Easter lamb with juniper and rosemary in damson and sloe gin sauce

Classic FM channel has been on most of this weekend, as I'm trying to catch most of the Hall of Fame 2017. While I was making a cup of mint tea for myself after a late-ish Easter lunch, Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet was announced as moving 32 places down to no.101.
This is one of my Hall of Fame votes. Every year I change two other votes, but Prokofiev's Dance of the Knights holds a special place in my heart.
It reminds me of seeing Romeo and Juliet ballet in my home town. It was and still is one of my most favourite ballets. I think I saw it first when I was in high school, and I promptly fell in love with the ballet dancer who performed the part of Tybalt. He was a very good dancer, and was soon poached by one of Moscow theatres. That was a long time ago, and his name now escapes me.
In case you are curious, the other two votes from me were for Masquerade Suite by Aram Khachaturian (no.218 this year), and The Gadfly by Shostakovich, which appeared this evening at no.81 933 places up). I was quite torn whether to choose The Gadfly or The Jazz Suite no.2.

Our Easter started very early, as Sasha got up at some ungodly hour, when it was still dark. I fell back into an uneasy slumber, and in the meantime he wandered downstairs and raided the locked cupboard with sweets.
Eddie wanted to go to the Easter service, and came back loaded with more chocolate eggs and Easter books.
I dyed a few token eggs to put on a table as a centrepiece.
When Eddie came home from the church, he asked me: Mummy, are you cooking your tights? - It's true, I was wrapping up eggs with herbs inside the pieces of old (washed) tights. I cooked them in the boiling water with the food colouring. The pattern is not very clear, as the eggs were brown to start with.
I'm not sure why most of the eggs that you see in the shops are brown (or blue, if you buy local breed eggs), and never white. When we were kids, most eggs were white, and easy to decorate for Easter.

This is a pattern from mint leaves.

While Eddie went to the church with his Dad, I started cooking lamb. I have bookmarked recipe on Waitrose site. I don't often cook lamb, but the recipe for Juniper and rosemary lamb with damson and sloe gin sauce sounded very tasty. I'm glad I tried it, it was delicious, and I'm definitely going to cook it again, when we have guests for dinner.
I have slightly adapted it, but mostly followed the Waitrose recipe. Since I cooked just for our family, I used half a leg at 1.1kg weight.

Easter lamb with juniper and rosemary in damson and sloe gin sauce
Ingredients:
2 rosemary sprigs
2tsp sea salt
2tsp demerara sugar
2 cloves of garlic
1tsp butter spread like Lurpak
2tbsp olive oil + more
10 juniper berries
lamb, half leg (1.1kg)
1 red onion, thinly sliced
for the gravy:
2tbsp damson jam
sloe gin, about 100ml ( I used more than Waitrose's suggestion of 2tbsp)

Remove the leaves from the rosemary stalks, put into a bowl with garlic, salt, sugar, juniper berries, butter spread and olive oil. They suggest crushing the rosemary with a pestle. I used a handblender to blitz it all together. Definitely add some olive oil to make a spreadable consistency.
Rub the marinade all over the lamb and sit it on the thinly sliced onion in a roasting dish. Drizzle some olive oil over the onion too. Let it sit for half an hour.
Preheat the oven to 200C. Place the roasting dish in the oven for 10 minutes, then cook the lamb as you like it - 8 minutes per 100g of weight if you like it well done, or 6 minutes per 100g if you like it pink. Turn it once over, and occasionally baste with the lamb juice.
Once cooked, take the lamb out of the oven, wrap in foil and let it rest for half an hour. To keep it warm, put a clean towel over the foil.
For the damson sauce, tip the roasting tin to collect all the juices in a small pan, add the damson jam and sloe gin. Using a little whisk, break the jam, to achieve the right consistency. Reduce the sauce.
Serve the lamb with the damson gravy, and roast potatoes and carrots.

I also put a jar of mint jelly and redcurrant jelly on the table. I did buy fresh mint to make my own mint sauce, but was running out of time, and The Bay Tree mint jelly is lovely.
If you want to cook the same dish, I used Tiptree Damson jam and Gordon's Sloe Gin.

The Hall of Fame continues tomorrow, and do I dare to hope that the Lark Ascending will topple over. I would be pleased with any other piece of music getting to no.1 just to make it descend.

