A September of two halves

The two pictures above show one of our Pedigree Aberdeen Angus heifer calves in the same field … in one, she is stood on some tinder dry, dead, unpalatable grass, while in the other, she’s in a lush field of green grass. What a difference a few weeks and about 80mm of rain makes!

Based on the variety of orders that we are getting each week, half of you are still barbecuing, despite the deluges of rain that we keep getting (legends!) and the other half have got the oven back on and are leaning into shorter wetter days and going for more roasting and stewing orientated cuts. So this week we are talking about both.

Dom’s barbecue tips are below, and so is a lamb cobbler recipe from BBC Good Food, which our dear, late mum Tessa used to make us when we were kids.

The barbecue half: Dom’s rules

You may have seen my brother Dom in The Independent a couple of days ago. Our fine landlords at Borough Market bought together five people who they see as fire-cooking experts to give their barbecue tips. Dom’s view? “Treat flame as an ingredient”

And his tips: charcoal, not gas, buy a chimney starter (costs about a tenner, will honestly change your BBQ life), and go for a fattier cut (like ribeye, short ribs or pork belly), a guaranteed way to get proper flavour, and of course, fire.

Borough also ran their first Flame & Smoke night this week – the market open after hours, fire pits going, live-fire cooking from the traders, a DJ, the lot. If that sounds like your sort of evening, get yourself on Borough Market’s mailing list…they put their events out there first and the good ones do sell out quickly.

Shop BBQ

The comfort food half: my Mum’s Lamb Cobbler

This recipe originated from BBC Good Food, however, I know it as “mums lamb cobbler”. It is true winter comfort food and I think it is my favourite lamb stew.

We still try and cook it in the colder months, however, none of us have got the magic touch that my dear old Mum did when it comes to perfecting recipe timings. Despite not being a Tessa original, we think it’s worthy of your attention, so we’ve now added it to our website so you can try it too.

Lamb Cobbler Recipe

I should say up front that it isn’t a quick supper. It’s a Sunday job. The kind of Sunday job where you do twenty minutes of work at the start, forty minutes in the middle, and then everyone tells you you’re a genius!

The cobbler topping is the star. Somewhere between a herby scone and a dumpling, crisp on top, cloudy and soft underneath, sitting in the gravy round the edge of the dish, Mum’s note on the recipe says “absolutely worth any scraps of energy put in to making it”.

Use 1kg of stewing lamb like neck, shoulder, or a mix and 200g of smoked streaky bacon. Don’t use anything lean and don’t use anything expensive; this is a meal that gets better the cheaper it is. If ordering diced lamb online for this, please leave us a note when placing your order and we will pick you what we think is the best lamb for the job!