The Perfect Roast Lamb

The perfect Sunday roast... is classic Aussie.  Out of all the roast meals, my favourite is the roast leg of lamb. 

First of all, I make the marinate.  As the children can't eat a lot of spicy food, we have to go with some flavoursome spices but not spicey.

Roast Leg of Lamb

Marinate
2 cloves of garlic
fresh rosemary
Thyme
Oregano
Parsley
Black pepper
Sea salt
Olive oil.

Pound the herbs with pepper and salt in mortar and pestle, and move it to the bowl and soak the herbs in enough extra virgin olive oil.  Leave aside for 1-2 hours.

Score the leg of lamb, and rub it with the marinate, place on the roast rack and leave it for 1-2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 130-140C or 285F.  Put the lamb on rack and let it go into the oven.  3.5 hours.

Without taking the meat out of the oven, put the oven to 200C or 390F for 10-15 minutes.

Cut in slices or just take it off the bone, and serve with yoghurt sauce, or gravey, this time we served with creamy potato salad...

Braised Lamb in Passata with Gnocchi - Potato Dumplings

It's cold cold winter here.
Time to use a lot of my slow cooker.

A dinner that can easily be prepared the night before.

This time, slow braised lamb in passata with gnocchi - the fluffy potato dumplings.

The night before, brown all sides of the meat (I'd love to be able to do it just before the slow cooking process starts, but as previous posts states, I start working roughly 7am every morning) and make a bouquet garni of parsley, bay leave, rosemary and mint.

The next day, cut the veggies, zucchini and fresh tomatos and an onion and 2 cloves of garlic, lay at the bottom of the slow cooker, add lamb pieces - shanks, and necks, and add passata, white wine and bouquet garni.

Let it cook for the day.

The job is then easy when I came home.  While the lamb is simmering, make gnocchi.

500g desiree potato with 100g flour plus extra to dust, will usually give my family enough potato gnocchis.  The children are not specific about the seashell shapes and they are happy with the rustic cuts.  Gnocchis don't take long to cook, and this is a lovely winter meal...

Spicy Lamb Pilaf - A Tasty and Quick Meal

Hubby and I love spices, although time is limited during the week days, sometimes we can still find short cuts to some of the favourite dishes.  I have some ground spices including some good quality curry powder (yes, I know they are pre-mixes) from our local Indian or Mid-Eastern grocery shops. 

This is our simple and tasty mid week meal, a quick pilaf.


Spicy Lamb Pilaf
350g lamb back strips
3 tbsp meat curry powder
2 tbsp mid eastern spice
2 tbsp dried mix herbs
2 tbsp salt
½ cup olive oil
Cracked black pepper
1 small onion
1 cloves of garlic
3 cup rice
6 cup water


Method
Cut lamb into stripes.
Marinate with curry powder, 1 tbsp salt, mixed herbs and black pepper, for at least an hour.
Half of olive oil in pan and caramelise thinly sliced onion and garlic.
Put meat in pan and fry till fragrant and almost cooked, it should be still quite dry.
Take out the meat and set aside.
Add the rest of olive oil to pan and add rice to pan with mid eastern spice.
Coat the rice with oil and spice and fry for 2-3 minutes before adding water.
Let rice simmer and soak up water, cover the lid and switch off stove.
Wait for 10 minutes and add meat back to pan and mix, cover the lid for a further 10 minutes.

Serve with a simple green salad:
1 medium ripe tomato
1 Lebanese cucumber
5 sprigs of parsley
150g iceberg lettuce
100g fetta cheese broken in small chunks.
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Cracked pepper and sea salt flakes.

Lamb Shank Confit & Cassoulet - First Daring Cook's Challenge in 2011

January Daring Cook's Challenge was hosted by Jenni from The Gingered Whisk and Lisa from Parsley Sage, Dessert and Line Drives, it's a cook off of a Confit and a Cassoulet.  Recipe is here.

I decided to do lamb shanks, and only 2 of them because it's summer here and we are not really keen on big pots of winter food.

However, the effort worth it, it's a very tasty dish, and we will do it a lot when winter comes.

