My Nan

My Nana made the best Corned Beef Ash (no H) ever. When my sister and I were little we would go to her house and that's what we'd have. We would sit at the table and eat huge platefuls with plastic white bread and butter. We loved it. When I went to university my nana wrote to me with the recipe and I have been making it ever since.

I absolutely insist that you try it.

Heres the recipe...

3 large potatoes
1 or 2 cans of corned beef, depending on the size of your casserole dish (and you greed for corned beef)
1 large onion
a small jug of ready made gravy

Put your corned beef in the freezer for 15 minutes, this helps you to slice it thinly and evenly. Peel and halve your onion and cut into thin half moons, mustn't be chopped any further, the soft stringy onions add to it. Then peel and slice your potatoes thinly.

Put a layer of potatoes in any oven proof dish (a lid doesn't matter), then add a layer of the corned beef slices, then scatter over some of the onion half moons. Repeat until the bowl is full, making sure the top layer is potatoes. Then pour over the gravy. Bake in a hot oven for 90 minutes. Test with a knife to check all the potatoes are soft. You might need to put tin foil underneath the dish to catch any drips of gravy. Cleaning ovens isn't fun.

It's perfect comfort food.

Nana was also a fantastic baker. Sausage rolls, mince pies at Christmas, plum bread (a joy with butter and cheese), coconut tarts. When I was young she would let me sit on the work top and help weigh out ingredients and be her little assistant. She taught me well.

Miss you already Nan. Don't have any kids in.

x