Join the upper crust

It's a dish to revive and restore your faith in good, simple food after one too many fancy festive dinners, and it's a dish to warm your soul during the January chill. Thank goodness for Lancashire hotpot. But banish memories of greasy, gristle-ridden school dinners, this succulent, big-flavoured dish is now on some of the grandest menus.

Fittingly, it's Nigel Haworth of Northcote Manor, near Blackburn in Lancashire, a passionate champion of produce from the region, who has put this dish back on the culinary map. He uses only definitive local ingredients and lavishes four-hours' cooking time on each pot, so diners who want it must pre-order.

Haworth may be a famed hotpot crusader but he is not the only one. Fellow Lancastrian Marcus Wareing of Petrus and the Savoy Grill plans to introduce it to his new Banquette menu early this year. He promises "the ultimate golden top made using clarified butter" and predicts it will go down a storm. It's also a regular feature at St John in London's Clerkenwell where British-cooking fan Fergus Henderson adheres to his Lancaster born-and-bred mother's recipe. Meanwhile, amid the grandeur of the Dorchester's Grill Room, hotpot is a perennial winter bestseller. Head chef Michael Kean prefers to use best end of organic lamb and recommends a recipe using a mix of white- and button-onions gently cooked to a confit in unsalted butter. Perhaps more surprisingly, Dominque Blais, the new French executive chef of the Ritz, is a recent convert to the joys of the hotpot: "Like Ducasse, I'm a great advocate of beautifully executed, hearty, slow-cooked cuisine du terroir and since introducing le hotpot to the menu several months ago, regular diners won't let us take it off," he says.

It's thought that in the 18th-century hotpot was a kind of punch which evolved by the mid-19th-century into the meat stew we know today. It was created out of the need to keep working families well-fed. Female cotton-mill workers would prepare it in the mornings, place it in communal range ovens and then pick it up again after work. Made in tall pots (as the hill sheep were long-boned, you needed a tall pot to stand the chops up in) and cosseted in a blanket, the aristocracy, thought it was a wonderful dish to take to the races. Apparently the quality of a Lancashire woman's hotpot even influenced the marriage prospects of her daughters.

For Haworth, it was his grandfather's rendition of hotpot which first endeared him to the dish. And crucial to it is his insistence on heather-reared Bowland braising lamb with its almost nutty, sweet tenderness. His preference is for the middle neck, shin and under-shoulder lamb, and King Edward potatoes, high in starch, to thicken the sauce. To recreate the traditional slow-cooking in a commercial kitchen, Haworth had an Aga Rayburn installed and a hand-thrown clay pot specially designed for it. "The best hotpots have a wonderful crisp top and the meat should naturally caramelise," he says.

There's a lot to be said for low-maintenance meals that simmer quietly in the oven. Putting Haworth's recipe to the test, despite a lack of Aga or hand-thrown pot, I was bowled over by the aromatic succulence of the dish.

Haworth has also reinvented the dish's traditional accompaniments. Oysters, once a cheap and popular choice, are cooked as oyster beignets and served alongside pickled cabbage spiced with star anise and fresh red chillies to reflect the Asian influences in Lancashire. And for guests who prefer not to order the orthodox hotpot, Haworth has recently introduced a deconstructed version - a warm salad of chargrilled fillet of Bowland lamb with toasted shallots, new potatoes, carrot vinaigrette and pickled red cabbage.

"We're returning to genuine comfort food with real flavour," says another hotpot lover, Brian Turner, a proud Yorkshireman. He questions why the Lancastrians should take all the credit for inventing the hotpot - "a dish, surely of infinite variations". At Turner's resolutely British restaurants in London and Birmingham, he favours using chump lamb with less bone and more meat and plans to introduce a Barnsley chop ultra-luxury hotpot shortly. "Still wonderful with HP sauce," he promises. *

Nigel Haworth is holding a Festival of Food at Northcote Manor from 26 January to 1 February, 01254 240 555; The Savoy, tel: 020 7420 2392; St John, tel: 020 7251 0848; The Dorchester, tel: 020 7629 8888; The Ritz, tel: 020 7493 8181; Brian Turner (Mayfair), tel: 020 7596 3444, (Birmingham), tel: 0121 781 4000

Nigel Haworth's Lancashire hotpot

Serves 4

1kg/35oz under-shoulder, neck and shin of local lamb (cut into 3cm/1in thick pieces, trimmed of fat)
700g/23oz thinly sliced onions
1kg/32oz peeled King Edward potatoes
25g/1oz plain flour
40g/2oz salted English butter, melted
150ml/5fl oz chicken stock
(or water) 3 teaspoons sea salt
White pepper

Season the lamb with one level teaspoon of salt and a good pinch of pepper, dust with the flour. Put the lamb into the base of a stoneware hotpot dish (diameter 21cm/8in, height 9cm/3.5in).

Sweat off the onions in 15g (1/2oz) of butter with one level teaspoon of salt for five minutes in a covered pan, on a moderate temperature. Spread the onions evenly on top of the lamb in the hotpot dish.

Cut the potatoes horizontally into thin slices. Place in a medium size bowl, add the remaining 25g (1oz) melted butter, season with a level teaspoon of salt and a large pinch of white pepper and mix well.

Place the sliced potatoes evenly on top of the onions, reserving the best-shaped rounds for the final layer then pour over the chicken stock or water.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4 (Aga equivalent is the bottom of the baking oven). Put the lid on the hotpot dish and place in the oven for 30 minutes.

Change the oven temperature to 130C/250F/Gas 1/2 (Aga equivalent is the simmering oven) and cook for a further three hours.

Remove from the oven, take off the lid and return to the oven on 180C/350F/Gas 4 (Aga equivalent is the top of the roasting oven) for a further 30-40 minutes or until the top is crisp and golden brown in colour.

Serve with pickled red cabbage.