As promised, I wanted to share with you the recipes from yesterday’s post, starting with the most amazing lamb roast ever. This is a Jamie Oliver recipe so I’m not going to completely repost it from his site, but just walk you through the steps to show you how incredibly easy it is.

His recipe calls for a lamb shoulder but I haven’t been able to find that cut anywhere so I ended up going with a portion from the upper leg. If you can’t find lamb, a large cut of beef or pork would work just fine.

Start by patting the roast dry with some paper towels and trimming most of the excess fat, but leaving a little here and there to keep it moist while it roasts. Cut long deep slices across the meat horizontally and then vertically, making a grid in the flesh. Salt and pepper the crap out of it, making sure to get the seasonings into the grooves you’ve just cut, and then rub it all over with a thin coating of olive oil. Lay over about 8 to 10 whole sprigs of rosemary.

Next up, peel and entire head of garlic. No, for real.

I find it’s easiest to break it into cloves with my hands and then bash each clove with the butt of my knife to loosen them from the peels. They slip out pretty effortlessly if you’ve done a good job of beating them into submission.

Next, tuck the cloves into the slices all over the lamb and just chuck any extras into the roasting pan.

At this point, Jamie would instruct you to turn your oven on “full whack,” which I think is a very charming thing to say and which for me means to turn my oven up to 500 degrees.

Cover your roasting dish with a sheet or two of aluminum foil and poke holes all over. When the oven has finished heating up to a fiery inferno, put in the roast and immediately turn the temperature down to 325 degrees. Let him bake for at least 3 hours and up to 4 if your roast is bigger than mine. Your house is going to smell amazing.

When it’s ready to come out, it’ll look like this…

It’ll be swimming in delicious lamb fat and juices and the meat will be pulling away from the bone. Discard the rosemary and get ready to shred it.

You can either pick out all the cloves of garlic and use them separately, or you can shred them right into the meat. They are so soft that they’re barely holding together at this point. I love roasted garlic with an intense passion so I like to eat them whole as if they were a side dish.

Just transfer the roast to a cutting board and, using a fork to hold it still, pull off chunks of meat with a pair of sturdy tongs. It should come off pretty easily though you may have to pick at it a bit around the bone.

This roast is excellent by itself, but it was even more special with the miso shiitake gravy that I’ll be sharing with you tomorrow.

It’s a real show stopper of a recipe and it really only takes 10 minutes or so to put together before the oven does all the rest. You can even prep it a day ahead of time and stash it in the fridge until it’s time to start cooking.

I hope you try it next time you need to impress a guest!

What is your favorite roasted dish?

December 21, 2011 Alayna Discussion, Recipes 6 comments

Hello all.

Not too many interesting things have been going on around here lately. We’ve been busy finishing up the very last of our Christmas shopping and just enjoying some time off of work together. Jeff is cashing in his remaining vacation time so he doesn’t go back to work until January!

We did manage to squeeze in one more social event before the holiday. This past weekend we had our friends John and Emily over for a little dinner party. I love to cook fancy elaborate food but rarely have an occasion to, so it was nice to be able to cook something special for a change.

On the menu:

• Roasted lamb leg with rosemary and whole garlic
• Buttermilk mashed potatoes
• Miso shiitake gravy
• Honey soy glazed carrots
• Apple butter cake with cinnamon cider buttercream

Yeah, it was as good as it sounds.

The lamb roast is a Jamie Oliver recipe that I’ve made several times before, and it’s been a hit every time.

I used an entire head of garlic and a ton of rosemary. I’ll share the recipe tomorrow!

I used some of the pan drippings and a few of those cloves of garlic to make the most amazing shiitake mushroom gravy ever.

Again, I’ll give you this recipe soon because it’s just insane, and you don’t need to use lamb drippings either when butter will work just fine.

The honey soy glazed carrots were soft and and lightly salty-sweet.

