Some of you might know that, because of a dearth of butchers in my local neighbourhood, I've been investigating online sources of good quality meat over the last few months. Thus far, The Well Hung Meat Company has delivered acceptable meat but at prices too high for me to place repeat orders. And Abel & Cole have impressed me with the quality of some of their meat, but less so with consistency not to mention issues with the ordering and delivery process. I've also got a list of other online meat suppliers to try, most of whom I encountered at the Organic Food Festival in Bristol some weeks ago.
So, recently I received a delivery from Paganum. I really like the environmentally friendly woolcool insulation - it kept the contents very well chilled and is made from British sheep's wool. The meat looked great!
I consulted the twitter food community for ideas on how to cook my leg of lamb and opted to go with thelarderlout's advice to "slow cook at 170C w/ 1/2 btl redwine, rosemary, garlic, carrot, celery, onion, anchovy paste. baste every 1/2 hour. 3 hours'll do it."
I hate celery, so I dropped that straight away. I intended to go out for anchovy paste and fresh rosemary but, in the end, decided to make do with what I had in, so onion became spring onion, fresh rosemary made way for dried and I didn't bother with the anchovy paste!
So, go ahead and use this "recipe" as a starting point. I'd love to hear about your own variations and successes.
Boneless Leg of Lamb Braised in Red Wine With Garlic
Ingredients
1.7 kilo boneless leg of lamb joint
Some home-grown carrots
Some spring onions
Some cloves of garlic, chopped
Half a bottle of Argentinian Malbec red wine
A scattering of dried rosemary
Method
- I made a bed of carrots, spring onion and garlic in the bottom of a large glass casserole dish.
The finished lamb was beautifully tender. The red wine had produced a wonderful, deeply coloured stock - to my surprise it didn't have a particularly red wine taste at all! The garlic and rosemary flavours came through, but didn't overwhelm the rich lamb taste. And the lamb did taste great - nothing like the insipid, anonymous taste of cheap lamb but an almost hogget-like intensity that I liked very much.
9 comments:
Yum, but you forgot to invite me to dinner LOL.
Oooh, beautiful! I've been cooking shoulder lately but might have to try a leg soon!
I usually cook shoulder long and slow as I think fatty cuts are more suited to it, but this looks great.
Oh yum! I could eat this every day...I've ordered from Paganum before, the lamb chops are great too.
Looks gorgeous - and I agree re: Niamh's stall! I was so inspired I made her blaas last week - they're here if you're interested
http://www.lexeat.co.uk/2009/11/two-sausage-sandwiches-and-dont-skimp.html
so easy, even I could make them!
this looks gorgeous. the anchovy paste adds a nice salty tang.
A whole recipe in less than 140 characters. Brilliant.
The lamb looks wonderful - shoulder of lamb as well as leg of lamb always benefits from cooking in red wine - it's a recipe to please everyone.
Oooohhhhh it looks beautiful, i will certainly try it...already drooling.
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