Nothing But Onions

Before Christmas, I bought a Lancashire Hotpot dish from Lakeland.It's a round ceramic casserole dish with steep sloping sides. It's about eight inches tall and ten inches in diameter. I wasn't really sure why you need a special pot for hotpot, but we're a bit short on decent sized casserole dishes and I liked the fact that this one was quite deep.

Whilst it seemed like a good idea at the time, this pot has been sat in the back of the cupboard ever since I bought it, and so I thought today was finally the day to try it out.

Lancashire hotpot is a traditional northern dish, consisting of what is basically a layered casserole. It's traditionally made with mutton chops, but I used neck of lamb cut up into large chunks. At the base of the dish goes a layer of thinly sliced potatoes, followed by alternating layers of carrot and leek and the pieces of lamb, together with thyme and seasoning. The whole thing is then topped with another layer of thinly sliced potato, topped up with stock and dotted with butter. A couple of hours in the oven, covered with foil to stop it drying out, and then a final twenty minutes without the foil to crisp the potatoes. Lancashire hotpot is one of those great dishes of my childhood and the crisp sliced potato that covered the top was the best part.

It's in the oven now, and the smells are already wafting up the stairs. Only another hour to go...