Slow Roasted Pomegranate Molasses Lamb Shoulder

So, as is traditional for Easter Sunday I made myself roast lamb. A whole 2kg shoulder of lamb, just for me! Of course I didn't eat all of it in one go but I had a pretty good portion of this last Sunday, It's meant to be served with couscous and salad. I went for Red Leicester Potato Gratin and Veg. Yum!

Slow Roasted Pomegranate Molasses Lamb Shoulder (from The Times)

(Serves 4)

1 x 2kg lamb shoulder, bone in, trimmed of excess fat
6 cloves garlic, peeled and halved
1 heaped tbsp ras el hanout
2 heaped tbsp oregano
1 400g tin chopped tomatoes
375ml beef stock
2 generous tbsp pomegranate molasses, plus extra, to serve
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 170C. Put the lamb, garlic, ras el hanout, oregano, tomato, stock, molasses, salt and pepper in a baking dish. Cover with foil and bake for 3 hours, turning the lamb halfway through. Uncover and cook, meaty side up, for a further 30 mins.

Remove the bone and transfer the lamb to a serving dish. Spoon over the pan juices and drizzle with molasses. Serve.

Jamie's Mothership Sunday Roast Lamb

I made my first roast lamb! I thought as it was Easter I'd have a go at roast lamb and as Jamie Oliver is usually pretty good at roasts I thought I'd try one of his recipes. It was really good, lovely and succulent. I served it with the savoy cabbage and bacon recipe from the book and then had mashed celeriac and Mediterranean roast veg, which were reduced in Sainsburys. I had lots of leftovers and I will share the recipes with you over the next few days. I also had pudding which comes tomorrow!

Jamie's Mothership Sunday Roast Lamb (from Saving with Jamie - Jamie Oliver)
(Serves 6)

1 bulb of garlic
1 bunch of fresh rosemary
olive oil
1 2.5 kg shoulder of lamb, bone in
3 onions
4 rashers smoked bacon
1 large Savoy cabbage
1 tbsp plain flour

Preheat the oven to 170°C.

In a pestle and mortar, bash 4 peeled garlic cloves, half the rosemary leaves and a pinch of salt and pepper into a paste, then muddle in a good lug of oil. Stab the lamb ten times, then stick your finger in each hole and massage the marinade in and all over.

Peel and quarter the onions and place in a snug-fitting roasting tray, with the lamb on top. Add 50ml of water, cover tightly with tin foil and cook for 3 hours. Remove the foil, pour away all the fat and add another 200ml of water to the tray. Cook for 1 hour more, or until the meat falls away from the bone, adding another good splash of water, if it starts to dry out.

Meanwhile, chop the bacon and cook in a large frying pan on a medium heat until golden. Trim, roughly slice and throw in the cabbage with a splash of water, cook for 10 to 15 minutes, or until softened, then season to perfection.

Remove the lamb from the oven, transfer to a plate and cover. Put the tray on a medium heat on the hob and stir in the flour, then pour in 600ml boiling water and any lamb resting juices. Stir well and simmer until you're happy with the consistency. Pour the gravy into a jug, or if you prefer it smooth, pour and push it through a sieve first. Serve.

Birthday Highjinks - 6 Hour Slow Roast Pork (Pulled Pork)

The main focus of my birthday meal was the delicious pulled pork. I forgot to take a picture of the pork before we pulled it apart as I was busy doing the side dishes, but you can see from the picture how amazingly it turned out. The crackling was fantastic, it was even still crunchy the day after and having pork and crackling sandwiches was amazing! The recipe below is for a traditional pork roast with gravy but I used the recipe without the gravy as I just wanted the meat for the pulled pork bit and it worked perfectly. The meat just fell apart off the bone. I also added in the smoked paprika as I thought it would give the meat a bit of added flavour.

6 Hour Slow Roast Pork (adapted from Jamie Oliver)
(Serves 4-6)

2 kg shoulder of pork, bone-in, skin on
 salt and pepper
2 tsp smoked paprika
2 red onions, halved
2 carrots, peeled and halved lengthways
1 large leek, cut into large chunks
1 bulb garlic, skin on, broken into cloves
6-8 bay leaves
600 ml water or organic vegetable stock

Preheat your oven to 220°C.

