Recipe CXXXVII - Pot Roast Melon d'Agneau

Fusion Food: two words, when seen together, that strike fear into any decent, self-respecting food lover anywhere. If you want teriyaki with empanadas or tagine-cooked pierogi, you are welcome but please don't even think about inviting me for some because first, I'd rather cut off my nipples with a sharpened spoon; and second, I will never be able to be seen with you in public ever again.

 Anyhow, there are some circumstances where this might work, so you are always free to suggest it... if you dare. And one of those circumstances took place in my kitchen this afternoon. I decided to combine my acquisitions from the greengrocer and butcher's shop in Sierck-Les-Bains with a great (acceptable) American culinary tradition and make a pot roast with French ingredients.

Ingredients (feeds between 4 and 6 hungry people): 

One boneless shoulder of lamb, bound like a ball.

Enough potatoes for your dinner guests

One or two onions

Five cloves of garlic (crushed with a knife)

Several carrots (I chose orange and red ones)

Brussels sprouts, halved

Three or four sprigs of rosemary

A lot of olive oil

A glassful of red wine

Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

Set the oven for 180°C. Cut, peel, slice the vegetables to your satisfaction; parboil the potatoes.

Take the lamb and sear it in a pan until the outside is sealed; cover it in salt, pepper and oil.

Take a large roasting pot with a lid and put the vegetables randomly in the bottom, giving them a stir in the oil. Add some salt.

Put the potatoes in with some more oil, and the lamb on top of that, with the rosemary and garlic spread around evenly. Cook for twenty minutes uncovered. Then add the red wine and put the lid on, reduce the temperature to 120°C for an hour, then take the lid off for a further 20 minutes. 

Remove the lamb, cut into slices, and apportion the vegetables accordingly. 

If you're feeling adventurous:

A good stuffing would round this meal off nicely. Here's one that would work:

Ingredients:

About two hands full of yesterday's bread, broken into very small pieces
1 onion
4 cloves of garlic
Some fresh herbs (rosemary, thyme and sage should be good)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
A binding agent like lemon juice, milk or an egg

Instructions:

Put the stuffing ingredients (except the bread) into a mixer and give it a thorough blitzing.
Then add the bread and turn it into a pâté-like consistency. Roll balls out of the mixture and add to the pot at random. Alternatively, spread it out over the top of the lamb.

Cook with the other ingredients.

Recipe CXXIX - Roast Spatchcock Lemon Chicken

I have started shopping in Luxembourg these days, as the kind of fare on offer is more international. This week, they had a splendid Portuguese theme and were selling all kinds of cheeses, vegetables, sea salts, fruits and meats from the country. There were some delightful pastéis de nata, the Portuguese national calling card, and some rather interesting spatchcock chickens. Now usually, I do my own, but what with so many responsibilities these days, time is of the essence, so I bought it. Now, it's winter, so I couldn't really grill the thing outside in the snow, but I wanted to do it some justice, considering its provenance. This recipe was inspired by a meal I had in Andalucía many years ago, which remains one of the most memorable gastronomic experiences I had.

Ingredients:
1 spatchcock chicken
4 large cloves of garlic
1 onion or 4 shallots
3 lemons
2 sprigs of rosemary
Some olive oil
Salt and ground black pepper

Instructions:
Turn on the oven to a maximum 150°C.

Spatchcocking a chicken:
If you have a whole chicken, place it with the breast on the cutting board, and cut along one side of the backbone with a sharp knife or the kitchen scissors. Then cut the other side of the backbone and remove it. Now turn the chicken over to the other side and open it up by pressing on the breastbone. You can use your hands to flatten it totally.

Then...
Having cut up 2 of your lemons into thin slices, place one of them on the bottom of an oven dish along with thick slices of garlic and onion.

Open up the skin of the chicken at the neck with your fingers and fill it with slices from the third lemon. Put some garlic and onion in there if you want too. Finally, spread salt, pepper and olive oil randomly on top of the chicken and cover the oven dish with tin foil. Put it in the oven on a low heat for 90 minutes to 2 hours.

Then take off the foil and roast at 180°C for a further 30 minutes.

I made potatoes roasted in olive oil and rosemary, and to bring some colour, Brussels sprouts fried in butter and nutmeg.

Bom apetite, as they say in Old Lisbon!

Recipe CXXII - Honey Roast Lamb Shank

I went to France a couple of days ago, to go food shopping. There is a wider selection of vegetables and meat cuts I recognise. My problem with German butchers is when you ask for a particular cut of meat, they just slice the next available piece off, no style or grace, no thinking about the direction of the muscles or anything. But the one thing that I came for, more than all the other pieces I bought, was lamb shank (souris d'agneau). It is the best piece of meat in the universe, and I really love preparing it. Although it needs 24 hours, it is very simple.

Ingredients:
4 lamb shanks
1 bottle of red wine
4 large-ish shallots, cut in half
5 cloves of garlic, halved
Some cuts of fresh thyme
100 black peppercorns, crushed with a pestle and mortar
Salt

Instructions:
Cover the lamb in salt, and then in a deep oven-proof dish with a lid, place them so there are gaps between each. Cover them in pepper, put 2 of the halved shallots in there, add the garlic, and cover the meat in the crushed pepper.

