Lovely lamb shank pie

Yesterday it finally began to feel cold, properly cold, the kind of cold that makes your toes hurt just walking from the front door to the car parked almost outside. I am not good at cold and I had forgotten what it felt like; I really was born in the wrong place. To be honest I have been hankering after wintry comfort food not because it was freezing outside but because I fully subscribe to the illusion that December warrants comforting stodge: mash, pies, puddings. In my defence I should say that I have been cold for weeks, but I had forgotten that it can get much, much colder. Two years ago Simon and I went to Berlin in December and I experienced real cold, and even with 2 pairs of tights under my jeans I was still a walking icicle (although less so than my dad). When I was a teenager, I used to put the fan heater in my bedroom on in the summer, because moving from the hot sun into the temperate house always made me cold, and because huddling in front of heat with a novel is my idea of heaven. I also unsurprisingly like hovering by a warm stove - I definitely deserve an Aga, but obviously I don't have one. Anyway yesterday it began to be December cold and we went to a party for most of the afternoon and had snacky party food for lunch. The invitation said 'please bring an exotic dish'; I brought brownies (well they are American, aren't they? exotic, ish?) because I can make them almost blindfolded and they always work (I went for Nigella's divinely seasonal snow-flecked ones, which are fantastic) and a bottle of M and S cava. I noticed that the 'exotic' dishes looked decidedly dodgy and several people had brought shop-made sausage rolls, which hardly qualify as exotic either; there were also far too many dishes swimming in mayo, but there was a lovely bean salad and some delectable vegetable pancakes.

After the party, I made Jamie's lamb shank pie. I love lamb shanks - that doesn't need saying again. I seasoned the shanks and browned them briefly, before replacing them in the heavy based saucepan with chopped leeks, onion, carrots, turnip (not swede!), and celery, which I cooked for 15 minutes until softened, adding rosemary and thyme plus a little flour. I whizzed red wine, flour and tomato puree in the food processor and added this to the pan with the lamb shanks, brought it to the boil and simmered for 90 minutes with the lid on.

Meanwhile I rolled out bought puff pastry and cut it into strips. When the lamb had simmered for 90 minutes, I transferred it and its sauce to an ovenproof dish (the only suitably sized dish I had was, embarrassingly, a Le Creuset saucepan) , layered the strips of pastry over in an uneven rustic way, brushed with beaten egg and milk and baked for 20 minutes.


I have already admitted how much I love lamb shanks... and slow-cooked meat in red wine is simply wintery heaven for me. I don't eat pies very often but this one was thoroughly worth it - it was absolutely fantastic. I could have eaten the lamb and sauce without the pastry too - it had such a depth of flavour. One question I would have is how to serve it neatly - I couldn't figure it out, but decided it didn't matter since I don't go in that much for poncey presentation. Speaking of which I saw Gary Rhodes in his spiky haired days making prawn cocktail earlier - he made a prawn cocktail cake which was so faffy and cheffy and looked so ridiculous that it made me want to shout at the television. Who wants prawn cocktail cake when they can have lamb shank pie? Not me, at any rate.

Mad Moroccan lamb

'Mad Moroccan lamb' is a very intriguing title for a recipe. I love Moroccan lamb tagines, and I liked the idea of making something a bit mad; moreover, shoulder of lamb is right up there in Simon's hit-parade of preferred dishes. I was a bit hesitant about making this dish though, because it seemed somewhat odd - the lamb roasts for two hours in a pretty hot oven and then another hour under a couscous crust. I had a vision of incinerated, blackened lamb waiting to greet me when I opened the oven door, reminiscent of a time I stupidly ordered blackened chicken in one of those naff but ubiquitous pseudo-American bar/restaurants and got something, frankly, burnt. I was torn between worrying that this recipe would fail (by trawling through my library of books and comparing it with other recipes - ultimately a fruitless quest because it seems to be unique) and eager to try it because it looks and sounds so inviting. Greed won out, so yesterday we finally got round to mad Moroccan lamb.
Jamie describes this dish as 'a bit of a palaver' - but worth it. I didn't find it that much of a palaver, because it was easy.
First, I scored the shoulder of lamb in criss-crosses, then ground up cumin, fennel and coriander seeds with black peppercorns, dried chillies and salt, and rubbed the mix into the lamb, before pushing rosemary leaves into the slits and roasting in a conventional roasting tray for 2 hours.
Meanwhile, I fried onions, cinnamon and marjoram or thyme (I used both...) with a pinch of seasoning until softened, before adding chickpeas, water and a surprisingly large quantity of balsamic vinegar (which seems to be another of Jamie's preferred ingredients) and simmering until the sauce thickened, before removing from the heat.
I brought vegetable stock to the boil and added chopped dried fruit (Jamie suggested a range, of which I chose apricots and cranberries) and simmered until the fruit plumped up slightly, before adding olive oil and couscous, removing from the heat and leaving to soak up the liquid. Once the couscous had guzzled all the liquid, I poured it onto a large flat baking tray and drizzled with olive oil.

