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When I was a child one of my favourite foods was corned beef hash. I especially used to like it mixed up with mashed potato. I think I got this from my granddad who first came across the dish when he was growing up in Scotland and he brought the dish down south with him after the war. He always refers to it as "corned beef and tatties". It's a simple meal albeit very tasty.

The Sunday before last I decided to make a variation on it called corned beef hash. It had been a wet and windy morning that had followed a wet and windy, but extremely excellent, Saturday night sampling flavoursome Mexican food while wearing an oversize Sombrero all as part of a friend's birthday celebrations. If the corned beef hash that I was about to make was simple comfort food to take my mind off the damp Sunday morning weather then the album of choice to listen was simple comfort music. I chose Kiss' 1987 platinum blockbuster Crazy Nights, which despite being cheesier than a Welsh Rarebit has many catchy songs that are played by the band with a passion and power that firmly sticks one finger up to critics and musical snobs. It's therefore the perfect record for a rainy day and helped me get stuck in to the task of dicing a large white onion, cleaning, peeling and cubing three white potatoes.

I first fried the white onion pieces in some olive oil in a frying pan for around five minutes until they began to brown. At the same time I added a pinch of black pepper and a quarter of teaspoon of mustard which I mixed into the onions. In the brief period that the onions were cooking I cut three slices of corned beef into small squares and after the onions were ready I added the corned beef and the cubed potatoes to the frying pan and spread them out throughout the pan.

I turned up the heat on the hob and once the potatoes and corned beef began to hiss I used a wooden spatula to look underneath the pieces and when they had started to brown I turned them over to fry the other side. So as to stop the food burning I added some extra olive oil to the pan to keep it moist. Once the potato pieces were soft enough to be cut with the wooden spatula and had browned on both sides I finished it by placing some fresh parsley on top and then the dish was ready.

This was genuine comfort food; the fried potatoes and the corned beef gave the meal a taste that was like the smell of a well-kept chip shop at peak serving hour. It certainly helped fortify me after my soaking that morning while walking the dog. The richness of the red cabbage cooked in cider that I had made to compliment it lent the meal some sophistication. The red cabbage dish will be featured in the next blog entry so watch this space...

The fresh parsley from the garden was the perfect finish to this meal.