Slow cooked ox cheeks for cold blustery days

Mid way through March and there were 2" of snow in the back garden, a biting, lazy wind, icicles hanging from the gutters and skies uniform grey and pregnant with nascent flakes of new snow and their threat of drifts, blocked roads and closed schools.
The calendar may have told us Spring had arrived, but the elements coldly contradicted such confidence.
What better for such wintry days than unctuous, slow cooked, cheaper cuts of meat, bulked out with pulses and a gravy like liquid tar, black with treacle and stout?

If you can't get ox cheeks, use shin of beef instead, or even oxtail.

2 onions, ideally red, thickly sliced
500g ox cheek
100g carlin peas, soaked overnight and drained
I used the wonderful Hodmedods peas 
1 cinnamon stick
200ml stout - drink what's left in the can or bottle
150ml stock
1 tblsp black treacle
Salt and pepper

Put the cast iron bowl over a medium heat and add 1 tablespoon oil.  Fry the onions until soft, but not coloured and then lift out with a slotted spoon, leaving as much oil as possible in the bowl.
Increase the heat and sear the ox cheek slices or cubed shin beef on all sides.

Add all the other ingredients, except the salt, pop on the lid and transfer to the slow cooker base.
Cook on LOW for 10 hours.
Taste and add as much salt as tickles your tastebuds.

Perfect accompaniments include buttery mash or creamy polenta and the sunrise glow of a dish of buttered carrots,

Serves 4

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