After 2 hours, I took the lamb out of the oven and turned the oven down from 220 to 200. Or at least that is what I was told to do. I confess that fear of incinerated lamb meant that I had had the oven at 200 anyway - my excuse is an over-exciteable convection oven, the weakness of my excuse being that I had turned the convection option off. Anyway, leaving aside my nervous recipe-breaking, I put the roasting tin on the hob and scraped at the sticky bits on the bottom (in the way you do to make gravy). I found a pot that would snugly fit the lamb inside and spooned an inch or so of couscous onto the base, before spooning over my chickpea mixture. I put the lamb on top, poured over the pan juices, and completely covered with couscous.


Jamie's pic didn't have any noticeable fruit in it but I kept most of the cranberries whole and ensured I scattered some over the top because I liked how it looked - sort of festive. The recipe said to put lemon halves on top but his pic clearly showed slices not halves, and slices looked better, so - more recipe-transgressing - I used slices. I then draped over damp and oiled greaseproof paper and foil and put back in the oven for an hour. Here it is, cooked:



Another anomaly: Jamie refers to the couscous as a crust that can be cracked, and his pic shows the couscous unevenly browned. Mine wasn't browning or hardening so I took off the foil and greaseproof, and then it did brown slightly and hardened a bit, forming a crunchy, rather than crackable, crust.

Jamie doesn't really say how to serve it apart from suggesting you serve it at the table, cracking it open. This would have been a potential disaster for us because our couscous crust came right up to the top of the pan; as we delved in we risked spillage. In the end we served it rustically, tearing off meat and scooping out chickpeas and couscous, before adding a generous dollop of natural yoghurt and drizzling over coriander and chilli.

This might have been my favourite savoury dish so far - I don't know; there has been a lot of competition. But it was truly divine. The couscous, the lamb, the dried fruit, the spices, the yoghurt and coriander, and balsamic-y, cinnamon-y, thyme-y chick peas - it was fantastic. I loved it and so did Simon. We had enough left for lunches for days, which means I had more for lunch today and still loved it. I do suspect that 220 in my oven could have been disastrous; I think lemon slices as Jamie has in his photo, but not in his text, look better than halves; and I think I was right to take off the greaseproof and foil at the end, but I could be completely wrong! What matters is that this is a grade A dinner and (the acid test) it is still making my mouth water now. Hurrah that there is more for lunch tomorrow!

Roast leg of lamb with aubergines and onions

To me, a roast leg of lamb suggests a feast, a celebration, a reunion, a family party. I don't buy a leg of lamb for the two of us - when we eat lamb we usually choose shoulder or shanks and slow-cook them in one form or another (Simon is particularly partial to the slow-cooked shoulder in Jamie's Dinners, followed by shepherds pie the next night; we also, as I have said somewhere before, went through a prolonged obsessive phase of cooking shanks Gordon Ramsay-style). Jamie's Italian recipe for leg of lamb with aubergines and onions might thus have had to wait to be tried out, except that Simon's godfather and his wife came to stay and we haven't seen much of them recently (they now live in the south of France, which should be a good enough reason to visit..) and it seemed like a celebratory occasion to try out the leg of lamb. I love aubergines - they look sexy, they have a lovely name (sorry, but eggplant doesn't have the same appeal - whereas zucchini sounds more exciting than courgette) and they absorb flavours beautifully. This recipe appealed because it sounded tasty, celebratory but relatively straightforward - served with bread and salad rather than the usual British round of vegetables that can really tip me over the edge in the kitchen just before serving up dinner.

To cook the dish, I roasted the lamb for half an hour in a hot oven, before removing it and tipping off the fat. I scattered chunks of aubergine and red onion seasoned with salt, pepper and oregano and tossed in olive oil around the lamb and returned to the oven to cook for another hour.

While this was cooking, I made the tomato sauce. I fried garlic and chopped parsley stalks (as an aside, I have noticed that in this book Jamie makes good use of the stalks of various herbs - basil, for instance, as well as parsley, as the base for sauces) and then added tinned plum tomatoes, pinch of seasoning, a 'good swig' of red wine vinegar dried chilli and drained anchovy fillets (again, Jamie uses a lot of anchovy fillets - fussy eaters need not be wary, as they disintegrate into the sauce and lend it flavour); the sauce then simmered for 30 minutes.

When the lamb was cooked, I removed it from the baking tray to rest on a plate. I poured the tomato sauce over the roasted aubergines and onions and put the tray over a medium-heat hob, scraping away at the sticky bits at the bottom of the pan as best I could without mashing the vegetables up. I added parsley leaves and simmered gently until the sauce reached the desired consistency (which is hard to describe, and which Jamie suggests be measured against the photograph in the book; you can sort of see it in my picture below).

The picture probably shows how tasty this was: a rich tomato sauce, aubergines, tender lamb - delicious. What I liked about it was that it felt like an unctious but kitchen table type supper, much more relaxed than the English roast (which is not to say that roast lamb with mint sauce isn't wonderful too).

I served it with warm bread and salad as suggested. For the bread part, I made rosemary and garlic focaccia which was lovely too - my first focaccia from scratch attempt and it worked. Hurrah - there is nothing like homemade bread to make me feel like Nigella.

