Like the previous recipe, this one also pairs up lamb with some heat and punchy flavours. The harissa loses some of it’s heat in the cooking, and creates a lovely tangy, spicy, sticky crust on the lamb. I got my hands on a fine leg of Yorkshire lamb from my new favourite meat source, Marky Market. It’s a great idea. Mark gets up every day to go to Smithfields and Billingsgate, you place your order the day before, and then he delivers to your door. Brilliant.

In terms of prep time, the potatoes are a bit of a faff, but the lamb is simplicity itself, so it’s swings and roundabouts. We served it with a gorgeous heritage tomato, red onion and mint salad, and a tzatziki (you can find the recipe for the latter here).

Ingredients

(for the lamb)

2.5 kg leg of lamb

90g Harissa paste

90g 0% fat Greek yoghurt

Juice and zest of one lemon

(for the potatoes)

1.7 kg of potatoes (Desiree / King Edward)

1 white onion

1 red onion

1 Bay leaf

2 sprigs of thyme

Salt & pepper

750 ml lamb stock (you can also use chicken or veg stock)

50 g butter

Method

You want the lamb to marinate in the harissa overnight, so your first job is to prep the leg. Making the marinade is easy. Just mix the yoghurt, Harissa, lemon juice and zest together.

Next, taking a sharp knife, cross-hatch the lamb, cutting into the flesh around half to a centimeter deep. Now, using a spatula, smother the lamb all over with the marinade, working it into the cuts, then pop it in a large freezer bag and leave it in the fridge overnight.

NB. You want the lamb to be at room temperature before you cook it, so make sure you take it out of the fridge a couple of hours before you put it in the oven.

The following day, set your oven to 245c and then prep the boulangère. For the best results, and to save time, slice the potatoes with a mandolin, but watch your fingers! First, peel your spuds, and then slice them with the mandolin, or as thinly as you can (around 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, thyme, bay and seasoning. Repeat until you are out of potatoes and onion.

Now pour the stock over the potatoes (it should come up just below the top later of spuds) and then finish the dish with a sprinkling of salt and pepper, some sprigs of thyme, and a few  nobs of butter. Set aside and cover with a cartouche of greaseproof paper.

When your oven is up to temperature, put your lamb in a roasting tray with a rack, and then put it in the oven. You’re going to cook it at 245c for around half an hour, before turning the oven down to 200c and cooking it for a further hour and a half.

After the first half hour, and the oven has been turned down, put the potatoes in, keeping them covered with the cartouche. After 45 minutes, remove the cartouche so that the top of the boulangère can brown up nicely.

When the lamb has cooked for 2 hours, remove from the oven, set on a serving plate and cover with foil to rest for quarter of an hour. Then turn off the oven, leaving the potatoes inside to keep them hot.

Serve after the lamb has rested with the tomato salad, and a tzatziki.

One of the dishes that got my mouth watering the most was the tomato risotto he cooked in Venice. There was just something beautifully simple about the risotto and the tomatoes cooked in olive oil that made me want to give it a go. I’m sure there’s an accompanying book for the series, but I haven’t bought it, so this recipe is a approximation of what I saw of the idiot box. It worked for me, so should do for you too.

Ingredients (serves 2)

For the risotto

1 small onion, finely chopped

1 large celery stalk, finely chopped

100g arborio rice

100 ml white wine

1 litre vegetable stock

Handful of grated Parmesan (about 25g)

Olive oil

Unsalted butter

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

For the tomatoes

15-20 mini plum / cherry tomatoes, halved

1 large clove of garlic, finely chopped

10 basil leaves, torn

50 ml olive oil

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Method

First up, get your stock ready. Pour it into a pan, and get it on the heat so it’s just below boiling point. Next finely chop your onion and celery and then gently sweat in a pan containing a good glug of olive oil and a small nob of butter for about 10 minutes. The veg should become translucent as opposed to brown.