Mrs Fitz's Scotch broth (The Outlander) - #ReadCookEat

I binged-watched the first series of The Outlander just recently on Amazon, and started reading the first novel in the series amidst watching. I'm still half-way through with the book. Now, I love historical fiction, and I do enjoy time-travelling as a genre, but I am very much in two minds about both the fiction and the TV series. The historical background is fascinating, and once you "accepted" the time-travelling fluke, the plot becomes quite dramatic and almost epic. As a storyteller, Diana Gabaldon is skilled undoubtedly.
On the other hand, it is way too graphic for me. I'm not a prude when it comes to erotica, but this novel has a strange fascination with violence.
And there's too much sex. Once two main characters get married, they are at it like rabbits, non-stop, to the point of marital rape.
The last two episodes of the TV series were so violent and graphic, I kept fast-forwarding the action. The disturbing prison rape scenes went for ages. It was totally unnecessary to drag it for two episodes.
I think I'll be skipping the pages once I get there in the novel.
The Outlander series of books have zillions of fans and got raving reviews, but I do feel I'm not in the cheerleaders' camp. I'll try to finish the first novel, but it is verra long indeed.

Reading books, especially historical fiction, I always look for food mentions, and there was quite a lot of meals described, from very simple breakfast to feasts. Here are a few foodie quotes:

"I had no appetite for the parritch that Mrs FitzGibbons brought next for my breakfast, but pretended to eat in order to gain some time for thought."

"I found my appetite rather lacking... I really didn't care for herring, when all was said and done. The bannocks were freshly baked, though, and served with honey."

The bannocks with honey sounded especially appealing, and I think I will try to cook them one day. Parritch was less tempting.

"...the hall, now restored to its normal identity as a refectory. Enormous cauldrons of porridge were dispensed, together with bannocks baked on the hearth and spread with honey..."

"An even louder shout greeted the tubs of ale and whisky that now appeared on trestles, accompanied by platters of steaming bannocks and smoked beef."

Broth is mentioned quite a few times.

"Ah, lass! The aye be things for me to do! I'll send a bit o'broth up for ye. Do ye call oot if ye need anything else"
"He was right; food did help. We ate broth and bread in companionable silencce, sharing the growing comfort of warmth and fullness"

And so broth it was, I decided to cook a rich version, as might have possibly appeared in Castle Leoch, cooked by the mother hen aka Mrs Fitz.

Scotch broth
Ingredients:
100g dried soup and broth mix (pearl barley, yellow split peas, green split peas, marrowfat peas and red lentils)
1 lamb shank, about 400g
2 litres of water
2 stalks of celery
1 turnip, about 250g
4 baby leeks
2tbsp vegetable oil
1 sweet onion
2 carrots
5 big leaves of Savoy cabbage

Soak 100g of dried broth mix in cold water overnight, the next day rinse them well under the running water.
Put the lamb shank in a deep pot (or pan, if you're cooking on the hob) and add at least 2 litres of water. Add the broth mix to the lamb.
Put the pot in the oven preheated to 180C, cook for an hour. Chop the celery and add to the pot together with finely sliced white bits of leeks.
Heat up 2tbsp of oil in a medium sized frying pan, and cook finely chopped sweet onion and peeled and sliced carrots for about 10 minutes, stirring often, until the onion is golden brown. Add to the broth.
Peel and cube a medium sized turnip and add to the pot.
Cook the broth for another hour or so, add the sliced green part of leeks and cabbage in the last half an hour. You might need to add more water to the pot, so that it looks like a thick soup.
Remove the lamb shank from the pot, discard the bone and shred the meat. Return the shredded meat to the broth. Serve hot, with a nice chunk of bread.

This meal is probably best suited for a slow cooker, but as I don't have one, I cooked it in the oven.

I used a pack of soup and broth mix in this recipe, but if you have separate packs of pearl barley and peas, mix your own version.

If you don't fancy meat, there is a vegetarian broth recipe as cooked by Janice from Farmersgirl Kitchen - visit her post How to make Scotch broth like a Scot.

