he best stews (or casseroles, or whatever you want to call them) are made from scratch with raw meat or vegetables, wonderfully seasoned and cooked very, very slowly. The great thing about them is that they transform cheap cuts of meat into meltingly tender cold-weather comfort food – and they are practically impossible to mess up. Even better. Whatever is left over can be frozen for a ready-meal later on or thinned with some good-quality stock and blitzed into a hearty soup. If you have a fair bit of meat left over, though, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with making a stew with it – using up wilting vegetables at the same time. Unlike classic stews made from scratch, these are relatively fast, taking minutes rather than hours.

urries, whether you use a fresh array of spices or a readymade curry powder or paste, are quick and almost effortless – certainly nothing exotically untoward – and if you keep them on the mild side most children will find them thrillingly different.

t’s worth repeating that cooked meat has already given up most of its juices and will only toughen if cooked again for too long. So with these dishes, the normal order of things is reversed – generally, the meat is added at the last minute, once the gravy or sauce has cooked and thickened – and it’s left only for as long as it takes to heat through completely

This chapter contains recipes for traditional stews as well as fake tagines, mild and hot Indian curies, Thai curries and Middle Eastern dishes like: