Summer eating

Our freezer is full of lamb. I mean, literally FULL. We were (extremely generously) given a whole lamb by Dan's parents a week or so ago. However, roast lamb isn't exactly what I fancy during a period of scorchingly hot weather! With the freezer groaning under the strain I had to find a way to have roast lamb on the hottest day of the year without feeling a bit sick and heavy.

I was actually very proud of my solution - spiced roast leg of lamb, with a fennel, pomegranate and feta salad, new potatoes, and a yoghurty minty dip.

I slathered the leg of lamb with a mixture of Ras-el-hanout spice, olive oil, a good squeeze of lemon and some salt and pepper then left it to marinate in the fridge overnight. I then slow cooked it so that I ended up with wonderfully tender lamb, almost falling off the bone.

The real star of the dinner was the salad;

An Ottolenghi masterpiece of fennel, tarragon, parsley, sumac, feta and pomegranate seeds. With this and a spoon of yoghurt (with chopped tomato and mint leaves mixed in), the lamb made a lovely summer meal. Not stodgy at all.

Speaking of Ottolenghi, I'm working my way through the salads in the Ottolenghi cookbook. I've recently made the French bean, orange and hazlenut salad



Which I had with new potatoes and grilled halloumi



and the Peach and Speck salad (I used parma ham instead of speck)



My lunches have been more interesting than usual this week!

Ottolenghi is my favourite person. Really. He makes my lunches and dinners so much more interesting. I hope I get to see him at
Alex James's Harvest festival. If he's there the same day as us Dan plans to tell him that its OK if he fancies coming round to cook for us sometime (and that he's willing to overlook the vegetarian cookbook).

UPDATE: Richard Corrigan, Monty Don and Yottam Ottolenghi will all be at the festival on the day we're going. The music line up sounds fun too. Marvellous!

Moroccan meatballs

With all the Christmas roast meat I really felt like a different kind of dinner this week. A while back I spotted that a fellow Daring Cook had tried out a Moroccan meatballs recipe for our December 2010 challenge. In that version it was served with a poached egg (poaching was our challenge for the month). Looking for a slightly less rich dish after all the Christmas excesses I actually served it without the egg, but it would clearly be delicious with one. We had steamed rice and spinach instead.



The Moroccan Merguez Ragout recipe has a wonderful blend of spices, both in the meatballs and the accompanying ragout. I'm always going on about how much I like Moroccan and Middle Eastern food, so no surprise that I liked the dish, but Dan also particularly loved this, so thanks to Audax for a very delightful dinner!



Find the recipe here.

This week's colour is green

Green...It's the new black.

And it was the theme of this week's cooking. First up I made Lamb koftas's with green sauce. This is an indian dish of mildly spiced lamb meatballs in a yoghurty-herby sauce. It was something I found here on the BBC website and I've been meaning to make it for a little while. It makes a good winter night dinner with its comforting blend of warming spices and the creamy yoghurt sauce. You can make most of it ahead of time so it can be made quickly when you're ready to eat. Its definitely a tasty dinner, but not extraordinary in any way in my opinion.

Then at the weekend I made slow-cooked courgettes with lemons and dill to have on toast for lunch. This was from the Riverford Farm cook book, and can also be found here on their website. It was very good. I love the distinctive flavour of dill, so perhaps its unsurprising that I enjoyed the dish so much.

Not green, but a new twist on an old favourite, was a goats cheese souffle topping for fish pie. It worked well. Dan really enjoyed it. Because the souffle only needs a short time in the oven everything else does need to be cooked before you put the topping on - it doesn't spend long enough in the oven to cook the other ingredients.

Hope you enjoyed bonfire night!

Spring Lamb in pub loos

Last year Dan's Dad very generously gave us half a lamb. An unusual gift, I grant you, but a useful one nonetheless.


(Sorry if the photo's in poor taste, but y'know we have to acknowledge where meat comes from.)

The one cut I had been rather dreading was the Lamb belly. I had no idea what to do with it, and I feared inedibility due to the fattiness of it.

I put it off, and put it off, and then delayed some more. But it has now been sitting in our freezer for a year, so this weekend I decided it was time to stop being a scaredy-cat and tackle the belly.

I took the recipe from a pub toilet wall.

Yes you read that right.

We ate at the Kingham Plough a few months back (very good - I recommend it, but not too often or you'll be bankrupt). They had papered their loo walls with pages from old farmhouse recipe books. While washing my hands I noticed one for how to cook lamb belly and figured it was one to remember since I knew I'd have to tackle the lamb belly in the freezer sooner or later.

So, here's the loo method:

Lamb Belly (or breast of lamb, which somehow sounds more appetising) with Butterbeans
serves 3

approx 500g lamb belly - trim off as much fat as possible, then roll it up with some sprigs of rosemary and thyme and a crushed garlic clove in the middle. Tie with string or cotton. I did 3 separate rolls, but I imagine one large one would also work.

Place this into a pan of boiling water and simmer for 5 minutes, then fish out the meat and put it into a bowl of cold water. I left this in the fridge for a few hours until I was ready to cook dinner, but I would think you could move straight onto the next step.

Place 2 or 3 rashers of bacon in the bottom of a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Slice a lemon and lay the lemon slices on top. Put the lamb pieces on top of the lemon.
Cover with 2 or 3 more slices of bacon.

Finely chop an onion and scatter over the top. Sprinkle on some rosemary and thyme.
Season with salt and pepper (go easy on the salt though as the bacon is salty).

Slosh about a glass of white wine into the pan, add 300ml of stock (or a stock cube), then top up the pan with cold water until the water just covers all the meat.

Bring slowly to the boil, skim off any scum that rises to the top with a slotted spoon, then allow to simmer for about an hour and a half. Keep the water topped up during this time.

About 10 minutes from the end of the cooking time cook any other vegetables you fancy (we had purple sprouting broccoli). Drain a 400g can of butterbeans, add a ladle of the liquid from the lamb pan and gently heat through.
Serve.

The verdict:
I won't be buying lamb belly; its too greasy for me to really enjoy it. But if I get given some again I won't be horrified. It was tender and had a nice flavour, but I think roasting it might be more successful as it would give all that fat a bit more opportunity to run off into the pan rather than ending up in the finished meal. I liked the flavours though so I would roll it with herbs and place some lemon on top, and butterbeans made a nice change from potatoes.