Slow cooked lamb with two stuffings

Moving on from my last blog post about cooking, here's a new one from Christmas Day, 2009.

(NOTE: The basis for this recipe can be found here on the Channel4.com website.)

STAGE ONE

Ask your local butcher to prepare you a suitable boned-out piece of lamb. For this recipe, a 1.5kg chump gigot chop (of lamb) was used:-



STAGE TWO

Remove packaging and fat side facing down, open out the joint as far as possible before stuffing:-



Set meat aside.

STAGE THREE

The stuffing. In this case, I went for two quite different ones as I could not decide which one I preferred.

Stuffing One:-

3-4 cloves garlic
6-8 fillets anchovies (not available so used 2 - 3 spring onions)
1 tbsp capers
flat-leaf parsley
olive oil
mustard
crushed black pepper

1. Crush and chop garlic, place anchovies on top of garlic and chop again.

2. Add capers and chop again, then plenty of flat-leafed parsley to the other ingredients and chop once more.

3. Place chopped mixture into a bowl, add a trickle of olive oil and mustard to bring it all together and pepper to taste.


Stuffing Two:-

one cupful of uncooked haggis
125g dried ready-to-eat apricots, chopped
75g fresh white breadcrumbs
leaves from 3 sprigs fresh rosemary, chopped
grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
wee dram of fine single malt scotch whisky
olive oil

1. Mix the stuffing ingredients together in a bowl and season well with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

You should then have something resembling this:-



Stage FOUR

Bring back the already prepared joint and by the spoon and then the hand, it's time to get stuffing. Spread all over the inside (for this recipe, half and half) of the opened-out lamb, covering all cut surfaces and into any crevices.

One should now have something like this:-



Stage FIVE aka the difficult bit.

Roll up the gigot of lamb and tie it together with string to make a neat parcel.

Having never done anything like this before, this was a tad on tricky side. Two pairs of hands were required and this was the best we could manage under the circumstances:-



Stage SIX

Place on a roasting tray in a pre-heated oven at 220°C (gas mark 7) for 40 minutes, then turn the oven down to 150°C (gas mark 2) for approximately 2-2 ½ hours until tender.

(By twenty minutes in, I soon realised that I should have listened to my Mum and put a lid on it. Things were getting a tad smokey in the kitchen).

After the 40 minute mark and having reduced the heat as instructed, time to chillax. PHEW !

Stage SEVEN

With an hour to go, add some frozen seasonal veggies into the oven (e.g. roast potatoes and parsnips.)

Prepare some more veggies for the microwave (in this case, peas, mushy peas and broccoli):-



Also prepare some gravy, of course. Went for the easy method with a sachet of Colman's lamb gravy powder, and 1/2 a pint of water. Seasoned it with a dollop or two of blackcurrant jelly, (another) dram of whisky, chopped rosemary, most of the juices from the roasing tin and salt & pepper.


(Note the slight scortching from not using a lid as mentioned in Stage SIX).

Stage EIGHT

Time to get the carving knives (in this case, machine) out having rested the meat for 10 mins.



Stage NINE

Find somewhere appropriate to serve and eat. Oh, this looks nice:-



"Nom nom nom" time.....