Sunday, December 23, 2007

Lamb surprise!

The surprise was that I thought I’d removed the Christmas Day lamb from the Ocado delivery as we’d had a change of plan and gone for a three-bird roast instead, however clearly altering the Ocado delivery late at night when you’re distracted should come with a health warning as I didn’t do it so well and the original lamb turned up with the rest of the festive food – whoops!

But it’s hardly going to go to waste when it’s this good so it gets anointed with a little English mustard and a herby crust made from a couple of slices of white bread, a few sprigs of rosemary and thyme and all whizzed up in the Bamix chopper. The herby crumb is pressed into the mustard and then browned in the pan before being slammed into the oven. Oh and those aromas!

One of my favourite accompaniments to lamb is a good old gratin Dauphinois, so I speed things up by parboiling the thinly v-sliced potatoes in the garlicky cream on the hob before layering a buttered dish with the aromatic slices. It’s finished off in the oven and as we have French trimmed rack of lamb today, they don’t take too much cooking the gratin can bake at the same time. And the resultant hearty yet elegant dish is finished off with some well-dressed greenery.

And for a special starter Waitrose/Ocado are selling rather delectable seafood spoons with edible spoons – great no washing up, and also rather tasty!

Okay maybe the lamb was a mistake, but a very delicious mistake in the end!

Nice new black plates as well M!

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