6 1GT Thursday November 26 2020 | the times

the table

Below: Skye Gyngell Marinate the meat

Received wisdom — well, Delia Smith

and Nigel Slater — is that you have to

brown your lamb before putting it into

a hotpot. However, James Cochran,

the head chef at 1251 in Islington,

north London, says there is an

alternative: marinate your lamb first.

He has a hotpot in his oven as we

speak. “I got some lamb shoulder

diced down, and I started marinating it

four days ago in yoghurt, chilli, garlic,

ginger, soy and fish sauce. The acid in

the yoghurt and the salt in the fish

sauce has broken down the meat, and

I’m cooking it for eight hours at 85C.”

He says that when it’s marinated for

a long time, there’s no need to seal the

meat, just bung it in the pot with some

liquid, in this case water with coconut

cream. “You’d usually brown it off, but

cooking it this way, the flavours are

going to bleed into the meat anyway.”

Also, if you are cooking a large cut

such as a whole lamb shoulder or,

his favourite, goat, he recommends

brining the meat in advance.

Don’t rely on potatoes

The joy of a hotpot is that it is an

entire meal in one dish. Yet if you are

not adding potatoes to it, you will

need a carbohydrate of some

sort to soak up the rich stock.

“I do love a silky, smooth

mash,” Cochran says, “but

why not have a wet polenta

with loads of parmesan and

some oil on top of it? It’s

really quick to make, quicker

than a mash.”

Gyngell serves her simple

chicken hotpot with crusty

bread. Corrigan agrees. “When

I am feeling a bit low, I tell you

what, a boiled chicken with lots of

garlic and parsley and some lovely

sourdough is what you need.”

H

istorians describe

1816 as the year

without a summer.

The eruption of

Mount Tambora

in Indonesia the

previous year meant

that the Earth was in

shadow. Harvests failed and riots and

arson were rife across Europe. The

silver lining? Mary Shelley’s holiday

with Lord Byron was ruined — so she

went inside and wrote Frankenstein.

In the Covid-ridden winter of 2020

my Frankenstein will be perfecting the

hotpot. Meat, stock, some vegetables

and the application of gentle heat.

This will be my masterpiece. “In these

darker evenings, one-pot wonders fill

the soul full of joy,” says Richard

Corrigan, the Irish chef. “They

brighten one’s eyes. The broth alone

that comes out of them tastes fantastic,

often better than the main ingredient.

It is a life soup. When adrenaline is

running low, when your motivation

has gone, there is nothing like it.”

But how to transform a dish that can

sometimes be grey and lifeless into

something magical enough to get us

through this long, dark winter? Here

some top chefs share their tips.

The magic of black pudding

Black pudding is wasted on a full

English. Its true purpose is to elevate

a Lancashire hotpot into a Cumbrian

hotpot, or tatie pot as they say further

up the M6. A Lancashire hotpot is, in

its simple form, lamb, onions, stock

(usually thickened with flour) and

sliced potatoes on top, which go crisp.

So too a Cumbrian, but here its

addition means that the soft blood

sausage melts during cooking, giving

the stock a sweetness and richness,

bubbling away under the layer of

potatoes. Nieves Barragan, the owner

of the wonderful Sabor restaurant in

London, is also a fan of black pudding

in a hotpot, adding it to bean stew that

has Spanish chillies, saffron and bay

leaves, which you can have as is or as

a rich side dish to milk-fed lamb ribs.

“It’s super-sexy, finger-licking and

lip-smackingly delicious,” she says.

Nigella Lawson also suggests it as

an optional addition to her apple and

pork hotpot in Kitchen, her 2010

cookbook. It should never be optional.

Sex up your

hotpot! It’s

the ultimate

comfort food

After the double whammy of Covid and

winter, these one-pot dishes have never

been more needed, says Harry Wallop

Thicken it up

You can thicken the sauce of any

hotpot without necessarily dusting the

meat with flour before colouring it in

the pan. One trick is Corrigan’s: put

into the stock some small, chopped-up

potatoes, which will break down

during the cooking, as well as the large

potato pieces on top. “If you put your

potatoes in small at the beginning,

there’s no need to dust with flour.”

Although he does go through the faff

of blanching his lamb for ten minutes

in simmering water before adding it to

his Irish stew or Lancashire hotpot,

“to get rid of all the impurities”.

Another trick to thicken your sauce

is to adopt the Iranian tradition of

adding dried fruit, especially to a

khoresh bademjan, a tomato-based

hotpot made with lamb, aubergine

and split chickpeas. “The starch in the

split chickpeas will thicken the stew,”

explains Marwa Alkhalaf, the chef-

owner of Nutshell, a modern Iranian

restaurant in the West End of London.

But so will dried fruit. “Add dried fruit,

like dried plums or dried apricots or

golden plums. When the fruit starts to

break down, the fibres of the fruit will

thicken your sauce as well as giving it

a lovely sweet note.”

Quick chicken v slow lamb

Hotpots are usually best suited to

lamb neck or beef shin, cuts of red

meat that enjoy the slow, gentle hug

of a casserole dish, but chicken hotpot,

ready in less than an hour, is a marvel.

Skye Gyngell, who owns Spring

restaurant in London, says: “I literally

raised the kids on one-pot dishes

made on a Sunday afternoon. One

of the simplest, and the children’s

favourite, was a chicken hotpot.”

Place a well-seasoned chicken into a

large pot. Slice some onions and sweet

tomatoes, crumble in some dried red

chilli, a few garlic cloves and some

sage and fresh bay, add a glug of white

wine and place over a medium to low

heat. Cook for half an hour, then

add peeled chunks of pumpkin and

return to the heat for about another

20 minutes, maybe a little more. Just

before serving you can add a large

dollop of crème fraîche to the sauce.

Corrigan too is a fan of a chicken

hotpot, but says it is crucial that you

poach, not boil, the bird. “If you boil it,

you need your fingers chopped off,”

he barks at me. He serves his with a

parmesan mayonnaise and, if you are

elevating it to another level, you can

put a slice or two of truffle under the

chicken’s skin as it simmers in the pot.

“It will be absolutely divine,” he says.

Add an acid garnish at the end

If your hotpot is one-dimensional,

add a garnish at the end to lift it

and a note of acid to cut through the

richness. “It’s a dash of Mediterranean

sunshine in winter,” Corrigan says.

“With a Lancashire hotpot sprinkle

a little gremolata: parsley, garlic,

lemon zest grated very finely.” When I

suggest that the good folks of Preston

might disapprove of such fripperies, he

pooh-poohs the notion. “Ahh, we’ve

been in the EU for 40 years; I think

we’re open to some parsley and garlic.”

For a beef hotpot add “chopped

olives, along with some orange rind

and some grated garlic. A dash of

vinegar, a pinch of sugar at the end —

that’s what the Chinese do with their

hotpots for good reason.” However, he

warns: “The garnish has to be added

right at the end. It can’t become

part of the slow braise.”

A sour, acid note is crucial

to many Persian hotpots too.

“Ab-ghooreh is very

similar to the French verjus.

It is unripe grape juice, but

a bit less sharp,” Alkhalaf

says. You should be able

to find it in a Middle

Eastern deli, and you only

need a teaspoon splashed

in near the end of the

cooking. “It’s a way to

balance the rich stew.

Iranians try to break their

stews with some sweetness,

some herbs, or a sour note —

or possibly all three.”

GETTY IMAGES; REX FEATURES