Help me recreate this recipe from my childhood?

[taliac]

I was recently talking to my sister about the great meals we had at primary school. Yes, it was waaay back in the day.

Anyway we both remember a lunch which was a kind of beef mince stew, with pearl barley in it. I have never seen it since.

Does anyone know a recipe like this?

are you sure it wasn't a lamb stew?
that is more usuallly the case if it had barley in it.

Perhaps it was peculilarly regional to your school?

My mum cooked this regulalrly as an 'economical' dish and I hated it. Shreds of meat attatched to huge globules of fat and bone in a thin gravy with pearl barley....

Never heard of mince with peral barley but it would be a good way of bulking out meat at school I imagine.

if it was lamb stew with barley then it is one of my most favourite things ever - I've never made it but my grandma used to. Don't think we ever had it at school.

I am jack sprat....

FMV, I don't know whether to laugh or throw up at your description of the stew tbh

and

I had some truly gross meals at my first primary school, tapioca and sago were daily terrors to be dealt with.

(much better dinners at my next school thuogh)

Well it was definitely mince.. And I think it was beef mince. Maybe it was an invented dish..

We had really great cooking at my primary. Okay, yes, semolina and truly dreadful "curry". But otherwise it was fab.

Secondary school was a bit of a shock.

(I'm Jack Sprat's wife, btw..)

god, secondary school dinners were a shock to me too. I only lasted one term and was straight onto packed lunch.

I loved our school dinners until around 1979/1980 when they closed down the school kitchen and introduced microwaved shit

Before then everything was home-made and gorgeous. I even loved the rice pudding and semolina

Message withdrawn

No potatoes on top, so not hotpot?

I'm checking with my sister, see what else she remembers.