John Whaite's Spiced Lamb Pasties

Pasties are traditionally associated with Cornwall. A freshly baked pasty is a delicious pastry, typically made with meat and vegetables, like beef, swede or turnip and onion. I'm not the biggest fan of turnips.
Turnips always bring back memories of my student days. In the Soviet times most 1-year-students spent up to a month on collective farms, just before the studies started in early October, helping with the harvest. We were digging turnips intended as an animal feed, but as we spent many hours outdoors, we were all quite hungry and often munched on the raw turnips, peeling the skin off with a knife.
Recently celebrity chef John Whaite has come up with a lamb pasty recipe for Stork's Sunday Bakes service. This service is a social media service designed to help people bake on the nation's favourite baking day - Sunday.
Stork and John Whaite have created a series of videos for Bake with Stork Youtube channel, check it out for useful baking tips and inspiration.
I loved the sound of lamb pasties - scroll down my post to watch the video on how to make them.

These delicious pasties are filled with minced lamb, grated sweet potato (hurrah! no turnips in sight!), peas and cheese as well as spices. The shortcrust pastry is made with Stork rather than traditional butter.
I have slightly adapted the recipe. I added twice the amount of grated sweet potato (and have a little bit of filling left because of that, but I put it in the freezer and will have it one day for lunch as a topping for a baked potato).
I also used a Cheddar cheese rather than feta, because I bought a lovely local Cheddar on the farmers' market and wanted to use it.
And I cooked pasties with fresh peas.
My crimping technique is pants second-rate. I'm much better at crimping pirozhki (Russian mini pies), but then they are usually smaller in size, so much easier to work with.

However, the filling was absolutely delicious. I baked four biggish pasties. They might not look like celebrity chef's creations but they were tasty.
If you plan to bake them, the full list of ingredients and instructions on how to cook the pasties can be found under the video on Youtube (click on Youtube symbol to move from this post to the video).
These pasties would be a lovely addition to a picnic or even the upcoming Patron's Lunch.




Do you love pasties? What is your favourite filling?

Disclosure: I received a £20 Sainsbury's voucher to buy the products to test the recipe. All opinions are mine.

Lamb pilaf

If there is a cooking competition, just whistle and I'll run to join in. When TastyEasyLamb asked me if I would like to create a recipe for the blogger competition using any cut of lamb as an ingredient, they didn't need to wait too long for my answer.
The competition is easy to enter, you just need to devise your own tasty recipe using any lamb cut and post on the blog. If you are interested to find out more, have a look at Lamb Recipe Challenge. But hurry, you've got just over a week to get involved.

Lamb dishes are popular in Russia, and there are many recipes from all over the ex-Soviet Union to choose from. The Uzbek plov (pilaf) and the lamb shashlik from the Caucases became a kitchen staple in many a Russian family. For an authentic plov you need a heavy cast-iron pot, well rounded at the bottom so that the slowly cooked meat and rice dish doesn't burn.
This dish brings back memories of my childhood, when we used to visit the friends of my parents. The father of the family was a Korean born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and was an excellent cook. His plov was the best I have ever tasted. He served it with lots of spicy vegetable side dishes.
To refresh my memory, I went to read an excellent blog post Secrets of an authentic Uzbek plov (in Russian). The author shares the recipe of plov as his Uzbek grandmother used to cook it. He cooks the plov for 15 people. I have adapted the recipe to suit a much more moderate size of a crowd to be fed as well as my cooking methods, as I don't have a heavy cast-iron pot for cooking outdoors.
I also talked to my Mum who cooks plov quite often, she said cumin seeds (zeera) and barberries are essential.


Lamb pilaf
Ingredients:
600g lamb (I used neck fillets)
2 medium onions
150ml sunflower oil
450g carrots
1tsp cumin
1tbsp pilau spice (for example, Bart)
500g basmati rice
2 heads of garlic
1tbsp barberries
sea salt

Slice two onions into thin rings. When the oil is very hot, add the onion rings to the deep frying pan. Cook for about 10 minutes until the onion get nicely browned.
Cut the lamb into big chunks and add to the onion. Keep stirring. Once the lamb chunks get browned, add the sliced carrots. Cook for another 10 minutes, stirring. Add the spices (cumin and pilau spice).

Pour enough hot boiling water over the meat & veg to cover it completely.  Cook for about an hour on low, adding water to top up.
At this point, I transfer the meat into a heavy ceramic pot to continue cooking in the oven.
Add the basmati rice, and season well with salt.
Peel the outer layer of skin off the garlic heads, without separating the cloves. Insert the garlic deep inside the rice. Add hot water, it must cover the rice about 3cm above.
Cover the pot with the lid and put in the oven preheated to 180C.
Cook for 30+ minutes or more until the rice is completely cooked and all the liquid is absorbed.

