You quite often have the option of straight Hot Pot or a Hot Pot With a Lid On - i.e. a shortcrust pastry top. Whatever, it should always be offered with pickled red cabbage. I moved to the North West in the late 80's and have been converted to run on Hot Pot, a little like being changed over to natural gas. In the Bolton area the cuisine also includes "Pastie Barm" which is a pastie seved in a bread bun, "Barmcake" being the local name for a bread bun/roll/muffin etc, derived from "Barm", an old word for yeast. In Wigan it's all pies, and a pie in a barm is a "Slap Barm" as they tend to tap the barm to break the pie up a bit. (Are you all still with this?). Then there's "Babby's 'yed and pea wet" (Baby's head and pea wet) which is actually (thank goodness) a small steamed steak and kidney suet pudding with processed peas over it.

The folk connection is that Lancashire has the "Lanky Night" - an entity on the distant edge of the world of folk and usually in a social club, where you'll get what somebody once described as a "Folk Cabaret Band" like the Houghton Weavers, Oldham Tinkers, Gary and Vera Aspey etc singing songs about wearing clogs in the good old days and always accompanied by a "Hot Pot Supper".