Whilst the veg is cooking, halve the tomatoes and add to a small pan with the oilve oil, garlic, basil leaves, salt and pepper. Stir them together and then put on a low heat. You don’t want to fry the hell out of the tomatoes, more soften them and let all the flavours in the pan infuse and meld together.

Once you’ve done this, you should be ready to add the rice to the onions and celery. Mix it all together, coating the rice with the oil. Add the white wine to the rice, stir in and let the alcohol burn off for a minute or so. You’re now going to start adding the stock. Do this a ladle at a time, stirring all the while. Stirring is an important part of the process, as it helps make the risotto creamy as it soaks up the stock. You don’t want to beat the mixture, more of a purposeful stir.

After 15-20 minutes of repeating this process, you should have used up most of the stock. The risotto should be loose and creamy, and the rice ‘al dente’ (not overly soft like rice pudding, still with some bite). At this point take it off the heat. Stir in the grated Parmesan, a small nob of butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Now cover the pan with a lid and leave the risotto to ‘relax’ for a couple of minutes.

Check your tomatoes. By now they should be nicely soft, and the olive oil should have take on a bit of their colour. Now take your tomatoes, and add them to the risotto, stirring them in gently, and then plate up.

Serve in bowls with a little drizzle of olive oil and a hunk of crusty bread.

As mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been looking at new features to add to Hand To Mouth. My friend Dazzler suggested I try re-creating recipes from weird and wonderful books, which I thought was a great idea. This first ‘Tried & Tested’ post fits more into the latter category, as it comes from a rather lovely new cookery book called ‘Great British Food‘.

Put together by the guys behind the brilliant Canteen mini chain of restaurants, this Lancashire Hot Pot stays true to their ethos of cooking gutsy, tasty, good quality, British grub. The recipe calls for leg mutton, which I couldn’t get hold of at the time of cooking, so instead I used shoulder of lamb.

The recipe takes a bit of prep, but once you get going it’s pretty easy, and it tastes reet good.

Ingredients (serves 6)

50g butter

250g onions, sliced

1kg boned leg of mutton, 3-4cm dice

150g carrots, sliced

10g fresh thyme, leaves picked

3 bay leaves

700g floury potatoes (Maris Piper), peeled ad thinly sliced

500ml meat stock

100ml meat stock

Salt and black pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 135 degrees, and then heat up half the butter in a saucepan. Add the onions and sweat over a low heat for around 15 minutes or until soft and translucent, but not browned.

Next place the meat in an oven proof dish and add the onions, carrots, thyme and bay leaves. Season well with salt and pepper, and then mix together.

Arrange the potato slices on top of the meat and vegetable mix, overlapping the slices slightly, and then pour the stock and ale into the dish.

Now melt the remaining butter and brush over the potatoes, season with salt, cover with a lid and then pop in the oven to cook for 2 hours.

After two hours, remove the lid from the dish, increase the oven temperature to 150 degrees and continue cooking for a further 30-45 minutes until the potatoes are nicely browned.

Serve in big bowls, making sure you get a good mix of the meat, vegetables and the tasty stock.

There are few meals as satisfying as a roast chicken. Even if you’re having a REALLY shit day, a roastie can turn tings around. What’s more, there are always leftovers, which means there’s always another meal or two to be eeked out of the carcass.

We roasted a particularly big bird last weekend, so I decided to do the leftover chicken justice by making a few pies. It’s a pretty easy recipe, especially if you buy ready rolled puff pastry from the supermarket. The below will make 4 small pies or one biggun. Here’s how it’s done.

Ingredients

250g roast chicken – mixture of white and brown meat

1 large leek, finely chopped

1 large carrot, chopped

1 large clove garlic, chopped

2 rashers smoked bacon, chopped

70g chestnut mushrooms

300ml chicken stock

1ooml single cream

100ml white wine

1 tablespoon chopped tarragon

1 tablespoon plain flour

1 pack ready rolled puff pastry (around 350g)

1 egg, beaten

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Method

Wash the leek and then chop finely. Add olive oil to a heavy bottom pan, turn on the heat and then add the leeks. Peel the carrot, chop and add to the pan along with the chopped bacon and garlic. Fry until soft and then add the mushrooms to the pot.

Once the mushrooms have cooked down a bit, add the flour and stir in. The flour will coat the veggies, and the mixture will become a bit pasty. Now add the wine, stir in and burn off the alcohol, before adding the chicken stock and the roast chicken. Stir all together, and then season with salt and pepper to taste.

You should have the makings of a fairly decent gravy by now. Reduce the liquid by about a quarter, and then add the tarragon. Stir in and then add the cream. Have a taste. If you’re happy, turn off the head and set aside to cool. If not, adjust the seasoning until you are.

Once the mixture is room temperature-ish, turn on your oven to 200 C, and start assembling your pies. Decant the mixture into whichever pie dish or dishes you’re going to use. Next, crack and beat an egg and get your ready rolled pastry out of the fridge. Using a pastry brush, paint the lip of your pie dish with the egg wash. Now cut a piece of the pastry sheet bigger than your dish, and lay it over the top of  it.

Press the pastry down around the egged lip to seal the pie. Using a sharp knife, cut of the excess off the side, and then ‘crimp’ the edge with a fork. Finally, make a little ‘chimney’ hole in the centre of the lid with a tooth pick and brush it all over with the egg wash.

The pies are now ready to cook. If you’ve made small pies they’ll take around 15 to 20 minutes, a bigger one more like half an hour. Either way, the pastry lid should be dark golden brown and puffed up when they’re done.

Eat immediately with new potatoes, steamed broccoli or a green salad with a mustardy vinaigrette.

Pretty good, although maybe not as good as the missus’ chicken pie, but thats another story.

It’s bloody cold in London right now, and add hangovers into the mix from all the Christmas partying, you need some seriously restorative food to get you back on an even keel. This French onion soup ticks all the boxes in terms of comforting, warming and tasty sustenance, and will have you ready for that next session of festive boozing before you can say zut alors!

Ingredients

Olive oil

Large nob of butter

1kg of onions

5 fat cloves of garlic

1 tablespoon fresh thyme, chopped

70ml French brandy

150ml French white wine

750ml chicken stock

750ml beef stock

Plenty of freshly ground black pepper

Pinch of salt

For the croutons:

French bread, sliced on the diagonal and toasted

1 clove garlic

Grated Gruyere cheese

Method

Peel and half the onions, and then slice them finely. Melt the butter and the oil in a heavy bottomed saucepan or casserole dish, and then add the onions, garlic, thyme and salt and fry them slowly on a medium heat. The idea is to sweat the onions down and cook them until they become golden, sticky and sweet. This will take a good 15  minutes.

When you’ve got to this point, add the brandy and set light to it to burn off the harsh alcohol. This will start to deepen the flavour of the soup. Next add the white wine, and de-glaze the pan, scraping off any sticky bits from the bottom and around the sides. You’re now ready to add the stock, do this and bring up to simmering point. Taste, and add salt / freshly ground black pepper as you prefer. The soup needs about another 15-20 minutes simmering to reduce a bit and let the flavour develop.

Whilst the soup is simmering, get your grill on as high as it will go. Cut your French bread on the diagonal in centimetre thick slices, and lightly toast on both sides. Once done, cut a clove of garlic in half, and rub all over one side of the toasted bread. Then grate a bunch of the Gruyere.

When the soup is ready, ladle it into what ever bowls you are going to eat it from. Cover the surface of the soup with the garlic croutons, sprinkle on a good quantity of the grated Gruyere and then pop under the grill.

The soups are ready to eat once the Gruyere is bubling, and the edges of the croutons have gone dark brown (be careful not to burn them). Serve with a final grinding of black pepper.