Lamb
Fresh British lamb is best, New Zealand lamb is OK. My favourite is Hampshire Down lamb, seen
at farmers markets. Please support the small local producers who keep the old varieties going.
Grilled lamb chops are hard to get wrong. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and chopped fresh
rosemary and grill for 6 or 7 minutes each side, serve with new potatoes, carrots or peas. They
can also be fried or barbecued. Baking in a medium oven is slower but you needn’t watch so
carefully so can do something else for 40 minutes.
Shoulder of lamb is easy to roast whole; just shove a few sliced garlic cloves and some
rosemary into slits made in the meat, salt and pepper and roast in the oven for 2 hours at mark
5. Serve with peas, potatoes and gravy.
If you bone the shoulder, it cooks much faster, is less fatty, and offers more cooking options.
Lewry’s of Botley will bone a shoulder of lamb for you, but you can do it yourself. Put the
shoulder fleshy side down and with a thin sharp knife slice along the shoulder blade (see
drawing when I put it up). Follow the bone with a thin sharp knife, bearing in mind the angled bit
of the blade bone, you will know this when you find it, just slice up and around. I taught myself by
doing it and so can you.
Make a casserole or kebabs the first few times so it won't matter if you make a rough job, but
you will learn soon enough. A boned shoulder of lamb offers many possibilities- roll around an
apricot and walnut stuffing, marinade and barbecue, cook in Rogan Josh sauce, mince for spicy
meatballs…..here’s just a few ideas.
Spicy barbecued lamb
1 shoulder of lamb, boned and cut into strips
100 mls tomato puree
5 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
10 mls Balsamic or sherry vinegar
20 mls extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp salt
1 tsp fresh ground black pepper
Remove and discard any big lumps of fat, mix the seasonings in a suitable vessel then add the
lamb portions. Marinade for half an hour or longer, then barbecue or grill for about 20 minutes
or oven roast for half an hour at mark 6. Serve with bread and a salad.
Lamb Tagine
Named after the North African cooking pot used for it, tagine is a slow cooked meat stew which
uses fruits as well as vegetables. This is my version; there are many others.
1kg boned lamb shoulder cut into big chunks
250g dried apricots
Onion and carrots 200g each, coarsely cut
Bouquet garni
Spoonful of honey
100g ground almonds.
2cm cube ginger shredded fine
2 teaspoons each of fresh ground cumin and coriander
Season and fry the meat in some olive oil until browned. Add the onions, cumin and coriander
then a litre of water plus salt, pepper and honey. Add the carrots after half an hour, replace the
lid and simmer slowly. Add the ground almonds once the meat and carrots are well cooked. Add
the apricots half an hour before the end of cooking, if you add them too early they will melt into
the sauce. Remove the bouquet garni before serving with couscous, rice or bread. Couscous is
a processed wheat product common in north African cookery. Instructions on the packet but
essentially add to boiling water with a dash of olive oil, take off the heat for 5 minutes, then bring
slowly back to the boil. Alternatives Put it all in a casserole together and cook in the oven for 2.5
hours at mark 4. Use cider or white wine instead of water, apples, sultanas or other dried fruit
instead of apricots; quince is also suggested, or the juice and zest of an orange (NOT the bitter
white pith.) You could also use pork, beef, chicken or rabbit instead of lamb. The key thing is
that you are simply combining good, balanced ingredients and slowly cooking in a time-
honoured way as cooks have always done.
Are you getting the picture yet? There really are only a dozen or so
different recipes in all the world-all the rest is regional and seasonal
variations or showing off!
Roast boned rolled shoulder of lamb
Wrap your neatly boned shoulder round 2 big handfuls of sage and onion or apricot and walnut
stuffing (see Christmas chapter for stuffing recipes), roll it and tie with string. You can get special
cooking string for this but any clean string is OK. Look in any decent butcher’s window to get an
idea of how to tie up rolled stuffed joints, they’ll show you at Lewry’s (the quality butcher in our
village, you may be lucky enough to have an independent butcher's shop near you, PLEASE do
use them if you can, or one day they'll be gone) if you ask nicely and buy your meat there.
Roast as you would beef topside, 2-3 hours in a medium oven with a glass of white wine or cider.
Serve with parsnips, potatoes, French beans, carrots or peas.
Leg of lamb with beans (Gigot aux haricots)
Leg of lamb
500g dried haricot or cannelloni beans
Onion and carrot
Tin of tomatoes and 50g tomato concentrate
Garlic, bay leaf, oregano, cloves
Butter
Soak the beans overnight in plenty of water. Simmer for an hour in 2 pints of fresh water with a
quartered onion, carrot and 5 cloves. Add some salt when they are just about done, no earlier or
it stops the beans softening. When the beans are soft, remove and discard the vegetables, the
goodness will have boiled out of them into the stock.
Remove and discard the outer skin with a sharp knife down to the red meat. Rub with a knob of
butter, 2 crushed garlic cloves, salt and pepper and roast 2 hours in a medium oven. Put a glass
of dry cider or white wine in the cooking pan and turn the joint once at half time.
Remove the lamb from the tray, pour the juices into a 1 pint Pyrex jug and skim off the fat with
your bent soup spoon.
Fry a chopped onion in a little olive oil, add the tomatoes, concentrate and a pinch of oregano,
then add this sauce to the strained beans and reserved pan juices. Place the lamb on top of the
beans in the roasting dish, and return to the oven for another half hour. Slice the lamb and
serve it with the beans as it is, or add some fresh boiled vegetables such as carrots, young
cabbage or green beans.
Leg of lamb fillet
A leg of lamb costs more than a shoulder, but is easier to fillet. With a sharp knife and the bony
side up, slit down the middle lengthways and follow the bone round, aiming for an almost
symmetrical half cone of meat.
This will cook twice as fast as a whole bone-in leg, a handy trick if you short of time. The other
advantage is that you can easily apply Chinese, Indian, Mediterranean or other seasonings.
Teriyaki sauce is a favourite, chopped fresh rosemary and garlic too, but it’s great with just salt
and pepper. 40 minutes in a medium/hot oven (mark 6) is about right. You can also cross-cut
the fillet into 2cm thick lamb steaks which you can treat just like fillet of beef.
Lamb (or venison) steaks are great pan fried with date and port sauce. Chop 60g of
dates finely, soak in a half glass of cheap ruby port, then cook for 4 minutes in the pan with the
seasoned lamb or venison cutlets once they’re almost cooked, (5 minutes a side in olive oil).
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