Serve hot with the garlic cloves and pomegranate seeds (optional). Scatter a few chopped mint leaves.

I found Barberries in Waitrose Cooks' Ingredients isle. These dried berries add an extra sweet tart flavour to Persian dishes, as well as many recipes originating in the East.
I also used a Pilau blend from Bart. This is a rice seasoning containing onion, salt, red bell pepper, cardamom, cassia, bay leaf, garlic, fennel, black pepper, turmeric and cloves. It is very aromatic, and is a super ingredient for rice dishes.

If you enjoy lamb dishes, why don't you check out the lamb recipe which Alison from Dragons and Fairy Dust has cooked for the same competition - Lemon and cumin lamb fajitas.

Disclosure: I have received a burger press and meat skewers for taking part in the competition.

Adding my recipe to the Tea Time Treats linky hosted by Lavender and Lovage and The Hedgec0mbers
This month's theme is colourful.

Roast Lamb with Quinces and Marmalade Glaze

If you read my blog even occasionally, you might know that I love culinary challenges and projects. I was delighted to be asked to take part in Mackays Christmas project which challenged the bloggers to create a festive dish, using new preserves from Mackays. To celebrate my husband's birthday last week I cooked a roast leg of lamb for dinner. And though it was technically not a Christmas dish, it is easily adaptable for Christmas, if you are a bit fed up with the traditional turkey.

Roast lamb with quinces and marmalade glaze
Ingredients:
a leg of lamb
2 big quinces, quartered
4tsp Mackays Christmas marmalade
40ml brandy
sea salt
1tsp sumac

 Mix the marmalade with brandy and sea salt and pour over the leg of lamb. Cover with the foil and let it marinade for a couple of hours, turning the meat over a couple of times.
Place the tray with the lamb in the oven preheated to 200C and roast for half an hour open. Then cover the meat with the foil, lower the temperature to 180C and cook for two hours.

Add the quartered quinces for the last hour of cooking and sprinkle both the quinces and lamb with sumac. Roasted quinces are excellent with the red meats, and they add a beautiful aroma to an overall dish. The meat was melt-in-the-mouth, very moist and flavourful. The marmalade & brandy glaze added a touch of citrussy sweetness and enriched the gravy.

As a side dish I served a selection of roasted vegetables: a sliced turban pumpkin, 5 little beets (skinned and quartered), a fennel (thinly sliced), several baby carrots, 3 banana shallots (halved lengthways), a handful of baby tomatoes with pomegranate seeds scattered in the last few minutes of roasting. I have used some dried herbs too, cannot remember now if it was Italian mixed herbs or French.

Roasted pumpkins are simply fantastic. I usually first pre-cook the whole pumpkin in the oven for half an hour, then it is easier to slice and remove the seeds. Later the slices go back in the oven for another half hour or so.

I didn't take the picture of sliced lamb with veggies on a dish on the day. The next day I had a bit of lamb with the floral salad. Nasturtium leaves are very tasty, they remind me of rocket. I mixed a handful of nasturtium leaves and flowers, a couple of small marigold flowers and pomegranate seeds.

For the glaze I used a newly launched Christmas marmalade with cranberries from Mackays. This festive marmalade is a pure delight. I love the combination of oranges, cranberries and ginger. Superb on a toast, it is also an excellent ingredient in cooking. I recently used it as a glaze for a gammon steak (will post a recipe separately). If you are making your own Christmas hampers as gifts, this is a great addition to any foodie hamper.

Disclosure: I received four jars of jam and marmalade from Mackays for the purposes of testing and reviewing. All opinions are mine.

Lamb shanks with dates & pomegranates for Virtual Blogger Come Dine with Me with Russell Hobbs

If there's a culinary challenge, I don't need to be invited twice. Especially when there is a chance to test a new kitchen gadget and work together with my blogger friends. To celebrate the launch of their new Illumina range, Russell Hobbs invited me to take part in Virtual Blogger Come Dine with Me cooking challenge. If you follow Russell Hobbs on Facebook, you must have seen the images of menus created by foodie bloggers in the last few weeks. This week the Three Musketeers, aka Cheryl from Madhouse Family Reviews, Alison from Dragons and Fairy Dust and I, your humble servant, are doing an imaginary menu. I so wish we could meet up in real life!

