As mentioned in the previous post, I was down in Cornwall for Christmas. My mum always puts on a great spread while we’re down there, but with seven mouths to feed she has her work cut out, and seems to spend too much time in the kitchen. That being the case, for the last few years I’ve given her the night off and cooked a meal for the family.

This year I cooked a slow cooked shoulder of lamb with Cornish style boulangère potatoes and spring greens. The lamb is cooked in a tangy herb, lemon and anchovy marinade (I have to leave out the garlic as my dad can’t stand it, but have included it in this recipe), and the classicly French boulangère are given a South West twist with the adition of Cornish cruncher cheddar cheese.

Ingredients

For the lamb:

2.5 kilo shoulder of lamb

2 lemons (juice and zest)

10 -15 tinned anchovy fillets

Bunch of rosemary

5 large cloves of garlic

Olive oil

Freshly ground black pepper

For the potatoes:

1.5 kilos of potatoes

2 onions

200g Cornish cruncher or other mature cheddar

Fresh ground black pepper

300ml vegetable stock

100ml milk

Chopped rosemary

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Butter

For the greens:

5 heads of spring greens

Butter

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Method

First of all, get your oven as hot as it will go, then prepare the marinade for the lamb. Finely chop the garlic, rosmary and anchovy fillets, zest and juice the two lemons, add a good couple of glugs of olive oil, then season with black pepper and mix well. Next, score the lamb all over on the upper side in a diamond formation about 1/2 a centimeter deep, and place in a roasting tray resting on slices of the zested and juiced lemons. Then spoon over the marinade, making sure you work it into the slashes on the shoulder.

When the oven is good an hot, slam in the lamb. You’re going to cook it fiercely for around 30 minutes to form a kind of marinated crust on the skin, and they you’re going to turn the oven down to around 180°C and cover the roasting tray tightly with tin foil and cook for a further 3 hours.

Now prepare the potatoes. Peel then slice the spuds as thinly as you can. I used a mandolin, but if you don’t have one, try to get them about a 3mm thick. When you’ve done this, plunge them into cold water and rinse to get some of the starch out, then turn  out onto a tea towel, and pat dry with another.

Next chop and slice the two onions, and fry them until they are golden brown. This will make the finished dish sweeter and richer. Now butter a large baking dish and start putting it all together. Start with a couple of layers of potatoes, then scatter over some of the onion, cheese and rosemary. Season with salt and pepper and then repeat until you are out of potatoes. Make sure you have some cheese and rosemary left over, but don’t scatter it over the top yet. Mix the stock and milk together, and pour over the top. The liquid should come around 3/4 of the way up the dish. Next cover the potatoes with a sheet of grease proof paper.

When the lamb has about an hour and a half to go, put in the potatoes and cook for an hour with the paper on, then remove from the oven. Take off the paper, scatter the remaining cheese and rosemary on top, season generously with black pepper then and put back into the oven for the last half hour until bubbling and golden brown.

Prepare the greens by slicing into fat strips and discarding the fat ends of the stalk. Boil in salted water until tender, drain, add a good nob of butter and season with salt and pepper.

Serve with the lamb and potatoes. Praaaper jaaaab.

This recipe makes one large rectangular pizza with a thin, crispy, tasty base, that is a million miles away from the flabby crud that the likes of Planet Pizza churn out. I would recommend that you make a bigger batch of the dough and freeze half of it to use at a later date. Just double the quantity of the mix (below), and once risen, wrap half in cling film and pop in the freezer.

For the tomato sauce, you can pretty much use the same sort of thing that you’d usually put on pasta. I use a simple sauce made from a tin of tomatoes, garlic, herbs and seasoning. If I can be bothered, I’ll blend it so it’s smooth like passata, but you don’t have to. A bit of tomato texture isn’t a deal breaker.

Obviously, once you’ve made your dough and tomato sauce, you can put anything on your pizza you like. This recipe is for a pizza of two halves. On one side a classic prosciutto themed number, and on the other anchovy and veggies.

Ingredients

For the base:

250g white ‘Tipo 00′ flour

3g powdered dried yeast

4g ground sea salt

1g sugar

150ml warm water

Topping:

Tomato sauce

250g Good quality mozzarella

5 slices of prosciutto ham

1 red chilli, finely chopped

8-10 anchovy fillets

Strips of red onion

Courgette, cut into ribbons with a peeler

Olive oil, rocket and basil to garnish

Method

Making the dough part of the pizza is very similar to the method used for making the earlier focaccia recipe. Mix the water, sugar and yeast together and set aside. Measure out the flour and salt into a bowl and then mix together. Add the yeast mixture to the flour and combine. The ingredients should come together and make a dough. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, and then knead for around 10 minutes. Coat the dough with a little olive oil, place it in an oiled bowl, cover with a plastic bag or damp tea towel, and then put in a warm place for about an hour until the dough has doubled in size. Now’s a good time to turn on your oven as you’ll want to get it as hot as it will go (preferably 250c +).

Once the dough has risen, turn it out of the bowl and knock it back. Now you’re ready to get busy constructing your masterpiece.  This is going to sound a bit retarded, but remember that you’re going to have to transfer your pizza from wherever you’re making it into an oven. This is obviously trickier with a larger pizza, so make sure you’ve got a plan. I make my pizzas on the baking trays that came with my oven. I flour one up, make my pizza on it and then use it to slide the pizza onto the other tray that’s been heating up in the oven. More on this shortly.

Roll / stretch your dough out into whatever shape you like. The base should only be few milimeters thick; once you’ve got the right shape and size, pinch and roll the edge to form a small crust. If you’re making a pizza with two different flavours as here, you can use some of the trimmings to create a dividing ridge. Once you’re done, set the base aside to 10 or 15 minutes to prove whilst you prep your toppings.

After you’re prepped, spoon a thin layer of the tomato sauce all over your pizza base, and then place on your toppings. On one side tear over the mozzarella, basil and chilli, on the other more mozzarella, shards of red onion, anchovies and ribbons of courgette.

You’re now ready to cook your pizza. Ideally you want to slide it onto a hot surface to try and replicate the conditions of a pizza oven.  I don’t have a stone, so I cook mine on a baking tray that’s been heating up in the oven. As the oven is bloody hot, the pizza should only take around 10 minutes or so to cook.

Once the edge of base is nicely browned and the cheese is bubbling, take it out. On the mozzarella and chili side take the proscuitto, tear it into strips and drape it over the base, then sprinkle with rocket leaves and drizzle with olive oil. On the anchovy side, add basil leaves and also drizzle with oil.

Serve as soon as possible. Molto bene!