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Mutton Stew
Take two pounds of mutton, the breast or one of the inferior parts will do as well as a prime piece. Put in an earthenware pan a lump of butter as big as an egg, and let it color. Cut the mutton in pieces and let them color in the butter, adding salt and pepper, a few onions or shallots. When all is colored, add at least a pound of turnips, cut in slices, with about a pint of water. Let it boil up till the turnips are tender. Then add two and one-half or three pounds of potatoes; salt and pepper these, but in moderation, if the meat has been already salted and peppered. Add some thyme and bay-leaves, and let them all cook very gently till the potatoes are tender. When these are cooked, take out the pieces of meat, mix the turnips and potatoes, so as to make a uniform mixture; then place the meat on the top of the mixture, and serve it. N.B. It is necessary to watch the cooking of this dish very carefully, so that you can add a little water whenever it becomes necessary, for if one leaves the preparation a little too dry it quickly burns.
Hoche Pot Gantois (For eight or nine persons) Take one pound beef, one pound salt pork, and one pound mutton; cut into pieces about three inches by two, let it boil, and skim. Take two or three carrots, one large turnip, one large head of celery, three or four leeks, a good green cabbage, cut in four, the other vegetables cut into pieces of moderate size, not too small; put them in with the meat, and see that they are first covered by the water. Let it boil for three to four hours, and three quarters of an hour before dishing, add some potatoes cut in pieces. To dish: Place the meat in the center of a flat dish, and the vegetables around; serve the liquid in a soup-tureen. This dish should be eaten out of soup plates, as it is soup and meat course at one time.
Two related Flemish one-pot dishes: a mutton-and-root stew mashed together at the end, and the fuller Ghent hutsepot with three meats. Both are forgiving in seasoning and unforgiving about liquid level.
- The hinge: liquid, not timeThe note at the end of the first recipe is the whole technique. A pint of water under three pounds of potatoes evaporates fast, and the starch settles and scorches. Keep the heat at a bare simmer, lid on, and add water in small splashes so the pot stays wet but never soupy.
- Butter as big as an eggAbout 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. "Let it color" means take it to a nut-brown, not black; the browned milk solids are where the flavor of the finished mash comes from.
- Earthenware panA glazed earthenware or enameled cast-iron pot on low heat. Unglazed terracotta over a modern gas burner is liable to crack; a heavy Dutch oven is the practical substitute and holds heat the same way.
- MuttonGenuine mutton (generally sheep over a year old, sometimes reckoned over two) is rare outside halal and specialty butchers. Lamb shoulder or breast, bone in, works and cooks faster; the recipe gives no times, but expect roughly 1.5 to 2 hours for lamb and appreciably longer for older mutton.
- TurnipsThe Belgian original means white turnips, which cook down soft and slightly peppery. Rutabaga (swede) will also work but is sweeter and much denser, so start it earlier.
- The mashTurnips and potatoes are crushed together with the pan liquid into a rough puree, not whipped. This is the stoemp idea: the vegetables become the sauce, and the meat sits on top.
- Hoche Pot Gantois: salt porkSalt pork of this period was often much saltier than today's cured belly or bacon, and the recipe adds no salt of its own. Taste the broth before adding any, and if using a heavily cured piece, blanch it separately first and discard that water.
- Hoche Pot timingThree to four hours at a simmer suits mutton and beef shin or chuck. Add the cabbage in the last 45 minutes with the potatoes rather than at the start, or it will disintegrate into strings.
- YieldThe first recipe gives no number; on these quantities it would stretch to four or five. The hutsepot is given as for eight or nine, served as broth in soup plates with the meat and vegetables from the platter.
Hutsepot (French hochepot) is the standing winter dish of Flanders, and the Ghent version is the best known: several meats, whatever roots the cellar holds, and a long quiet simmer. The name is generally traced to a Middle Dutch verb meaning to shake or jumble, sharing a root with English "hotchpotch" and the legal "hotchpot," which are usually said to have come by way of Old French hochepot han than than by any fixed list of ingredients han than than by any fixed list of ingredients han than than by any fixed list of ingredients — a dish defined by mixing rather than by any fixed list of ingredients. The first recipe here belongs to the same family as stoemp, the Belgian habit of crushing potatoes together with another vegetable so that the mash carries the seasoning. Both appear in The Belgian Cook Book, compiled in Britain during the First World War from recipes gathered from Belgian refugees; the emphasis throughout on inferior cuts, cheap roots and one-pot cooking reflects both ordinary Flemish home cooking and the circumstances in which the book was assembled.