Place your pork on a clean work surface, skin-side up. Using a small sharp knife make scores about a centimetre apart through the skin into the fat, but not so deep that you cut into the meat. If the joint is tied, try not to cut through the string. Rub salt right into all the scores you've just made, pulling the skin apart a little if you need to. Rub with half the smoked paprika

Brush any excess salt off the surface then turn it over. Season the underside of the meat with a few pinches of salt, pepper and the rest of the smoked paprika. Place your pork, skin-side up, in a roasting tray and pop in the preheated oven. Roast for 30 minutes, until the skin of the pork has started to puff up and you can see it turning into crackling. At this point, turn the heat down to 170°C, cover the pork snugly with a double layer of tinfoil, pop back in the oven and roast for a further 4 and a half hours.

Take out of the oven, take the foil off, and baste the meat with the fat in the bottom of the tray. Carefully lift the pork up and transfer to a chopping board. Spoon all but a couple of tablespoons of fat out.

Add all the veg, garlic and bay leaves to the tray and stir them into the fat. Place the pork back on top of everything and return to the stove without the foil to roast for another hour. By this time the meat should be meltingly soft and tender.

Carefully move the meat to a serving dish, cover again with tinfoil and leave to rest while you make your gravy. Spoon away any fat in the tray, then add the water or stock and place the tray on the hob. Bring to the boil and simmer for a few minutes, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon to scrape up all those lovely sticky tasty bits on the bottom of the tray. When you've got a nice, dark gravy, pour it through a sieve into a bowl or gravy boat, using your spoon to really push all the goodness of the veg through the sieve. Add a little more salt and pepper if it needs it.

Serve the pork and crackling with your jug of gravy.

A Sunday Roast

To christen the new kitchen I invited some friends over last weekend and we had a roast! I had lots of help which made the cooking a lot less stressful than it could have been.



It was a fairly simple lunch: roast chicken, roast potatoes and carrots, sausages wrapped in bacon, stuffing, broccoli, gravy and bread sauce but delicious.



Now this bread sauce is nothing like normal bread sauce, or even very sauce like, but this is how my mum has always made it and how we normally have it when having a family roast. It's the first time I've ever tried to make it too, but I think it came out ok!

My Mum's Bread Sauce

Milk
7-8 black peppercorns
7-8 Cardamom pods
7-8 cloves
1 onion, sliced
4 slices white bread, made

Heat about an inch and a half of milk in a medium sized pan with the peppercorns, cardamon, cloves and onion until it comes to the boil and then turn off the heat and leave to one side. You can do this just after the chicken goes in.

Make the slices of bread into bread crumbs using a food processor.

Strain the milk through a sieve into a bowl and mix in the breadcrumbs. Put the mixture into an oven proof pot and when the chicken comes out of the oven put the bread sauce in to warm through. When everything else is ready, take the bread sauce out the oven and serve.

Chinese-style Roast Chicken with Spicy Potatoes and Stir-fried Vegetables

I am in the middle of essay hell again! I have an essay on e-books due in the week after next, I have at least started the reading for it and I am hopeful it will get done in time! Its just not a very interesting topic! This necessitates some good old comfort food, especially as although the snow has now largely gone, it still cold out there!

Last weekend I made Chinese Style Roast Chicken from one of my Leiths cookbooks. Roast chicken is one of my favourite meals, although usually done more traditionally with roast potatoes, parsnips, bread sauce, etc, so it was nice to try an alternative.



This recipe was really tasty, the chicken came from Borough Market so I knew it was good quality, but it was so tender and the leg meat just fell off the bone. The flavours worked really well together, and the sherry gravy was delicious. I used sweet potato instead of ordinary potatoes for a bit of variation and that worked really well too.

Chinese-style Roast Chicken with Spicy Potatoes and Stir-fried Vegetables (adapted from Leiths Simple Cookery)
(Serves 4)

1 x 1.35 kg chicken, giblets removed
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp oil
1 stick of cinnamon
1 star anise
2 large sweet potatoes, cut into 1 1/2 cm cubes
1/2 tsp Chinese five spice
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp clear honey
1/2 glass of sherry mixed with 1/2 glass of water
2 tsp cornflour
450g mixed vegetables ready to stir fry
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 200C. Weigh the chicken and calculate the cooking time at 20 mins per 450g plus 20 mins.