Cheryl has totally rocked it with her delicious starter of Briouates (hope that's the correct spelling, that's quite a mouthful to pronounce). It's a Moroccan dish, a kind of pasties made with filo pastry, and I will be definitely making my own, now that I have seen Cheryl's recipe.
I know Alison has a mouthwatering dessert coming on Friday, and I am looking forward reading all about it.
I cooked the main dish. And here it is, my entry for Virtual Blogger Come Dine with Me with Russell Hobbs: Lamb shanks with dates & pomegranates.

In one of February Weekend issues (The Guardian, 15/02/14), Yotam Ottolenghi exclaims: "Meat and fruit on the same plate? You'd better believe it". Not sure what's the novelty though. Meat and fruit have been paired for thousands of years, in many cuisines and cultures. Even in my childhood, when the Soviet shops haven't had much of a variety of foods, my Mum often cooked dishes which combined meat and fruit, mostly dried, like apricots, prunes, raisins, figs, apples. So, for me personally this is something very familiar. And if we move to the warmer climes, what about the famous combination of ripe melons with paper thin prosciutto slices? Or lamb tagines of the Eastern cuisines? Fruit, both fresh and dried, gives the meat the touch of sweetness, while the fruit itself absorbs the meaty juices and flavours, a win-win combination.

Lamb shanks with dates & pomegranates
Ingredients:
2 lamb shanks
1 tsbp plain flour
2 onions, finely chopped
2 carrots, sliced
1 tsp ras el hanout
sea salt with rose petals
a few sprigs of fresh mint, chopped
1 cinnamon stick
15 dates
8 dried apricots
100ml rose wine
1 tomato, sliced
1tsp ground ginger
more fresh mint and half a pomegranate
to serve with mashed potatoes: 2 medium potatoes + 2 heaped tbsp creme fraiche

Start by dusting the lamb shanks with the plain flour and browning them in a frying pan with the olive oil (it takes about 10 minutes). Chop the onions and slice the carrots. Remove the lamb shanks out of the frying pan and put them in a Pyrex dish. Fry the onions and carrots in the oil and juices from lamb for about 10 minutes on low, until the onion is golden brown. Add the onions and carrots to the dish with lamb shanks.
Season the shanks well with the sea salt (I like to use the sea salt with dried rose petals, but this is optional). Add the cinnamon stick, ras el hanout, mint, dates, dried apricots, tomato, ginger and rose wine. Pour enough water to cover the shanks with all the other ingredients.
Put the Pyrex in the oven preheated to 180C and cook for half an hour. Then stir the contents a bit, cover the dish with the lid and cook for another hour and a half. If you want the dates to be chunkier, add them at a later stage, as being cooked for two hours, they almost dissolve into a sticky sauce.
Serve with the mashed potatoes made with creme fraiche.
When serving, add more mint and scatter a generous helping of pomegranates.
This is a veritable feast for eyes and palate. The lamb is very tender, and the sweet sauce of dates and spices is perfect with lamb.

As part of the challenge I received a new kitchen appliance from Russell Hobb's new Illumina range - Illumina Food Processor - which is a stylish modern gadget with unique colour features. It has a set of 4 different speeds and settings for slicing/shredding/grating, dough/cream, blending and chopping/processing. Depending on the speed you choose, the colour of the ring changes, that is so neat.
It has a capacious 2.3 litre processing bowl with safety locking lid, as well as a 1.5 litre blending jug which is perfect for making milk shakes and smoothies.
It is very easy to use and as easy to clean.

It took seconds to do a "tearful" job of chopping the onion. No more tears. I also sliced carrots for this dish. And just yesterday I posted a recipe for beetroot fritters, where again I was glad to use the food processor to shred the beets, carrots and onion.

Russell Hobbs says: "Consumer insight, years of development and expert know-how within Russell Hobbs has now resulted in the launch of Illumina – the enlightening new food preparation range which uses colour control technology to help make cooking and home life easier.
Every product in the new five–piece collection features an innovative colour control light ring which changes colour to represent speed with clear guidance on which setting is best for different food types, helping to take the guess work out of cooking"

You can find more about Illumina range on Russell Hobbs site.

Disclosure: I received the shopping vouchers to cover the cost of food products used in the recipe, and the Illumina Food Processor for the purposes of testing and taking part in the culinary challenge. All opinions are mine.