I've just made a huge batch of Mrs Steve's mum's stew. Tragically, I never met her, as she died of cancer just before I met Mrs Steve 49 years ago.

It's ludicrously simple. The only ingredients are shin of beef, carrots, swede and shallots (or onions). Everything gets chopped up, the meat and spuds into one-inch pieces, the swede into half-inch chunks, the carrots into rounds about half an inch deep and the shallots just sliced however you want them. The whole lot goes into a big pan of water and is simmered for as long as it takes, maybe two and a half hours. No stock, no wine, no spices, no herbs, just salt and pepper.

As for amounts, that's a variable feast. I like to think that the meat, carrots, swede and onions are in roughly equal volumes, but I don't sweat it.

I make it the day before, reboil it on the first day, portion it out into the required number of days (I make enough for three days for the two of us, which means about 1.25 kilos of meat) and put today's lot into a big pan. That gets heated through, and when it's bubbling away I put in some dumplings for twenty minutes.

Dumplings: 100g self-raising flour, 50g shredded beef suet (Atora this end), a pinch of salt and enough water to make a fairly stiff but not too dry dough. That can be rolled into six or eight dumplings that are just floated on top of the stew.

We tend to serve this on top of a few extra boiled spuds in great big bowls and eat it in front of the telly. If you're cold when you start to eat it, you'll be bloody hot by the time you've cleared your plate. To me, though I know it's subjective, this is the ultimate winter comfort food. And no cooking for the rest of the week!

Just one thing about the beef: any cut good for slow cooking would be good, I'm sure. We've always gone for shin. I get mine from an online butcher and it needs no further prep. If you buy it from a butcher you may need to remove some tough skin. What look like awful sinewy bits render beautifully after all that long cooking so no need to go mad with the trimming!