Easy Pot Roast Lamb

This blog is in danger of growing mould, so long it is now since I have written anything! My apologies. I have countless photographs on my computer of food I have taken pictures of because it has been a successful little number I've knocked up from the contents of my fridge on a casual weekday evening for my work-weary husband. The trouble is, I have not written down what I did. I think I am going to remember simply by looking at the photographs, but of course I never do.

So, enough excuses. Here I am now, when I should be doing a thousand things to get ready for Christmas (badly out of control with sick children to boot), writing down the pot roast lamb we had on Sunday.

I had been busy making a Christmas cake with my eldest daughter (a combination of two recipes - if it proves tasty and successful, I will let you know) and the day was ticking away. I'd got as far as taking a small shoulder of lamb out of the freezer which needed eating up (God knows how long it had been in there). I chose the small one because two out of three daughters were ill so I knew there would only be three non-ill member of the family eating it for supper. Even frozen it was giving off a slightly alarming smell (compared to the newly frozen lamb - bought from a local farming friend - which I had bagged up only a short time ago) I perservered and defrosted it in the microwave. Once thawed I took it out of its smelly polythene bag and ran it under the tap. I decided that all I was really smelling was old blood and that All Would Be Well. Rest assured, it was.

Given that I did not have time to fiddle, I decided to pot roast it and put all the vegetables in to cook alongside it in the slow oven. I got my trusty non-stick, glass-lidded casserole dish out of the cupboard and put the shoulder joint in, fatty side down. I then placed this on the hob to brown it off together with a thickly sliced large white onion in a very small amount of olive oil just to stop the onions catching and going brown. I sprinkled the joint with some sea salt and ground black pepper and after just a minute or two I added a good slug of white wine (an inferior bottle of Portuguese vinho verde which I had lurking in the fridge just for this sort of purpose), making sure I poured it over the meat too. I let this bubble away for a bit and turned the meat over when the fatty side had started to brown, just to sear the other side too. Meanwhile I peeled four or five carrots, cut them into thirds and sliced them down the middle. I did likewise with a leek which needed eating up and threw both in the pot. I also had a stick of celery about my person which I de-strung (i.e peeled off the worst of the stringy bits), cut in half and threw in the pot too. I also added some fresh sprigs of rosemary from the garden, about 6 small bulbs of garlic (peeled) and a bouquet garni. I then added the rest of the wine (probably about a third of a bottle in total) and a 2 pints (just over a litre) of chicken stock (I always keep loads in the freezer - making it every time we have roast chicken - as nothing beats a good fresh homemade chicken stock). Finally I dug around and found a packet of baby new potatoes which I also threw in the pot. Once that had all bubbled away for a bit I took it off the hob and put it in the simmering oven of the Aga (or on a low heat in a conventional oven) and left it to do its thing for the next five and a half hours.

So the whole thing only took about half an hour and used up lots of bits I had lying around the fridge, leaving me time to get on with my Christmas chores AND go out to a candlelit carol service in one of our local churches.

When I got back all I had to do was whisk the pot out of the oven, leave it to rest while I laid the table and poured some wine (a nice chilled bottle of Rioja Riserva 2001) and voila! Having cooked slowly in all that liquid the meat was fabulousy tender and fell of the shoulder bone (yet did not fall apart - we were able to carve lovely slices which were even slightly pink still rather than that rather off-putting shade of grey which you can sometimes get with meat which has been cooked slowly over a long period). I remembered I had some celariac and potato mash left over in the fridge from the previous evening's meal, so whipped that out and shoved it in the microwave - it was the perfect extra accompaniment and helped soak up all that lovely broth. As a final touch, I got a jar or homemade rhubarb and mint jelly out of the fridge and stuck a large spoonful on the side of my plate to dip the lamb into. Perfect.

Husband and eldest daughter announced it all 'delicious' - even suggesting I serve it up on Christmas Day as an infinitely less labour intensive alternative to the dreaded turkey. So you see, even a humble shoulder of slightly old lamb can be turned into a simple feast with the right treatment. 'Waste not, want not' could never have been more appropriate.





HAPPY CHRISTMAS!