Saturday, January 12, 2008

Jamie Oliver's lamb shoulder with noodles, baby spinach and mint caper gravy

In his new book, Jamie At Home (which is truly great, by the way: not one dud recipe in there), in the lamb chapter, there's a recipe for slow-roasted shoulder of lamb with smashed vegetables and some wilted greens. Mum had a go at the shoulder, using a boned rolled leg, flattened out. (The butcher was being difficult: we'll deal with him later.) She put it in a baking dish with unpeeled garlic cloves, rosemary and a tiny bit of olive oil and salt, and roasted it with a tight lid of tinfoil for a few hours at a low heat. It was perfect: melting, falling apart, heaps of flavour and still juicy.
I took a piece of it home to play with: it ended up as a homage to Jamie, and using the same sauce he recommends in the book.
We cooked some of that curly wide pasta (not lasagne sheets, ricciarelle) until just before al dente. It was dressed with some unsalted butter and went into a bowl with baby spinach leaves. We tossed them together to slightly wilt the leaves. Over the top went the shredded lamb pieces. The sauce is a mixture of the lamb juices from the roasting, light chicken stock, capers and red wine vinegar. I heated all these together in a pan and used a little flour to thicken. The sauce went over the lamb and sprinkled on top were some torn fresh mint leaves.
It was really delicious. Probably not what Jamie originally has in mind, but definitely a testament to what you can do with a few simple ingredients and easy slow cooking.










Later we cooked the REAL roast shoulder, with steamed squash, broccolini, carrot, beans and roast kipfler potatoes. Big success.

2 comments:

Ange said...

These both sound scrumptious. I have the book & as soon as the weather has cooled down a bit here in sunny melbourne I will be giving these a go

Ange said...

These both sound scrumptious. I have the book & as soon as the weather has cooled down a bit here in sunny melbourne I will be giving these a go