Option 2 – not as healthy – Option 3 - somewhere in between!

This is definitely a luxury version, perfect for a supper with friends.

Replace the soup with a Velouté sauce. A Velouté sauce is one of the “Mother Sauces” - a light white sauce made with chicken or fish stock and a roux – it is also used as a base for other sauces, for example, a Sauce Supreme, known as a “Daughter Sauce” using Velouté and then enriched with cream.

Here's the Sauce Supreme recipe :

half a pint (300ml) of cold stock

15g unsalted butter

15g plain flour

½ tsp Dijon mustard

200ml double cream

salt and black pepper

Melt the butter, take the pan off the heat, add the flour and whisk. Return to the heat and cook out the flour for 2/3 mins, stirring continuously – do not walk away.

Then tip your cold stock straight into the roux and whisk until smooth, then cook on a low heat for 30 minutes. Season with salt and black pepper.

Add the mustard and cream and simmer for 5 minutes.

Fold your gammon, chicken and leeks into the sauce.

Top your sliced potatoes with seasoning and 2/3 knobs of butter, finish with a mixture of grated Red Leicester and mature Cheddar cheese. Bake as before.

Option 3 – somewhere in between

Omit the potato, butter and cheese topping and replace with a puff pastry lid. This option can also apply to Options 1 or 2. Bake as before. You could “hit the middle” and make Option 1 enriching the tinned soup by adding double cream. The world is your lobster or in this case your pie!

For those sceptics among us who think that a slow-cooker is only capable of producing stews and casseroles I hope you might be persuaded otherwise.

Bite size cooking to follow ...