Put on the lid and marinate overnight in a cool place. An hour or two in a hurry should do, but overnight gives the best results. Turn them over at some point, so the lamb has a full bath in the red wine.

The next day, or whenever you wish to cook, turn the oven on to about 180°C. While it's warming up, put the oven-proof dish on the cooker to heat the contents. Then when the oven is fully hot, put it in there for an hour, covered.

Uncover it for a further 45 minutes so the wine reduces and then remove them from the dish. Put them in another baking tray, cover them with honey and then pour the rest of the juice in.

Put them back in for 20-30 minutes - this is how they should look when you remove them.

We ate them with roast potatoes and braised carrots, cabbage and fennel.

Recipe LXIV - Sage & Onion Stuffing

One of the most special thing about roast dinners is the way the meat is seasoned. When it comes to birds, you can not go wrong with some stuffing. Now, whilst most people get it from the supermarket, actually making it at home yourself is easier (and cheaper [and tastier]) than what comes out of a packet. This is one of two recipes this week, to make up for lost time.

Ingredients:
2 slices of bread, preferably no longer fresh
1 egg
A cup of milk
1 onion, chopped
Some fresh sage
3 cloves of garlic
Ground black pepper
Salt



Instructions:
Cut up the onion into fine pieces.
TIP: to avoid your eyes being affected too much, many people have their own methods: in some parts of the Mediterranean, they cut onions on their heads. I favour sticking my tongue out - then my tongue bears the brunt of the odorous onion, leaving my eyes less affected.
Take the leaves of the sage, and fold them into a ball. With a knife or a pair of scissors, slice them up into small pieces.
Put the bread, egg and milk into a bowl and with a potato masher or fork, bind it into a smooth consistency. Then add the onion, sage, ground pepper and salt.



Mash well, until it is all nicely mixed in together.
Open the bird and fork the mixture inside. I favour leaving the bird open, as this allows the stuffing to slowly slide outwards, leaving a delicious crust.



Salt the skin of your bird, and baste it in oil. Put some butter on the leg area - this gives some crispiness to the skin on the legs. I sometimes put half-cloves of garlic under the skin, but with the stuffing inside, this is not necessary. Roast the bird for about 20 minutes per 500g, plus twenty minutes on top.



The photos of the result did not come out very well (dark!) but this was the best I could do:



The potatoes enjoyed bathing in the oil too...

Recipe XLVI - Yorkshire Pudding (with Roast Beef and Roast Potatoes)

One of the single most delicious things only an oven can make is the simple Yorkshire pudding. It is one of the iconic objects of traditional English cooking. It goes so well with roast beef, it is almost as if the cow was created in case Humankind should invent the Yorkshire pudding.

Ingredients:
3 eggs
280ml milk
120g flour
some animal fat or lard (for the bottom of the moulds)
a pinch of salt

Instructions:
Put the flour and salt into a large bowl, crack the eggs into it and pour in the milk. Stir in the ingredients until it makes a consistent, runny batter, not dissimilar to pancake mix. Use an electric whisk if necessary.



Once the batter is ready, put it into the fridge for between 1 hour and 10 hours. The air needs to leave it before it is ready for baking. Before you cook, switch on the oven to 220°C. In your baking mould, put the fat, making sure you cover all sides. I used simple butter. Even ordinary oil from a bottle will do.



Put it into the oven. When piping hot, take it out and pour in your batter.



In the end, there should be roughly the same amount per mould.



Put it back into the oven for between 20 and 25 minutes, or until it has risen. I unfortunately left mine in for a couple of minutes too long and they ended up a little too well-cooked, but they were still tasty.



I roasted them before I put the beef into the oven. So, now turn your oven down to 160°C.

To make the roast beef:
Ingredients:
1 piece of roasting beef
2 spoonfuls of Colman's English mustard
10 peppercorns
1 onion
2 carrots
Salt to taste
6 potatoes

Instructions:
Put the beef on a preparation plate. Cut off the various pieces of fat and cover it in salt. With a spoon, spread the mustard evenly over the beef, then with the crushed peppercorns do the same. Put the beef into a frying pan and seal the outside. Put it to one side.



Cut the two carrots and the onion into slices, rings or lengths. Put them into the cold baking tray, in the oil you will roast the beef with.



Put the beef on top and place it into the oven. As it's on a low heat, it can stay there for a while if necessary.
In a saucepan, boil the potatoes for ten minutes. Save some of the water for making the gravy.



Remove the water and add them to the roast beef now, placing some garlic on top of the beef. They should stay here for a minimum of 20 minutes, with no real maximum. Five minutes before you want to remove it, turn the oven up to 200°C to crisp up the potatoes. Serve up the food.



Using the potato water and the juice at the bottom of the baking tray, make some gravy. The photo above shows the meal before the gravy went on.
A nice bottle of Bordeaux just under room temperature would go nicely right now.