Heavenly Lamb

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OK - just a quick throwaway: last night's roast dinner - the picture shows the leftovers being prepared for tonight's meal. It was off-the-cuff and simple, but bloody beautiful. As I've said before, I don't often use recipes and just wing it most days (the liver-thing and that glorious Biriani I wrote about last year notwithstanding!) We didn't really do much different from my normal slow/fast roast lamb method, but here's what transpired anyway.

Ingredients and method as follows in various grammatical tenses:

One half-shoulder of lamb (I don't know whether this made a difference, but we'd frozen it before Christmas and while it was defrosting, we covered it with a clean tea-towel which absorbed all the blood and moisture).

Lamb placed in a roasting tin on a trivet of garlic cloves and rosemary; rubbed with olive oil and well seasoned with sea-salt, black pepper, thyme and oregano, a half-glass of white wine in the bottom of the pan. Covered with a sealed tent of foil, placed in a pre-heated oven at 240°C and turned straight down to 110°C. Cooked for four hours or so (usually not critical, the longer the better from my experience).

Lamb taken out of the oven and the temperature raised to 240°C again whilst preparing potatoes for roasting. Potatoes par-boiled in well-salted water, scuffed in a colander when tender, placed around the meat and drizzled with more olive oil. Roasted in the same pan for half an hour, then the spuds placed on a clean tray and the juice drained off the meat after basting it very well with them; both then returned to the oven for another half an hour on 190°C. Meat taken out to rest for 20 mins while the spuds finish (turn the oven off and crack the door if they're done). Serve with good gravy, veg of choice, etc.

All I can say is that it was possibly one of the best roast dinners I've ever eaten, anywhere. That's cooking for you: sometimes the food gods smile on you and the results are truly heavenly. At some point I'll try and replicate this as a recipe and see if it was the modus operandi that did it, or whether it was just serendipity.


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