Slow Roasted Lamb Shoulder for the Whole Family

Lamb might not be an obvious choice for kids but there are lots of great things about it.  Kids need iron and red meat is a great source of it.  Lamb though is a fairly strong taste in comparison with chicken and pork but that said, if you don't offer stronger tastes with kids, they don't get used to them, and let's face it, I would happily serve a lamb curry to my 2 year old.

Rosemary and garlic are natural partners for lamb but with a leg of lamb, it's often inserted and I find the garlic is still undercooked and indigestible.  This way makes sure the garlic and rosemary are fully cooked but still flavours the meat because it's cooked in it's own little steamy oven.

The other great reason to cook this dish is it's incredibly thrifty.  When I went to my local supermarket to buy this, a leg of lamb was £11-12 a kilo.  Lamb half shoulders were £5 a kilo.  Trust me, this is as good or even better than a leg of lamb and brings it into the price range of more households.

Slow Roasted Shoulder of Lamb - Easily served 2 adults and 1 toddler with a little left over

Ingredients

1kg Half shoulder of lamb
1 tbsp Olive oil
2-3 Sprigs of rosemary (although as I grow my own, I took around 6 of the tips of the sprigs as they are the most tender)
3 Cloves of garlic
Coarsely ground black pepper

For the gravy
Beef or lamb stock (you can use a stock cube and water but fresh stock is better if you have it)
1-2 tbsp Cornflour (cornstarch)

Method

Preheat the oven to 220oC / 450F.  Fry the lamb shoulder on all sides until browned.  Discard any oil and fat in the pan.

Smash together the garlic, rosemary and pepper in a pestle and mortar until broken up (it doesn't have to form a paste).  Rub over the lamb shoulder and put into a baking dish.  Pour 100ml (3.5 fl oz, just under half a cup) of cold water around the lamb.  Cover with a layer of baking paper and then wrap well with foil and I mean well, you want to seal it as well as possible.

Put in the oven for 30 minutes and then lower the temperature to 170oC, 340F and roast for a further 2 hours or until tender.

Allow to rest for a good 20 minutes and in the meantime drain off the juices into a jug.  Scoop off the fat from the juices, there will be quite a bit, shoulder can be a fatty cut.  Mix the juices complete with the bits of rosemary and garlic (they're tasty) with the stock and bring to the boil.  Reduce until to your liking.  With the stock mixture boiling, mix 1-2 tbsp cornflour with cold water and whisk in, bring to the boil until thickened.  The amount of cornflour you will need will depend on how much stock you have.  Just see how thick it is and add more if you feel it needs it.

Carve the lamb, this won't carve into super neat slices because it is so soft but do watch out as there are a couple of natural fatty layers in a shoulder so you might want to cut them off rather than serve them.

Serve with vegetables and gravy.  Feel smug!

My son and husband loved this.  We had the warmed leftovers as well with flatbreads, hummus, salad and chilli sauce but a more traditional leftover treatment would be shepherds pie.

Enjoy!

The Best Roast Potatoes EVER!

The fact that you can buy frozen roast potatoes has confirmed to me that people don't know how to make roast potatoes but it's super easy and makes you look like a superb cook to your friends and family.  This is the VITAL recipe to have to hand come Christmas.  Don't worry about the turkey needing a lower temperature, cook the turkey to be ready to take out of the oven 1 hour before you want to eat, then turn up the temperature.  Not only does the resting time help the meat, it then means you don't have to worry.

Even some really good cooks don't know how to make these.  The perfect roast potato should be golden and crunchy on the outside and lovely and fluffy within.  The perfect accompaniment to Christmas lunch or any other roast (and just maybe a delicious midweek treat!)  What's more is depending on what fat you use, these are really cheap to make (if you're smart, why not save some fat from roasting a duck to make these later, which kind of makes one of the ingredients free!)  No cheating with flour either.  Just two ingredients.  Done.

The Best Roast Potatoes - the below amount easily serves 3 but you can scale up

Ingredients

Floury potatoes - as many as you want but I used about 4 medium sized spuds.  This served 2 adults and a toddler.   You need to bear in mind that people really like roast potatoes.
2-3 tbsp Duck or Goose fat (or vegetable oil if you don't have either or would like a vegetarian version.  Dripping or lard is also good.)

Method

Peel your spuds and cut them into pieces of the same size.  What size you chose is basically up to you as long as you're consistent but I tend to look at the potatoes and decide once I see what size they are but it's normally bigger than an inch (2.5cm) and smaller than 2 inches (5cm).

Put into a saucepan and cover with boiling water.  Bring to the boil and boil for 7-10 minutes.  You kind of get a feel for this, how long will depend on how old your potatoes are.  Drain your spuds and put the lid back on.  Give a shake and a shimmy of the saucepan with the lid on.  Not too hard because you want the surface to be roughed up without the potatoes breaking up.  Have a look, if they're not showing any signs of roughing up, be a bit more aggressive.  If you find you've really not boiled them for long enough and they're showing no signs of being fluffy at all, you can save the day and cheat and use a fork to rough up the surface, but this takes a bit longer and doesn't quite work so well.

Put the oven on to 220oC / 450F and put a baking dish or tray into the oven with the fat or oil in it to heat.  You want the fat really hot.  While the fat is heating, leave the potatoes to cool a bit, if you have a lot in the saucepan, turn them out onto a cold plate.  Losing the steam helps them crisp up.

