I had intended to make a typical beef casserole with potato top last week but found myself short of carrots and mushrooms. I did however have peppers and aubergine so carried on with my plan and instead we ate a richly red dish with beautifully tender beef and a potato lid that had soaked up some of the flavours beneath. Quite a success with the whole family.

Ingredients - serves 4

900g braising steak or diced beef
1 large red onion, peeled & chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed to purée
1 large aubergine, trimmed & cut into 1cm dice
4 red ramiro peppers, deseeded, halved lengthways & sliced
1 red chilli, desseded & finely chopped
3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp tomato purée
300ml beef stock
salt, pepper

6 medium King Edward potatoes
2 tsp dried oregano
30g butter

Method

1 1Preheat the oven to 170°C
Cut he braising steak into 2.5cm cubes and season with salt and pepper. Heat a large frying pan to hot then add a tablespoon of olive oil and brown the beef in batches, setting aside in a bowl once browned.

2 Add the remaining olive oil to the pan and fry off the onion, peppers, chilli and aubergine over medium heat for 10-15 minutes until the vegetables are colouring. Now bring the vegetables and browned beef together in a casserole dish, mix and add hot beef stock, tomato purée and garlic, check seasoning and add more salt and pepper if necessary.

3 Melt the butter in a small saucepan and set aside. Peel the potatoes and cut into slices about 3mm thick. Lay the potato slices, overlapping, in concentric circles to cover the surface completely. Brush the surface liberally with melted butter and sprinkle over a good grinding of sea salt together with the dried oregano. Now transfer to the oven for 1 ½ hours and - if you have a cooker that will do this - turn the oven function to grill to brown off the surface of the potatoes. Serve the dish from the casserole at the table - and have some crusty bread available too as the sauce is definitely worth mopping up!