The creative casserole: 17 fabulous one-pot recipes – from kale spaghetti to coq au vin

The sturdy pots are great for roasting meat, but they can also be used to bake bread, steam shellfish and make a beautiful blackberry cake

My American mother would have called it a Dutch oven, although a lot of people in the US call a Dutch oven a French oven, while the French call it a casserole. I think a true Dutch oven is a piece of camping equipment, with a hanging handle and stubby little legs, but that is not what my mother meant. My mother did not camp.

What I am trying to describe is a pot, round or oval, with fairly high sides and a snug-fitting lid. They are usually enamelled cast-iron and they can be ruinously expensive, although you sometimes see good secondhand ones at car boot sales. My wife once got two giant Le Creuset casseroles from a market stall for 20 because the guy selling them had put one inside the other and couldn't get them apart. I was prepared to deploy any number of drastic separation strategies, but a screwdriver wedged between the handles did the trick.