Lamb roasted in a Citrus and thyme crust
From my new book 101 Dishes to Eat Before You Die
To be published August 2009 Love Food/Parragon Books
Whenever I ponder my desert island dishes (this happens pretty much daily), I start with the exotic ones and the memorable life-defining dishes, but eventually I’ll come around to one of my familiar, simple favourites: roast lamb. And this version is the most spectacular of all roast lamb dishes.
The idea is to cover the lamb in a fragrant casing of whole minced lemons (don’t worry, this is easily taken care of by a food processor) combined with garllc, salt and herbs. It is breathtakingly good, encasing the lamb and suffusing the meat with a deep citrus flavour and helping it cook evenly and gently.
The gravy is deliciously citrus-flavoured too, but beware: after cooking, you need to remove and discard at least half of the lemon crust, and add it to the gravy bit by bit – it can make the gravy a little bitter if you’re not careful.
Variations
Stop right there! If it’s blood orange season then you should substitute those for the lemons because it’s absolutely mindblowingly good. This also works beautifully with rosemary instead of thyme, or with a mixture of them both.
It would be criminal of me not to mention the other classic way of roasting leg and shoulder: stuffed with anchovy, garlic and rosemary, but with no crust. If it sounds odd to stuff lamb with a fish, don’t worry because it won’t make the meat taste fishy, but rather it will intensify its lambiness. I don’t have a clue how it works – it just does. Make 2cm (1 inch) cuts all over the lamb with a sharp knife and jam a sliver of garlic, a tiny sprig of rosemary and a chunk of rinsed anchovy into the cut.
The fat-tailed sheep
I had seen line-drawings of fat-tailed sheep in food history books, but I didn’t really believe that they existed until I visited Afghanistan and met them. They don’t really have that fat a tail, but rather a huge wobbly hump of fat that sits on their bottom above the tail. I was interested to discover that the fat is as valuable, if not more valuable than the meat itself. It’s amazingly light and fluffy – not like traditional European lamb fat. It’s an essential ingredient for making lamb kebabs, which usually consist of one piece of fat to each piece of meat. They also use it to make Quabili rice – basically a dish of rice, a few vegetables and lot of stewed lamb, all oozing lamb fat. And if that sounds greasy and sickly, it’s not. It’s delicious.
