In honour of the previous post's paean to easy cooking, this was what we had on Saturday: Extremaduran slow-cooked lamb shoulder, ripped off a Moro recipe.
I love lamb shoulder. It's one of those cheap, cheap cuts of meat, like beef shin or brisket, which is almost superior to prime cuts if you cook it right. I think this is something to do with sinew and fat: they all need slow cooking to get the toughness out, and they all tend to be larded through with fat so need time to let it render out of them. After a few hours in the oven they're all luscious richness, but a shoulder of lamb that feeds four only costs A$16--pretty cheap in Oz these days.
The recipe is dead simple. Chop up a tablespoon each of thyme and rosemary. Get a shoulder of lamb--about 1.2kg should feed four as part of a meal. Rub it in half the herbs and sea salt and leave it on a plate for 20 minutes to an hour.
Then chop up an onion and break off a dozen garlic cloves--leave the paper on them. Get a big roasting dish that will sit on the stove and fry these up till they're translucent and soft. Add half a teaspoon of fennel seeds, half a teaspoon of smoked paprika, the rest of the herbs, and half a bottle of white wine mixed with 30ml of brandy. Mix it all up and put the shoulder on top, skin side up.
Cook on 175C for 2.5 hours, basting at least every 40 mins. Make sure that onions don't get stranded on the top as you do this, because they'll char. If it looks dry, add more wine or water.
Get about 1kg of medium-sized waxy potatoes. Quarter them and sprinkle them with salt. Once the 2.5 hours is up, turn the heat up to 225C and throw the spuds in, turning them in the juices.
Cook like that for 45 mins and make sure the meat gets 10 mins to stand before you dish up. Don't bother getting elegant slices of meat--it will just fall off the bone and dissolve into strings--so pile people's plates with a mess of meat and potatoes, and sprinkle with the juices, onion and garlic.
Yum!
ReplyDelete