Moroccan Lamb

Just looking back through some old photos (at some point in the past I thought I would start keeping a photo record of what I cooked, but that didn't last for long) and found some nice shots of a Moroccan lamb recipe that I did some time ago. For once I actually remembered to do before and after pictures:

(you can see the chef has had a sneaky glass of wine already)

This leg of lamb was marinated overnight in lemon and saffron, plus others spices and oils, and I served it with spinach:

I'm a sucker for dishes like this - more or less one pot cooking, with everything pretty much ready in one dish, and loads of great flavours melding together into one. That lamb may look a little dry but believe me it wasn't, and the juices from the cooking made for an instant gravy.

A lot of recipes with legs of lamb suggest puncturing the meat and inserting slices or garlic or rosemary, which I've never been happy about doing and have stopped now, especially after one particularly dry result. I can't think of a better way to dry out a piece of meat than stick a knife all over it, and fail to see the point - you can get plenty of flavour on your plate without this technique. And why just lamb? You don't see anyone recommending it for beef, chicken or pork now. I think it's just become a habit, and to my mind can easily make a nice piece of meat far too garlic and herb ridden. OK, rant over!

Another recipe very similar to this one is the old English way of taking a leg of mutton to the butchers of a Sunday morning, and there's an Italian variant too - but more of them another time.

Beef Wellington

Not some recent cooking - this was Beef Wellington for Boxing day a couple of years ago. I just had to share this picture though - how fab does that look? To be honest whilst it was good it wasn't great - looked better than it tasted in the end, and I think my mum in particular would have liked it perhaps just a little more cooked ... !

It's a real pleasure to make though, and a nice challenge as it's quite hard to get everything just right. I always feel that recipes like this are the best type, simple yet complex, and are the best judge of a cooks skill.

Carbonara is another example - a simple dish that's very hard to do well. I used to cook it all the time when I was young, and thought it was great, then I had it in a restaurant in Padova when I was about 22 and realised how bloody awful mine was! I think I've finally got it working again now, although sometimes it can be a little bitter (which I think is me overdoing the pancetta). This is the recipe I like to choose when visting a new resturant to see just how good the chef is.

Lasagne

Now that's what I call a lasagne! A favourite in most people's houses I'm sure, although I'm getting fussier and fussier about mine. Now it's not good enough unless it's been made with left over from a roast rib of beef and freshly made pasta sheets. I find you just can't get enough flavour into the pasta unless you make it yourself, plus that way you can get just the thickness you want - and I like mine with lots of thick sheets and not much sugo but loads of bechamel ...