Slow roast leg of lamb with cinnamon, fennel & citrus - oh my word!

You've probably gathered by now that there's not many foodstuffs on this earth that I won't try - at least the once.  However, if you were to ask me what is my favourite type of roast meat, I would be hard pressed to pin it down to just the one.

After all, there's gorgeous roast chicken - who doesn't like roast chicken?  There's roasted gammon ham - so delicious with creamed leeks and new potatoes.  What about a superb roasted rib of beef?  So savoury and flavoursome.  Roast turkey, too - cooked with love and care, it is a perfect companion to bread sauce and Brussels sprouts.  Then, there's a beautiful roast leg of lamb, with mint sauce - need I say more?

For this last Sunday's dinner, we had originally planned to have a piece of salmon, which hubby was going to roast in a spicy glaze.  All these good intentions flew out of the window the minute I saw that Tesco were offering a leg of lamb at half price - £10 instead of £20, effectively.  When would we be able to lay our hands on an entire leg of lamb for that sort of price again?  Probably not for a long time - and it would fit perfectly into hubby's programme of roast dinners that he has embarked upon.

By heck and it was a mighty leg of lamb, too.  It only just fitted into our teensy tiny freezer - where it stayed until Saturday.

There'll be a few dinners out of this one!

The advent of this leg of lamb demanded the reconvening of the Menu Planning Committee (over a cup of coffee and several Jack Russells, of course), where we decided what in the world we were going to do with it.  Should we go the traditional route and roast it plainly then serve it with mint sauce, onion sauce and roast vegetables?  Or should we investigate some rather more exotic uses for the lamb?

In researching how long it would take to cook, I tripped over an intriguing recipe from BBC Good Food's Sarah Cook for slow roast lamb, with cinnamon, fennel and citrus.  Now the minute I mentioned cinnamon, hubby was hooked - but the addition of the word "fennel" had him salivating.  So, we'd decided.  Now, all that was left was to decide on what to serve with the lamb.

Again, we ultimately changed our minds over this, but the original plan was to serve it with roasted Jersey Royal potatoes with sea salt & rosemary, accompanied by a Spring Vegetable Thoran - which was a midly curried recipe from Anjun Anand.

Hubby had something of a change of heart about the Thoran once half-way through cooking the lamb and quite rightly so, in my opinion.  He felt that the two dishes might argue as to which was the star of the show, when in truth the lamb should be the hero of the hour.  I think he was absolutely right, and although the Thoran had been a good idea at the time, we hadn't the benefit of smelling the lamb cooking when we'd been planning the accompaniments.

All dressed in its rub and ready to roast

So the vegetables took a bit of a step down and we settled for steamed Jersey Royals, along with steamed broccoli, green beans and asparagus.  Hubby made a divine lamb gravy, using the pan juices, which we would have missed the opportunity of having, otherwise.

We had a bit of a problem where marinating the lamb was concerned, however.  It was supposed to be marinated overnight in orange and lemon juice, but we hadn't a bowl, dish or tray that was big enough for the lamb, but that would fit into our small fridge.  Even our freezer bags weren't big enough, or we could have put it all together in a freezer bag to marinate.   As a consequence, our lamb missed out on being marinated overnight, but - scout's honour - it didn't seem to make one jot of difference.

The lamb is roasted for four and a half hours in total.  To say that we had our tongues hanging out of our heads by serving time, is putting it mildly.  The aromas that were coming from the oven were just mouthwatering.

Much, much gorgeousness!

The served lamb was just divine.  No other word for it.  It was soft, flavoured gently with the earthy cinnamon, the freshness of the fennel and the tangy citrus and just melted in your mouth.  Honestly, I can't remember the last time I had such beautiful, gorgeous, sublime roast lamb.  Even the might of a dab of mint sauce wasn't enough to swamp out the flavours.  I was in little roast dinner heaven.

You, too, could be in this roast dinner nirvana - the very next time you lay your hands on a leg of lamb.  Do it - I can't recommend it highly enough.

SLOW ROAST LAMB WITH CINNAMON, FENNEL & CITRUS

Ingredients :

1 leg of lamb
zest and juice of one lemon
zest and juice of one orange
4 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp clear runny honey
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp fennel seeds
1 tbsp ground cumin
3 garlic cloves, crushed.

Method :

1.  Put the lamb into a large (very large!) food bag or container with all the juice and marinate overnight.

2.  The following day, take the lamb out of the fridge an hour before you want to cook it.

3.  Pre-heat the oven to 200degC(fan)/400degF/Gas7.

4.  Remove the lamb from the marinade and reserve the marinade.  Pat dry, rub with half the oil and roast for 20-30 minutes or until browned.

5.  Remove the lamb and reduce the oven temperature to 140degC(fan)/325degF/Gas3.

6.  Mix together the zests, remaining oil, honey, spices and garlic with plenty of seasoning.  
7.  Line a baking tray with foil and place a large sheet of baking parchment on top.  Place the lamb into the middle and rub all over with the spice paste.

8.  Pull up the sides of the foil/paper and drizzle the marinade into the parcel, before sealing by scrunching and folding the silver foil.

9.  Roast for 4 hours until very tender.  Rest in a warm place for 30 minutes (still wrapped).

10.  Unwrap and carve to serve.

Printable version
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Meal planning for a new week

We met again on Monday last, across a bed strewn with recipes, notepads, pens and Jack Russell terriers - and planned this week's meals.  Oh, the romance!

