A Month of Lovely Lamb

I took delivery of my whole lamb from F&B a wee while ago and set about thinking of wondrous thinks to cook with it.  My only (small) disappointment was that both shoulders appeared to be minced or diced so no slow cooked shoulder for me.  Boo... Everything else was divine.  The most amazing thing of all though it that this particular lamb appeared to have 4 shanks instead of 2... Weird lamb but I’m not complaining...

So I started with Moussaka – since I had an abundance of mince I decided this would be a wise course of action.  I haven’t actually cooked it before so cruised the interweb looking for some recipes to inspire me.  I decided that I wanted to spice it up and not add too much tomato so it didn’t just taste like lasagne with eggplant.

I made a white sauce as opposed to a cheese sauce, and added lots of nutmeg for flavour.  Then for the mince I really ramped up the herbs and spices; browned some onion then the mince.  Then I added clove, nutmeg, garlic, chilli, oregano, cinnamon; basically anything I could think of to give it a Grecian spicy edge, I added a bit of tomato, but not too much.

Fried off the eggplant then layer, layer, layer...  Success! The mince was superbly spicy and the whole not too rich.  My wee girl is not a huge fan of eggplant (textural thing) but she also wolfed it down.  My BFF dropped around for a walk and ended up walking out with lunch for the next day – what a friend I am...

I also went with a Lamb Slow Cooker dish jobbie. Diced Lamb, Port & Cranberry surprise cooked by Henri.  Henri is our slow cooker, I fill him up in the morning and at the end of the day he produces mouth watering dishes for us.  This is another super easy dish.  Brown Lamb, add stock, port, cranberries, cranberry sauce... simmer for 8 hours, serve with mash. Yum.

Oh yes! And Lamb Saag! Ah, lamb! You are so versatile!! Again with the interweb’s help I cooked up another gem in Henri.  Diced Lamb, spices, spinach... I think though, I added too much water as I was worried Henri would dry out during the day, so it was not as thick as it could have been but was delicious still, I served with roti romali – my new favourite Indian bread.  I was worried that just lamb and flat bread might be a bit much so I also knocked up Aloo Matar which was easy and sensational...

An Assortment of Things

Hmm I’ve been quite quiet for a while I know, but what with my massive following I’m sure it’s fine.  Apparently no comments can be posted either, which is a bit weird so sorry if you’ve tried to take me down a peg or two, or dispute my love of secondary cuts.  I’ll get back on that.

I have done a few delicious things in the last few weeks; there was the 3 course meal entirely from the pantry/fridge/freezer (no shopping allowed) when my family left me on my own one Saturday night... that consisted of a caramelised onion tarte tartin (sensational) I didn’t have any pastry in the freezer so used a lacha paratha that was in there instead.  As this is an Indian version of puff pastry it worked a treat.  Main was a chicken schnitzel I found in the freezer, broccoli gratin and champ.  This went not quite as well, somehow I managed to over salt the champ and the sauce I cooked was a bit weird – I should have stuck to the pepper sauce Gravox mix...  I fear though I was a bit fussy because I was still quite full from the starter. 

Dessert was a bit of a triumph, I made a boozy prune and chocolate tart.  I bashed up some chocolate ripple bikkies, added melted butter and put that in a tart case.  I soaked the prunes in port, mixed with melted chocolate and cream, added an egg yolk and then baked for a while.  It was delicious but I was so full I only had a bit; which was good because it improved over the next few days anyway...

So that was that.

I did end up getting a whole lamb from the lovely people at Feather and Bone, all chopped up and ready for the chest freezer, I’ll leave what I did with all of that for another post or this one will be way too long; instead, I’ll focus on a pet peeve of mine, beef brisket being sold as ‘roasting beef’.  Why? It’s tough when cooked medium/medium rare and dry when well done... So I had one and decided to do a Guinness pot roast with it instead.   Success! It was gorgeous and the gravy sensational.  We had it with a bit of Hot English Mustard on the side which made it sing.  The recipe was an old one from a ‘One Pot Meals’ cookbook I had. Essentially, brown veg, pour over Guinness and beef stock, plonk in browned meat and cook for an age.  Yum.  So don’t roast your brisket! Pot roast instead.