'Open' Slow Pot Roast Lamb with Fennel & Radish

Feeling a bit experimental last Sunday, so decided to do another of my open pot roasts but with some ingredients that you wouldn't usually find together - Lamb & Fennel. As a seasonal cook I like to use what's around at the moment, so Fennel seemed like a good bet, plus I have a load of radishes in the back garden so thought I'd throw in some of those as well.


The bottom layer of vegetables in the pot, seasoned and tossed in olive oil and a glass of rose wine

This idea of 'open' pot roasts is working out quite well, so nice to try something different in it. The basic premise of this is that you have a pot which is just big enough for the joint you're cooking, and you put under the meat vegetables and other flavourings such as herbs which will steam underneath and flavour the meat, whilst on top you get very gentle browning. It's a slow roasting technique, so I put it in a standard oven at 150ºC for four hours - that's for a 5lb (2½ kg or so) shoulder of lamb.


The lamb shoulder on top of the vegetables. You often need to cut something off to squeeze it all in, in this case I took off the protruding leg and tucked it in the side.

It's a lazy man's lunch really, as you don't need to do much, but it is worth checking after a couple of hours just to make sure it's not burning underneath. It will depend how well covered the vegetables are, and what type of course, but if it's getting too dry just pour in some more liquid, anything from stock, wine or just plain old water will do. This one actually turned out very juicy, a quality of the lamb itself I guess as there wasn't much in the way of vegetables to speak of.


The meat out of the oven, nicely browned, but very tender and moist still.

One nice by product of this technique is that the fat runs off the meat into the pan, and can be strained off so you can just serve the juice and spare an artery or two as well.


Lamb has a reputation for being a bit fatty, especially shoulder, and you can see why here.

Served this with mash from the night before (I'm getting lazier by the minute!) and runner beans from the garden, which never seem to run out - thank god :-) The fennel worked quite well with the lamb, though the radishes were completely lost (one day I'll find something interesting to do with the things). Think I'll do this again, but next time I'm going to slice up some lemons to go with the fennel and not bother about the rose wine or the radishes.


The finished dish, served with a sauce made from the vegetables and ricotta, just to try ...


... and a fab nectarine cheesecake B made for dessert.

The leftover meat has a lovely soft flavour of anise still, which has already gone into some pittas for lunches and is very soon going to make a dry risotto type dish I do with some peppers and onions as well. Loads of meat left though - I think we'll be eating lamb all week in Silverton!

Pot Roast Guinea Fowl

Busy as ever cooking away - it's pizza quattro formaggio tonight, at least it will be shortly, but I just thought I'd put up a quick post about my Guinea Fowl.

Now I've not cooked guinea fowl for many years, and the Italian has never had it before, so when we spotted one at Cullompton Farmers market (second Saturday in the Month, as patronised by Prince Charles don't 'yer know - well once at least) we thought we'd give it a try. The lady running the stall said she preferred it to chicken (more flavour) and you know what, now that I've had it I can see what she means. Loads of meat on the thing too, more than you'd think given the size of it. Leftovers went on to make a fabulous stroganoff as well, which stretched for quite a few meals.

The pot roast itself was another wood burner affair, and as ever it's still learning time with that. I mis-timed how long it would take rather majestically which meant that the sticky rice I had in mind to go with it was ready half an hour early :-) Thank god Le Creuset stuff keeps the heat so well. The recipe was one from Sophie Grigson's Meat Cookery book (a good find that) which included lots of onions (courtesy of my Dad) which cooked down slowly to form this wonderful sticky sweet mash, plus lots of fresh thyme from the garden. I'll say one thing for the wood burner cooking, it's making me polish up my skills a bit when it comes to working out when something is cooked. You can't rely on any cook book when you're piling logs in to try and get the temperature right!


Mid way through cooking, so still well uncoooked

Suffice to say that it was so tasty that I completely forgot to take any pictures of the finished dish, that pot roasting is alive and well on my wood burner, and that guinea fowl will be making a welcome return to my kitchen very shortly.


A wider shot of the cooking

Pot Roast Brisket with Basil Dumplings

I love a piece of brisket now and then, but it can be a tricky thing to cook and I've overdone it once or twice, which is never a good thing. Lately I've taken to curing it first to create a kind of corned beef, and I'd really recommend it if it's not something you've had a go at. My favourite recipe so far is from Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail Eating (now that's a well named book) which is simple, but has lots of strong flavours which tuck themselves nicely into the main flavour of the meat.

Once the meat had cured this time around it kind of fell apart into four large pieces, which I left whole and bunged in with plenty of onions, carrots, swede, potato and beef stock, plus bay leaf & thyme. It then went on our new wood burning stove - we've been experimenting with cooking on it, but it's early days!



The picture shows it with the basil dumplings added. I wouldn't use basil normally, but we had some left that needed finishing up (well, it probably needed throwing away really, but I hate doing that) so in it went. I should add that the Le Creuset pot that the pot roast is in (OK, well perhaps 'stew' might be more accurate!) I found at the local dump for £1. Weird how great stuff like that is thrown out sometimes, but good for those of us who don't mind reusing what others don't want ...

The stove did a great job in the end of cooking it through, and I think will be a fab addition to the house - and that's apart from being a brilliant way of heating the house without relying on fossil fuel. The cat certainly likes it at any rate.



All in all a great meal for very little cost, and perfect for this time of year, although you might want to go easy on the dumplings!