WHOLE SLOW COOKED ROUGH FELL LAMB SHOULDER

In this month’s issue of Cumbria Life magazine, P116, there is a recipe from Richard Swale, the Head Chef at Askham Hall, just down the road from here.  Richard is a great advocate of using high-quality local produce and this recipe embodies his philosophy.

We made this dish yesterday and it was really good, the meat just fell off the bone and was so tender. Quite the thing for dinner on a cold February night.

I thought I would share the recipe with you – I’m sure Richard won’t mind!

Ingredients (Serves 4 hungry people)

Whole Rough Fell (or any local lamb) lamb shoulder

1 large onion

4 carrots

1 leek

3 celery sticks

5 garlic cloves

Extra virgin olive oil

1 sprig of thyme

1 bay leaf

1 tbsp tomato puree

2 star anise

1 tbsp mixed spice

500ml white wine

500g chopped tomatoes

1 litre fresh chicken stock

500g tinned, cooked, chickpeas

Sea salt and black pepper

Honey for seasoning (optional)

1 cabbage (we had spinach to hand and it worked very well)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 110c or the lowest gas mark.  We cooked ours in the bottom Aga oven.
2. Peel and dice the onion, carrot, celery and leek.  Finely chop the garlic and set all the veg to one side.
3. Take a large deep casserole and heat a good glug of olive oil.  Brown the lamb until it is golden brown on all sides.
4. Remove the lamb and keep it warm on a plate.
5. Put the vegetables into the casserole dish and sweat them for about 10 minutes until soft but not brown.  Add the thyme and bay leaf, the tomato puree, star anise and mixed spice and cook for another minute or so. Add the white wine and bring to the boil, then add the tomato puree and chicken stock.
6. Put the lamb back into the casserole dish with the veg and liquid almost covering the entire shoulder.
7. Put the lid on the casserole and cook for about 8 hours.
8. Once cooked, carefully remove the lamb to a warm dish and on the stove  reduce the liquid by half.
9. Add the chickpeas, season well with salt and pepper.  Add the honey if you have a sweet tooth.
10. Steam the cabbage (or spinach in our case).
11. Serve the lamb with its vegetables and the green vegetables on one large serving dish for everyone to share.

Richard suggests serving this with a raita – we mixed up a carton of Greek yogurt with crushed garlic and some shaved cucumber, a bit of mint,  a good pinch of sea salt, into a pretty glass bowl and sprinkled a few toasted cumin seeds on the top and finished with a swirl of extra virgin olive oil.

Delicious!

Categories: Recipes, Winter