This was a fun dinner to eat, tearing off bread and helping yourself to more mustardy salad (I tend to make salad dressing as I was taught to when I lived in France, very classically, but with a lot of mustard), which worked so well with the lamb and veggies. It was a very happy evening, eating and drinking and chattering, and the food was generous but informal. A perfect sort of evening, really. Oh and we rounded the meal up with Jamie's vanilla cheesecake, which I will report on later....

Incredible baked lamb shanks

I've been away for the weekend, hence the apparent gap in my cooking project (other people were cooking for me, which is both nice and odd). I decided to celebrate a return to the kitchen with a lamb recipe to treat Simon, because he loves lamb - and he had been so compliant with the mussel experiment. So: 'incredible baked lamb shanks'. I have cooked with lamb shanks quite a lot, mainly because we became semi-addicted to a recipe from Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Heaven (the first book where he tried to cater for the common people like me) which involved braising lamb shanks in reduced white wine, stock, the usual vegetables (carrot, celery, onion, leek, garlic), herbs (thyme and rosemary) and star anise, before serving with creamy parsnip puree. I haven't made this recently: it seems designed for a wintry Sunday afternoon's cooking. Jamie's recipe also involves carrot, onion, leek and garlic, plus thyme and rosemary, but is very different. Jamie's lamb shanks are stuffed with a sage, thyme and rosemary butter and baked on a bed of the above-named vegetables, all wrapped into a foil parcel with white wine.

I nearly went wrong with the foil parcel. Jamie says 'tear off four arm-length pieces of tinfoil and fold each in half to give you four A3 sized pieces of foil'. Now, I was using my husband's arm as a vague measure, but even so, once folded, the paper was A4 not A3. I think. (Paper sizes are confusing: I have always found the fact that A3 is bigger than A4 off-putting). Anyway I simply didn't fold the foil I had cut, but cut another piece the same size and managed the double thickness that way; it worked fine.

I also nearly had a query about the amount of butter stuffed into the shanks - 150g for four. Which would mean about 75g for two. Which is a lot of butter. However, this sort of cooking isn't an exact sort of science, like baking; it allows for a bit of experimentation (or so I think). So I just made up the amount of butter that looked sensible for my two shanks but didn't make me fear for our arteries. I'm definitely not a member of the food police (you know, these people who go on and on about salt and fat, amongst other things - and usually live on those horrid artificial cardboard ready meals that promise reduced salt, low fat, no flavour...) and I didn't weigh my butter; I just used what looked right for my shanks.

Mmm. Baking the shanks in foil with white wine means that they sort of braise and bake at the same time; they are both beautifully tender and deliciously sticky round the bone like roasted meat, so you get the best of both worlds. And the flavour of the meat really does, as Jamie promises, come out here. He suggests serving this for a dinner party and I think it would be a fab meal for friends - these rustic parcels would be fantastic at the table, simply served with mash and greens, not least because after you've made up the parcels then you're free to leave them to bake for ages so you don't have that last-minute 'guests-are-here-and-I-need-to-talk-to-them-but-what-if-I-burn-the-dinner' moment. (I have those a lot. I tend to be over-ambitious, not because dishes are difficult but because there is a lot of last-minute fussing, and then I have a drink and talk too much and everyone's got a slightly well done dinner).

I served this with mash and peas (no peas on the photo; Simon took it before we had plated up the peas)

Autumn comfort food. Yum.

Roast rack of lamb with potato and cauliflower dauphinoise

Another admission: I've never cooked a rack of lamb before (though I have cooked individual cutlets). I think it is partly for financial reasons (Simon is always accusing me of sharing my grandmother's 'carefulness with money' (apart from when it comes to buying books and shoes) allegedly characteristic of her Yorkshire background (although I am not saying that Yorkshire people are stingy). Partly though I like the cheaper cuts of lamb: slow-roasted shoulder, braised shanks, and so on. For this recipe I did buy a rack and I didn't complain about the cost.

The lamb part of this dish is basically simple: brown the rack in a pan on the hob, sprinkle over chopped rosemary, and roast in the oven.

The dauphinoise is the interesting part, because it has cauliflower in which adds a nice twist. My dauphinoise was even more unusual because I was using oddly shaped potatoes - Jamie says they are best for dauphinoise when waxy, and mine were waxy, but they are sort of kidney shaped and narrow; they don't produce the kind of slices that I can get out of my habitual Maris Pipers. Anyway. I layered unconventional-appearing potatoes with chopped cauliflower and thyme, poured over hot milk and cream infused with garlic, bay leaf and nutmeg, and baked with the lid on in the oven until the potatoes were soft. Then I added Parmesan and removed the lid and let the top layer brown.

Yum. This is much nicer than normal dauphinoise, which I sometimes find borders on sickly. The cauliflower adds crunchiness and a depth of flavour. And it can be counted as one of our five a day whereas potato can't. It is really easy, looks good; would be great for entertaining. A winner. Oh, and the lamb was yummy too...