Well, actually, making a menu plan is a nice excuse for a cup of coffee and a couple of hours spent talking (almost exclusively) about food, flavours, what goes with what, what might go with what, what cooking methods to use, what turns out to be way too expensive, etc.  Allow for a bit of deviation from the focus of the conflab, to scratch a dog's ears or retrieve a pen from the other dog's mouth - you can imagine, if you've ever owned a dog, I'm sure.

We started from a position of "what do we know for sure we'll be cooking?", moved on to "what have we been yearning for?" and "what have we had in mind to cook?", winding up with "what's a family favourite that's easy to do?".

The final list looks like this :

Tues : Pizza

Weds : Springtime Pasta and meatballs

Thurs : Maneating Chicken, roast sweet potato with sesame broccoli & beans
Fri : Kari Udang with rice

Sat : Tarragon Chicken & Asparagus, Jersey Royals, broccoli & peas

Sun : Slow Roast Cinnamon, Fennel & Cirtus Lamb with Roast Rosemary & Sea Salt Jersey Royals, Green spring vegetable Thoran & gravy.

Mon : Chilli con carne with potato wedges.

Well, Tuesday's Pizza doesn't come into any of the categories above, as it forms a bit of a breathing space in between weeks.  It's good to just chuck a pizza into the oven every so often - and it's always a winner with son & heir.

Eat at lunchtime .. sleep rest of day

Wednesday's Springtime Pasta and Meatballs got bounced from last week owing to our having broken our tummies by eating the remains of the Tuna & Vegetable Lasagne for lunch.  I hasten to add that they weren't broken in a bad way, just broken in a "I couldn't eat another thing for many hours" kind of way.

Everything was keepable - even the Little Gem lettuce, which has kept very well in the vegetable drawer of the fridge - so it was easy to bounce along to this week.

Thursday's "Maneating Chicken" originated as "Man pleasing chicken", but the name got adjusted along the way by hubby.  He discovered the original recipe on the Witty in the City website and loved both the look and the sound of the recipe - plus, its reputation as "man pleasing chicken" is always a good sign.

He's going to be making roast sweet potatoes in a very similar fashion to the roast butternut squash (except with different spicing) that we had this last weekend with the pork.  It will be interesting to see how they turn out, as I have a great deal of problem getting sweet potato to caramelise and look roasted, instead of just mushed!

I think this one qualifies under the "what have we been yearning for?" category, as hubby has always wanted to find a really really good chicken recipe - one which knocks spots off of all the others.

The Kari Udang is a Malaysian recipe recommended to me by The Spice Traders.   Taken from their website, it has required a bit of sourcing of things like curry leaves and fenugreek, but we (pretty much) had the remainder of the spices in the cupboards and fridge already.  I really like prawn curries and we've picked up some King Prawns to use, so I'm crossing my fingers that it'll be great.  I think this one comes under the "what have we had in mind to cook" category, as I'm always in the market for an authentic Malay recipe.

Saturday's Tarragon Chicken with Asparagus is a recipe from this month's BBC Good Food magazine.  The minute I saw the photograph, it was love at first sight and I knew I had to make it - and soon.  It doesn't seem to have hit their website yet, or I'd show it to you - but take it from me that it looked completely gorgeous.

Cooked with lovely steamed Jersey Royal potatoes (which are our favourite type of new potato), broccoli and peas, I think it'll make a superb Saturday dinner.

Hubby's back in the kitchen with his "Sunday Lunch Chef" hat on next. We were originally planning on a salmon dish - right up until I saw an advert for reduced price lamb at Tesco.  I'm afraid I was swayed by this and we drove down to our local Tesco and made off with a leg of lamb just this morning.  We have since reconvened the brainstorming session (complete with accompanying Jack Russells, ever keen to be in the midst of a major conflab) and come up with what sounds like a terrific menu for Sunday's lunch.

Photograph c/o BBC Good Food website

It will now be a slow roasted leg of lamb - marinated in lemon & orange, rubbed with cinnamon, fennel & garlic, then roasted for a minimum of 4 hours.  As side dishes, we've come up with roast Jersey Royals with sea salt & rosemary, after which we go off up a complete side road with an Anjum Anand recipe for Green Spring Vegetable Thoran.  You can find the exact same recipe here, although it isn't credited to Anjum at all, so I don't know who got which from whom - but here it is, anyway.  The Thoran has no sauce as such, so will go very nicely with the lamb & potatoes, leaving us the elbow room in the ingredients list to make a lovely gravy from the lamb pan juices.


Wish hubby luck with this one, he's not going to need it, but he is going to need some support with just thinking about creating it all and having it all go right!

Good old Chilli con Carne makes another showing on the menu list for Bank Holiday Monday.  We all love this one, but to make it a little different this time, we thought we'd serve it with potato wedges.  It all depends on whether we've a lot of potatoes going wrinkly as to whether we make the wedges or just chuck some in the oven from the freezer!

Either way, with grated cheese and some sultanas to sprinkle on the top (you don't have sultanas?  What?  Try it, next time!) I know it'll be empty bowls all round.

I don't suppose the weather will do anything but rain, however, with the chance that we might see some sun on that day I've purposely not scheduled anything that takes a long time to make.  It'd be nice to get out and see something other than these four walls! 

Ruby's first crop of rhubarb - plenty more where that came from!

As for extra cooking, well we're still on the lookout for a good rhubarb chutney recipe and I've still to bake a cake.  I'm guaranteeing nothing where either of them are concerned, it all depends upon finding the right recipe (or dreaming one up!) and the time available!

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