Lamb and Spuds

I dare not call this “hot pot” as it would offend the pride of a number of regions who claim hot pot as their own.

• 500g of lamb neck fillet or shoulder, chopped into one inch pieces
• a handful of diced streaky bacon (roughly 50g if measurements like “a handful” bother you)
• an equal volume of carrots and onions or leeks
• 750g of potatoes
• stock (Marigold boullion powder is fine)
• some fresh or dried thyme
• Worcester sauce (this is the secret ingredient)
• flour, butter, oil, salt, pepper

To avoid unnecessary washing up, pick a large pot that can go on the stove top and in the oven. I use a big cast iron pot for this: not a Le Creuset, but an el cheapo French thing from Robert Dyas; it was twenty quid and does the same job.

Pop the pot on a gas ring, gently warm it, and add the bacon. You want a low intensity sizzling sound, so the bacon darkens and oozes all its fat. Whilst that’s happening, slice the potatoes about as thick as a pound coin. Don’t bother peeling them unless the skins are particularly horrid or you’re having very posh guests.

Get the oven going at 140°C. (That temp works in my fan-forced, you may need to go a little higher in a gas oven.)

Hack up the lamb, turn up the temperature, and fry it in the bacon fat, in batches if necessary. We want to get it nice and brown on the outside, partially for appearance, and also for flavour. No need to cook it through, though, as that’s what the next stage is for. Once done, set lamb and bacon to one side, but leave any fat in the pot. Add the veg and fry, adding some butter or groundnut oil if there’s not enough fat from the bacon. (Avoid olive oil, as this would make it a little too Mediterranean. Mind you, add some whole cloves of garlic, oregano, olives and anchovies, and you could take this dish a long way south.)

Once the veg have softened a bit, return the meat, and add a splash of the stock. The stock needs to be hot if you’re using a cast iron pot, so the temperature change doesn’t cause the iron to crack. Give it a good scrape and stir, to release all the dark brown sticky gooey stuff from the bottom of the pot into the stock. Add a teaspoon of Worcester sauce, plus salt and pepper. A spot of dried thyme is good as well, if handy. Have a taste and adjust quantities.

Level out the meat/veg layer, and then layer the sliced spuds on top, and add the remainder of the stock, plus enough hot water to come almost level with the top layer of potatoes. (Having a freshly boiled kettle on hand is somewhere between useful and mandatory.) It’s a bit like pommes boulangères: we want the very top layer of potato to get crunchy, and the lower layers to get gooey.

Into the oven for about two hours, no lid necessary. Keep an eye on the liquid levels and top up if necessary. The idea is to achieve a gentle universal bubbling effect. Some people can do this on the stovetop, I think the oven works best. Towards the end, lever up the spuds and fish out a piece of meat. It should be tender, verging on the point collapse. If not, another half an hour won’t hurt.

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Slow Lamb

This is so easy. Just chuck it in…

…wrap it up…

…and after three hours at 150ºC, le voilà:

An adaptation from St Delia, who in turn adapts if from Kleftiko, this would be a no-brainer except for the fact that you need to get things going three hours in advance of eating. This is one of the recipes in her How to Cheat book, and it slightly misses the point, by adding unnecessary faffage. (The observant will also notice that Delia says, “wrap it in foil”, but her photo shows a more cunning two layer arrangement of baking parchment and then foil. Hmmm. Not sure it makes a difference.)

Here’s what I used to feed four.

• 800g lamb neck fillets (this is a cheapish cut, and suited to slow cooking)
• the juice of two lemons
• a sprinkle of salt and pepper
• a bunch of thyme (branches and all)
• a whole head of garlic, the cloves separated and peeled – or more

Some key differences.

1. Spread the branches of thyme across the bottom of the dish.
2. Don’t bother slicing the garlic into slivers and inserting into the meat; it’ll take ages. Just peel them and chuck in with everything else. I pack the meat into a single layer, and pack the garlic cloves in between each piece.
3. Once everything is in the dish and wrapped, you can leave it for a couple of hours at room temperature or overnight in the fridge without it coming to too much harm — unless your local “room temperature” is 35°C
4. Don’t bother with the lemon zest and parsley faff. Foodies call this gremolata – I call it unneccesary.

Serve with couscous, I think.

You may want to spent some time out of the house whilst this is cooking, as the smell may drive you mad.

Lamb Curry

There was some rather good lamb in the supermarket today, so it had to be Curry.

I used

• 400g lamb leg, trimmed and chopped into cubes
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp minced chilli from the jar (wasn’t quite enough for my tastes)
• 50mL Greek yoghurt (and another 50mL for later)
• a 450g tin of chopped tomatoes
• a large onion
• a fistful of coriander leaves
• and a supporting cast of cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, cumin seeds, and cloves

I do it like this:

1. Put the cubed lamb in a bowl with the chilli, crushed garlic, a grind of pepper and salt, and the yoghurt. Mix well, and let this sit for at least an hour, or maybe an afternoon. If you’re doing it overnight, maybe in the fridge.
   
2. Meanwhile, chop the onion into wedges – no need to get fancy – and gently fry it in a large pan, with a couple of tablespoons of oil, six cloves, and half a cinnamon stick, broken into two.
   
   Around about twenty minutes ought to do the trick, which is just enough time to have a beer.
3. In a mortar and pestle, grind up about a teaspoon of cumin seeds, and the seeds from six cardamom pods until vaguely powdery. Yes, you can get fancy and use some kind of mechanical grinder, but the effort you spend cleaning that bit of machinery afterwards will put your labours with the mortar and pestle to shame.
4. Back at the pan, fish out the cloves and cinnamon – doesn’t matter if a few bits get left behind – and then turn the heat up high. Add the cumin and cardamom, and stir madly for about half a minute.
   
5. Just before the spices start to burn, add the lamb. (You may want to have your extractor fan going at this juncture, or have a window open.) Keep stirring furiously, for about a minute, until the lamb is cooked on the outside.
6. Turn the heat right down, and hurl in the tomatoes.
   
   If you hurl them in with the unnecessary esprit and élan with which I hurled them tonight, you will get tomato on your jeans. Consider this possibility.
7. Now, just let the whole thing simmer, very gently, for about an hour.
8. Five minutes before the end, stir in the rest of the yoghurt, and the coriander leaves.
   
9. Serve with basmati rice. You could reserve some of the coriander, plus a lemon wedge or two, for a garnish, if you’re that way inclined.
   

Shepherd’s Pie

There is leftover garlic mash from the other night. It was pushed into a square sandwich bag, and squished into a flat slab, about an inch thick. The slab is conveniently the same size as my smallest square baking dish. Muwhahaha.

Some minced lamb and a chopped onion get fried in olive oil with salt, pepper and a half a teaspoon of sugar. I realise that there’s no red wine handy, at least of the sort I’d use to deglaze the pan, so I pop in a splash of vermouth and, for the hell of it, some squished up juniper berries. A sprinkle of dried thyme, a tin of chopped tomatoes (minus their juice) and the results go into the bottom of my baking dish. A layer of frozen peas and then the slab of mash. The mash turns out not to be exactly the right size, so there’s some artistic carving with a serrated bread knife to make it fit.

Finally, into a hot oven for half an hour. Joy.

Variations:

• Worcestershire sauce
• tomato paste (not keen on this as it makes the whole thing tomato flavoured, whilst the pieces provide just the occasional nugget of fruitiness)
• chopped up dried tomatoes