Mutton hotpot and a breakfast of leftovers

Hot (pot) to trot

Like Lancashire hotpot, but without the kidneys. I'm pretty good with offal nowadays but kidneys...well, I've had some unpleasant experiences with kidneys. Maybe one day...

Mutton hotpot


Loosely based on a recipe for Lancashire hotpot by James Martin, available here: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/9099/lancashire-hotpot


Serves 3 (The Bear and I had this for dinner one night, then he took the leftovers to work for his lunch the next day.)


500g diced mutton
olive oil
a small knob of butter
1/2 an onion
2 small carrots
1 tsp dried thyme
s + p
1 tsp marmite
2 tbsp plain flour
1 mug of chicken stock
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
about 500g potatoes


Preheat the oven to 140 degrees C.


Brown the mutton in a large casserole pan (one which can go in the oven and has a lid) with the olive oil, seasoning and butter. Finely chop the onion and carrot and add these to the pan with the dried thyme. Fry for about 10 mins, then add the flour. Finally add the chicken stock, Worcestershire sauce and marmite. 


Slice the potatoes into roughly 2cm slices and arrange on top of your stew. In between layers of potato add seasoning and a few blobs of butter.


Put the lid on your casserole dish and bung in the oven for one and a half hours. Remove the lid (don't forget to use oven gloves!) for the last 1/2 hour or so of cooking to crisp up the potates. We ate ours with some leeky greens made by sauting some leeks in butter and adding to some boiled savoy cabbage. T'was yum.

Dinner is served...

On another note, we had a lot of leftovers hanging around our fridge, so I turned them into a rather lavish breakfast: leftover savoy cabbage,  roast potatoes, carrots and parsnips became bubble and squeak - perfect with a squirt of brown sauce and topped with a poached egg - and leftover sharon fruit compote got whizzed up into a sharon fruit and banana smoothie. A pretty good start to the day if I do say so myself.

"How do you like your eggs in the morning?" With bubble and squeak. And brown sauce.  And smoothie. And NOW.

Sunday cookery extravaganza part one: scotch eggs



Scotch eggs, fresh from the fryer

On Sunday, my friend Laurie came round to help me cook up a storm. A scotch-egg-and-chocolate-éclair flavoured storm. This post I’m going to talk about the scotch egg-y part.

Scotch eggs are actually pretty easy to make, they just require a bit of patience. But it is SO worth it – if you’ve never had a home-made scotch egg you are seriously missing out. They really are a million miles away from those sorry looking things you can pick up from the supermarket. The sausage part actually tastes of sausage, for a start. This is the third time I’ve made a batch of these beauties, and the third time that I’ve scoffed the majority of them in less time than it took to make them.

We used Cumberland sausages from our local butcher (A.R. Tym’s on Smithdown Road, Liverpool – if you reside in Scouseland you should get down there pronto, it’s boss, lar*), but you can use whatever sausages / sausagemeat you fancy, as long as it’s good quality.

*Translation for non-scousers: it’s really very good, my friend.

Scotch eggs

Makes 12

900g Cumberland sausages

About 1/3 of a loaf of white bread, frozen (sounds weird, but trust me, this will make sense in a minute)

13 eggs

Some plain flour

Bottle of sunflower oil (unless you have a deep-fat fryer. I don’t.)

1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

Black pepper

1 red chilli, finely chopped and seeds removed

2 tsp dried sage

1 clove of garlic, grated

Hard boil 12 of the eggs (about 8 minutes), stick in cold water to cool and set aside. Grate the frozen bread to make breadcrumbs (told you it would make sense). 

Grating the bread to make breadcrumbs

In another bowl, squeeze the sausagemeat out of the sausages and add the Worcestershire sauce, black pepper, finely chopped red chilli, dried sage and grated garlic and mix it all together with your hands. If you are concerned about getting your hands messy, well...this is probably the wrong recipe for you. Just get into it! Roughly divide the sausage mixture into 12 similarly-sized blobs.

Squeezed -out sausages n stuff

Crack the remaining egg into a separate bowl and beat. Add the flour to yet another bowl. Remove the shells from the eggs, rinse and put in another bowl. You should now have 5 bowls, one with hard boiled eggs, one with sausage, one with flour, one with beaten egg and one with breadcrumbs. You are now ready to assemble.

The procedure to assemble each scotch egg is simple. Roll a hardboiled egg in flour, then wrap in sausagemeat, dip in beaten egg, then roll in breadcrumbs. Repeat until all the eggs are done. All you have to do now is fry them!

Sausage-y balls of GLORY

Fill a deep but relatively narrow pan with the sunflower oil and heat. You need to get the oil really hot before you drop your scotch eggs in. A good way to test is to put a spare crumb of bread in – if the oil bubbles and fizzes straight away it’s ready. If it doesn’t, heat up the oil some more. Once the oil is hot enough, carefully add your scotch eggs. You will have to fry them in batches. Once the eggs have turned deep golden brown they are done – remove from the oil with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen towel.

Fry my beauties....fry

I cannot be held responsible for the extra pounds you are likely to gain after scoffing 5 of these in one go. And make no mistake, you will scoff about 5 of these in one go. At least my last post was about a salad...