Saturday, December 08, 2012

Experimental Cookery 2012: Bikers' Lamb Hot Pot

This is another entry from the Hairy Bikers' "Perfect Pies", which is a book I rather enjoy but use only rarely. I've tried hot pot once in the past, but that was made from a sachet, and was rather bland.

The hot pot itself is pretty simple to make up - it's basically just a case of cutting up some veg, pre-cooking things a little, and then sticking them into a bowl and then the oven. And then waiting.

I did have two small concerns going in: I was forced to use lamb leg rather than neck (the neck was recommended because the higher amount of fat should mean more flavour in the end result), and I found that my bowl was rather too small for the job. In hindsight, I should really have used one of the new ones we got as wedding presents. (Actually, in hindsight that's so obvious that now I feel quite stupid for not thinking of it earlier.)

The end result was nice enough, but... It was all a little bland and overwhelming. Lady Chocolat noted that it really "needed something" just to pep it up a bit. I mean, there wasn't anything wrong with it, as such, it was just a bit lacking.

I'm going to try this one again. It's good enough to be worth another attempt, and I do think I can probably do better. So I'll experiment a bit next time - perhaps an insistence on the neck would be better, perhaps a bit more seasoning, perhaps some more thyme and rosemary...

So, a somewhat mixed success there, I think.

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