Smear the chicken all over with soy sauce, then drizzle with 2 tbsp oil. Put the cinnamon and star anise inside the cavity of the chicken. Place in a roasting pan and roast in the top of the oven for the calculated time.

Meanwhile, toss the sweet potatoes in a little oil, the Chinese five spice, cayenne and 1 tsp salt. Roast in the oven for about 20-25 mins until crisp.

After the chicken has been roasting for 1 hour, remove it from the oven and brush it with the honey. Pour the sherry and water mixture into the bottom of the roasting pan and return to the oven until the chicken is cooked.

When cooked, remove the chicken from the roasting pan and keep warm. Heat the roasting pan on the hob, scraping any sediment from the bottom of the pan to dissolve it. Taste and if the flavour is too strong, add more water, if too weak, boil vigorously to reduce. Miss the tsp of cornflour with 2 tsp of warm water. Slake the cornflour into the sauce. Bring to the boil, the cook for a further 2 mins, adding more water if the sauce becomes too thick. Season with salt and pepper.

Just before serving, stir-fry the vegetables in a large wok or frying pan with a little soy sauce and 1 tsp of honey if desired.

Carve the chicken and serve with the vegetables, potatoes and sauce.

Christmas Meals

Christmas is over as my Father would say! We have had a lovely and quiet couple of days with lots of yummy food, a roaring fire and lots of lovely presents.

Our starter for Christmas Day was a Shellfish Selection from Waitrose. We had a last minute dash round Waitrose on Christmas Eve whilst waiting for my sister to have her hair cut. We went in for two items and came out with a basket full! The Shellfish Selection contained smoked salmon, prawns, crab and prawn mousse. It was really tasty.

This is how the table looked for Christmas dinner, although I have managed to cut out the top of the centerpiece, which is a very large champagne glass shaped glass container with lots of silver baubles in it, and a candle in the middle.

We had beef wellington for Christmas Dinner, with roast potatoes, roast carrots, mange tout, broccoli and red wine gravy. It was absolutely delicious. The beef wellington had a portabello mushroom, fillet steak and ardennes pate all wrapped in puff pastry.

On Boxing Day we had relatives over for lunch and had the more traditional roast goose for lunch. with stuffing, roast parsnips, roast potatoes, Brussels sprouts, red cabbage and gravy.

Crazy Insomnia and a Mini Roast

I travelled to my parents house yesterday and finally finished my Christmas shopping. Hurray! I had a delicious meal last night of Moroccan Lamb with Couscous and Salad, made by my mum and there are leftovers, which I fully intend to eat for lunch today. There was wine a plenty and I went to bed very happy. However at about 3am this morning I was hit by crazy insomnia and could not go back to sleep, argh. So I finished my book, Comfort Food by Kate Jacobs which is really very good and have now wrapped all my Christmas Presents as well, and it is only 7.45am and I'm still awake and functioning!

Anyway moving on from the lack of sleep, last weekend I made a Mini Roast just for me. I love the experience of a roast and I do think its worth doing with smaller birds just for one, plus I had plenty of leftovers for a chicken sandwich and I made stock from the bones, no waste here! This was an adapted version from Nigella Express and I apologise for the strange picture, I was hungry and ate the skin before taking the picture!

Roast Poussin with Sweet Potato (adapted from Nigella Express)
(Serves 1)

1 poussin
2 tbsp garlic oil or wok oil (or use a blend of vegetable oil, sesame oil and crushed garlic)
1 sweet potato, skin on
¼ tsp ground cumin (I used Paprika instead of Cumin)
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
large bunch watercress
squeeze lime juice, to taste
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 220C/425F/Gas 7.

Place the birds into a baking dish or deep baking tray and drizzle over one tablespoon of the oil.

Cut the unpeeled sweet potatoes into 5cm/2in cubes and place them into another baking dish.

Drizzle over the remaining tablespoon of oil and sprinkle over the ground cumin and cinnamon. Gently shake the tin to combine the ingredients.

Transfer both the poussins and the sweet potatoes to the oven and roast for 45 minutes, or until the poussins are completely cooked through and the sweet potatoes are tender.

Season, to taste, with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and squeeze over a little lime juice and serve with the watercress.