When the fat is hot, carefully bring out the tray or dish onto a heatproof mat and put in the potatoes, carefully as the fat can splash.  As you add the potatoes, the fat should sizzle, if it doesn't put the tray back in the oven to heat up more.  Use a spoon to poor some of the hot fat from the dish over each potato and return to the oven.  Lower the heat to 200oC / 400F and roast for 45 mins or so turning once or twice or until they are golden, crispy and delicious.  Just be aware that if you're cooking a lot of these, do use a big tray because you need space around the potatoes for them to go crispy.  Also be aware if it's Christmas day and the oven door is being opened multiple times they may need a little longer.  Remember my top tip though is to get your turkey done an hour before you want to eat, wrap it in foil to keep warm then up the temperature in the oven to get the potatoes on.  Much easier.

Best served as soon as possible after cooking to be at their crunchiest.

Slow cooked duck with Thyme and Apple for kids and adults

I made this last weekend but it's been a busy week in the Mamacook household.  I now have my own business providing food safety support to food companies (which is my day job) and it's going pretty well but it does mean that time is short to fit in playing with my toddler, blogging, running and sleeping.  Unfortunately sleeping is paying the price as a result and if you think I've touched the vacuum cleaner in the last few weeks you are much mistaken!

It's inevitable that something has to give but I hope to get back on top of blogging asap because it brings me so much joy.  It's odd to think my little blog has been going for nearly two years now and regularly has 20,000 page views a month.  That might not sound like a lot but it's significant for me.

I still use the recipes from my first post (so much so I even went back and added a photograph recently) so everything changes but nothing does in lots of ways.

This is an easy recipe for duck.  If you've never cooked duck it's a great meat to roast.  Just be aware the amount of meat you will get won't be huge but you will feed 2 adults and a toddler without much of a problem.  Also don't be afraid of the fat (there's a life lesson!)  The fat is delicious and great for making roast potatoes.  In fact, you could freeze it and use it for Christmas day!

Which comes to another point.  Turkey is not for everyone and if you are just eating as a couple on Christmas day, a duck might be a tasty alternative if you fancy something a bit different.

Slow Roast Duck with Apples and Thyme

Ingredients

2kg Duck (remove and keep the giblets if there is a giblet pack, defrost if frozen.)
5-6 cloves of garlic
1 onion
1 eating apple
A few sprigs of thyme
Seasoning
1 tbsp Cornflour (cornstarch)
Bacon to make liver and bacon bites (if liked if you have giblets)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180oC / 350F.  Cut the apple and onion into wedges, (just remove any root and dirt from the onion, there is no need to peel).  Halve the garlic cloves.  Put a couple of the apple and onion wedges, garlic and some of the thyme into the cavity.  Do not completely fill, you want to leave an air space so the heat can penetrate.  Put the remaining apple, onion etc into a baking dish and put an oven safe rack securely on top (a clean deep grill pan is great for this.)

Put about 2cm / 1 inch of water in the base of the tray and put the duck on top of the rack so it's over the tray.  Season the skin with pepper and a little salt.

Roast for 1 hour at 180oC / 350F, then reduce the heat to 150oC / 300F for the remaining cooking time of 90 minutes increasing to 200oC / 400F for the last 10 minutes or until the duck is fully cooked and crispy.  Add more water to the tray underneath if it starts to boil away.

While the duck is cooking, you can use the giblets.  The heart and neck can be used to make stock (boil away for an hour or so in water and then strain).  The liver can be cut into small pieces, wrapped in bacon and cooked for about 30-40 minutes or until fully cooked.

Once the duck is ready, put onto a carving tray to rest.  Pour the cooking juices from under the duck into a jug and carefully remove the fatty layer and save it for roasting potatoes another day.

Sieve the cooking juices pressing the apple and garlic to extract some flavour if liked into a saucepan and add the stock from the giblets if you have it.  Discard the apple, garlic and onions as their flavouring job is done!  Boil hard to reduce the stock until it tastes to your liking.  If the flavour is a bit 'thin' add a chicken stock cube if liked.  Thicken the gravy by mixing a tbsp of cornflour with cold water and then adding this gradually to the boiling stock, stirring all the time.  Add more cornflour if you like it thicker.

Carve the duck and serve with vegetables.  My son loved the meat and the crispy skin.  Just be aware that the skin has salt on so not to serve to very small babies but if you make the gravy yourself without adding a stock cube or seasoning you can serve that to them without worry!

Vegetable and Chorizo Soup

One of those things, you've been to the supermarket, bought some ingredients, then you come home and your partner suggests something for tea you'd not planned for.  Today was 'soup'.  Now soup is easy, you can often make it from store cupboard ingredients but I didn't fancy lentils (I've over lentil-ed recently, even though I love lentils, you can have too many) and pumpkin is so autumnal.  So this was the result.

My husband astutely pointed out when I told him what we were having it was "the stuff which was in the fridge".  Yes.  Sometimes inspiration takes the form of cooking the "stuff which is there" and the "stuff which needs eating up".  I like to think there is more science to it than that but, let's face it, sometimes there isn't.  Still, despite that, my husband described this as 'delicious'.  I've not tried this with my son yet but it's the kind of thing he likes, definitely full of flavour and he has a bit of a thing for chorizo.

Vegetable and Chorizo soup - Serves 2 adults

Ingredients

120g Chorizo, cubed
1/2 Onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
500g passata
1/2 red pepper, finely diced
200g pumpkin (peeled weighed), finely diced
1 tsp smoked paprika
Fresh thyme

Method

Fry the chorizo and onion together gently until the oil starts to run from the chorizo and the onion softens.  Add in the pepper, paprika, garlic and pumpkin and fry for another minute or so.  Add in the passata and simmer, covered on a gentle heat until the pumpkin is cooked and soft.  For me this took a good 30 minutes but will depend on the variety of pumpkin.  Add some water if it's too thick.  I made this though to be good and chunky.

Add thyme to taste and serve.  Lovely with some crusty bread.

I've linked this up to seasonal inspiration.