables or a green salad