This recipe is super easy. Just 2 lbs. of carrots with a generous swish of soy sauce and a squirt or two of honey. They bake at 400 degrees for an hour covered in aluminum foil to hold in the moisture and keep the honey from burning.

And here’s a plate of everything…

I ended up pureeing the miso shiitake gravy for a better consistency. It was so good paired with the creamy potatoes and fragrant roasted lamb. I ate a few of those roasted garlic cloves by themselves too. I could seriously make a meal out of just roasted garlic and a good loaf of bread.

Dinner was served with a glass of Cardhu 12 year, a sweet and honey-like Scotch that suited the flavors of the dinner perfectly. Never mind that it’s in a Jack glass. I can’t even drink that stuff anymore, too sweet!

And the jewel of the evening…cake!

I have so many cake recipes bookmarked and I never have an occasion to make one. I modified this recipe to create this apple butter cake with cinnamon cider frosting. It had a damp banana bread texture and the frosting was smooth and not-too-sweet.

I’ll share my changes to the original recipe with you soon!

I know for a fact that John and Emily loved the food, and I really enjoyed getting to make it for them. We were all feeling sleepy afterwards from stuffing ourselves and having a few too many whiskeys.

I had so much fun preparing this meal that I’m already scheming for future dinner parties. Recipes to come……!

December 20, 2011 Alayna Discussion 5 comments

I’ve started lifting weights again now that Jeff and I finally bought a small set of adjustable weights for the house. I’ve noticed that now that my body is constantly breaking down and rebuilding muscle that I am craving protein much more, which makes sense, but has led to some really unusual dinners lately.

I left the farmer’s market the other day with 4 huge short ribs, something I haven’t bought in over a year. I got home and suddenly thought to myself, “How did I talk myself into buying all this meat?! What am I gonna do with all of it?!” As you may know, Jeff and I are not vegetarians, but meat is never a requirement and is rarely the focus of the meals I make. So to come home with several pounds of beef ribs as an impulse buy kinda made me chuckle at myself a little.

Well, I had them, might as well make them awesome right?

I started making a flavorful marinade by heating up some garlic, ginger, scallions, and red pepper flake in sesame oil to release their flavors.

Then I added soy sauce, rice vinegar, mirin, and lemon juice. That got poured over the short ribs and left to marinate for about an hour.

I got a grill pan searing hot and sizzled the ribs on it, about 5 minutes on each side.

When those came off, I added some cubed pineapple to the grill pan and drizzled the leftover marinade over them. When the pineapple was nice and hot, it was time to eat!

I served it with jasmine rice and some of the spicy cucumber quick pickles that I made the other day.

This cut of meat has a lot of fat on it and several bones to work around, so there are really only a few good bites of meat on it. That’s why I bought 4 for just the 2 of us and it really was just the right amount. We ended up having about one and a half each and then Jeff took the last one to lunch the next day.

Garlic and ginger short ribs

Short ribs coated in a flavorful asian marinade.

Prep Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour, 20 minutes

Yield: 2 to 4 servings

Ingredients

• 4 medium-sized flanken-cut short ribs
• 3 large cloves of garlic (sliced)
• a 1 inch piece of ginger (grated)
• 2 scallions (sliced)
• a pinch of red pepper flake
• 2 tbsp. mirin
• 1 tbsp. rice vinegar
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• the juice of 1 lemon
• sesame oil

Cooking Directions

1. In a small pot heat garlic, ginger, scallions, and red pepper flake with sesame oil until fragrant.
2. Add liquid ingredients and allow to heat up but not boil.
3. Pour over short ribs in a sealable container, shake to coat and leave to marinate for 1 hour.
4. Grill short ribs on a very hot grill pan coated in sesame oil for about 5 minutes on each side.

This was a delicious combination of flavors. The ribs were so garlicky and flavorful, and the pineapple was bursting with sweetness.

Do you like fruit in savory dishes?

May 25, 2011 Alayna Discussion, Recipes 8 comments