It's a 3-4 day cooking process, and I started with rubbing the salt to the lamb shanks, leave it over night, in my case, in the fridge.

The next day, I added rosemary, thyme, bay leaves and cracked black peppers.   Added duck fat (from the roast ducks I did before) and cooked the confit in 180C oven for an hour.

Mean while, soaked the great northern beans in pot.

The third day, I took most of the duck fat out of the pot, lined the pot with bacon (I didn't use pork rind, just bacon with rind),

added pan fried Italian sausages, onions and beans, and some stock to cover.

Cook the cassoulet in 180C oven for an hour, and then 120C oven for another hour.

I must admit that it wasn't pleasant cooking that day as it was a hot 35C day!



The fourth day, it was cooler and the time to enjoy our cassoulet.  I cooked it again, took the whole pot out of fridge, wait till it warm to room temperature and cooked it in 180C oven for another hour.

Serve with home made sourdough bread....

Red Wine Lamb Chops with Cheesy Bread and Yoghurt Dip and Salad

I wasn't able to eat meat lately, but Graeme loves the lamb mid loin chops..... Luke's starting to eat lamb and the chops are his favourite part of the lamb.  Monique... hmm... she eats some normally.


But as always, I couldn't decide what to do until the last minute.  Life of a home cook is always like openning up a mistery box... That's the view shared by most forumists on the Masterchef Forums.   We use what we can, and we adapt the recipes as we go...  After all, I do have a budget to keep and we have to cook with what we've got.


I did have the intention to make pita bread again, but somehow, I changed my mind, so it end up with normal cheesy buns... Sourdough of course.


This is what I did with the chops:

Red Wine Chops:
6 Lamb mid loin chops.
1/3 cup of red wine
Chopped fine mint
Mixed Dry Herbs
Cracked Black Pepper
Pitch of salt
1.5 tbsp of golden syrup
Half of lemon


Yoghurt Dip:
1/3 cup Greek Yoghurt
1 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 of lemon
½ tsp salt


Simple Salad:
1 Lebanese Cucumber, de-seeded and diced.
2 Roma tomatos, diced.
A few sprigs of coriander and spring onion.
¼ lemon juice
Cracked pepper and 1.5 tbsp olive oil


Marinate lamb chops in red wine, mint, dry herbs, salt, golden syrup and lemon juice for 1-2 hours (I must say I do miss warmer weather when my herbs are growing and I don't have to use dry herbs all the time, at this moment, there's only corriander and spring onion in the garden, very few others like winter.  Must get a small green house?)
.
Grill on griller pan till meat is pink in the middle, keep the charcoal marks, look pretty like that.


Mix yoghurt (drain water as much as you can) and lemon juice and mix with salt and garlic.


Mix salad and add in olive oil and lemon juice.

Cheesy bread recipe will be listed separately.

Pot Roast Lamb Shanks

It has been cold in Melbourne and another winter warmer...  for the cold and wet and miserable days that we can't even go out, restless children...

Pot Roast Lamb Shanks

4 Trimmed Lamb Shanks
½ cup pearl barley
½ cup red wine
½ cup split peas
½ cup chick peas
½ cup kidney beans
2 small onions
2 cloves of garlic
2 medium size Roma tomatoes
1 can of diced tomato
1 carrot
2 tbsp tomato paste
Herbs: oregano, thyme and rosemary
1 tsp all spice
Black pepper, crushed
1 tsp smoke paprika
Olive oil to cook
Salt – to taste
Sugar, 1 tsp.


Method:
Soak beans and chick peas the night before in twice amount of water and soak split peas 2 hours ahead, drain.
Put generous amount of olive oil in non stick oven and stove top friendly top, brown the sliced onion and crushed garlic.
Brown the sides of the lamb shanks, and add all spice, salt and paprika, add herbs and brown all sides more for 3-5 minutes.
Add red wine, deglaze.
Add chopped carrots and tomatoes, add diced tomato from can and add tomato paste, let it simmer for 10 minutes.
Add the peas, beans and pearl barley, cover the lid and transfer the pot to 175C oven.
Cook for 2 hours.

Serve with olive & yoghurt sourdough bread - recipe listed separately.