B
Beryl M
Guest
The Industrial towns of Lancashire grew from villages in the eighteenth century and prospered in the nineteenth thanks to their proximity with the port of Liverpool, the great success of the American cotton trade and a climate ideal for spinning and weaving cotton thread. Lancashire is cool and damp and so the traditional dishes are hearty and warming, the best known being Hot Pot.
Hot Pot was a meal loved by rich and poor alike but the variation we are going to look at is known as Bolton Hot Pot which is perhaps best suited to the 21st century palate.
Bolton was the most prosperous of the Lancashire towns and the inhabitants revelled in their status, leading people in more down market communities to say the place was "all fur coat and knee knickers." For a long time most people assumed this was just a local dialect version of the common phrase "all fur coat and no knickers," meaning somebody who was all style and little substance.
View attachment 7044
View attachment 7044
A few years ago however, a local historian, while studying a collection of medieval dialect poems found that the local usage referred to the fact the Bolton stands on the first tract of rising ground encountered by the prevailing North West Wind since it left Greenland, in fact their isn’t so much as a clump of decent sized trees to get in the way.
So the good ladies of Bolton needed to take drastic steps to ward off chills throughout the long winter, and this is why they were in the habit of wearing fur coat and knee knickers.
Hot Pot
Ingredients (to serve 4)
The main variation is that we use leg chops of lamb where our grannies would have used neck chops (fatty and messy to eat) or if very poor something called scrag end. Less said about that the better I think.
about 2lb of leg chops
1 large onion
2 carrots
2lb potatoes
¼ pint stock*
25g oil or fat
salt, freshly ground pepper,
thyme, garlic to taste.
a couple of tablespoons of Chinese oyster sauce (optional
* If you like a thick gravy rather than a broth, you may want to add a little thickening but don’t go over the top, the potatoes will take up quite a lot of the liquid in cooking.
The leg chops should have a piece of bone in the centre. On the day we took the photos we could not get any with bone from the supermarket, but the flavour is noticeably improved by bone marrow diffusing into the gravy. Trim off any excess fat.
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees centigrade, 350 Fahrenheit
Peel the potatoes, slice enough to put an overlapping layer on top of whatever pot you are using. Cut the rest roughly in to smaller pieces. Place in a bowl of cold water until they are needed. Peel and roughly chop the onion. Slice the carrot.
Heat the oil or fat in a frying pan with a chopped clove of garlic season the lamb chops with salt and pepper and brown on both sides. While they are browning cover the bottom of your casserole dish a layer of roughly chopped potato. On top of this place about half the carrot slices and a layer of onion. We will add more layers, sprinkle each with salt and pepper as you go.
When the lamb chops are browned on both sides put them aside, drain the excess fat off the pan and stir the stock and oyster sauce (real oysters used to be used before they became an expensive luxury). Add a little more seasoning according to your personal taste (some people like a little chilli as well as the salt, black pepper and thyme.)
Now transfer the chops to the to the casserole, draining off any excess fat.
Put another layer of onion and carrot on top of the chops and then on top of that the rest of the roughly cut potatoes (Hot Pot is as much a construction task as a cooking exercise.)
Pour in the stock mixture. It should almost cover the top layer of potato.
Now put on the final layer of sliced potato. Arrange the slices so they are overlapping like fish scales. Brush the exposed potato slices with a little oil or melted fat to keep the potato moist and make it cook to an appetizing shade of brown.
Cover the pot and put it in the preheated oven for two hours. For the last thirty minutes remove the cover to allow the top to brown
And an history lesson too... Mom would say "Kippers and certains" Dad would say "Red hat and no draws" 