Hi, we have some friends coming over for dinner this evening and I was wondering if anyone has any good, tried and trusted recipes for a slow cooked shoulder (or gigot) of lamb with seasonal vegetables.
Any suggestions will be welcome.
Thanks
sounds perfect for my slow cooker...(Xmas present to myself!) will let you know how it cooks up....thanks for the recipe Judith.
I know the gigot has been frozen but ... just for information ... I use a Fat Ladies recipe called " A N Wilson's slow cooked lamb". Put leg, or shoulder, in cast iron pot, add four or five chopped onions, same number of shallots, tin of toms, bit of tom. puree, loads of garlic cloves, sometimes I add chopped carrots, optional extras a few anchovy fillets drained and chopped, black olives.' a tin of flageolet beans Then add a good wine glass full of dry white wine and a splash of water, S & P, thyme and/or rosemary, put the lid on and put it in a really low oven for about 8 hours! If anyone has the Fat Ladies book it is in, feel free to correct me - I've been doing it from memory for ages. All you need with that is good bread!
Yes, ours went completely yesterday and mild when I went to bed (well, relatively). Woke up to a blanket of snow and still near blizzard.
Parsnips are complements of my mother who overcooked everything in lard (so Scots of her generation and yuk!) which made parsnips a soggy, but slightly burned (charcoal at early stage, so still soft) unpleasant thing. So they remain an aversion rather than anything being wrong with them.
Should have guessed Brian....I love parsnips...especially as chips or roasted with honey, and the base of a good curry soup...but 10 years ago they were animal feed and rarely seen in the shops....didnt know about the top of the parsnip Brian...will try that next time. By the by...where did the snow come from??? it was warmish last night..off to friends for dinner and it was 7 degrees...wake up to a winter wonderland today!
There are a couple of market traders who listen to suggestions. The woman I buy vegetables and fruit from has a very wide range of good quality produce and does include imports like mangetout peas from Kenya at this time of year. The organic produce sellers have a limited range, more expensive and often less nice that do not keep as long. So I tend to go to the former mostly for choice. She listens to people and tries new ideas, neither of the organic ones on one market claim to be able to do so. Therefore, things like red cabbage and cavalo nero are available quite frequently from the more enterprising stall holder. I think it is people like her who on a small scale are changing the narrow view of French consumers. Where that is epitomised is in the quite wide ranging offer of exotic fruit and some vegetables like yams around Christmas. However, most of this does not help Nick cook a gigot, just make my mouth water...
When I first came to Brittany it was very difficult to find parsnips and butternut squash. I started to grow both myself and still do, but they are readily available here now. I also grow red cabbage which I love cooked with apple and onion, cider vinegar and sugar and spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg. I like to grow spinach too and it's lovely served with butter and black pepper - lovely with buttery, garlic chicken and rice.
Of course I do Carol, but that takes that thrill off finding a new one in a garden centre. I have been part of a seed share group for years as well and that is where I get my real broccoli seed from. I have bought but not grown Cavalo Nero or any other kale here. It is really just about as common as blette (Swiss chard) is here where OH come from. I do grow the chard in various colours though. Parsnips, never liked them myself, so do not bother. Incidentally, if you do, they are related to parsley and the green tops are very edible and I really don't know why people don't eat them...
Oh yes Cavolo nero delicious. As for parsnips - we eat them all right & panais is often on the menu at school so not considered at all exotic.
get the seed sent over....I get seeds from several companies posted without probs...some of the heritage seed is good. We belong to a gardening group here...and everyone very generous sharing....do you grow the Cavalo Nero Brian? which is becoming very popular in the UK right now....plus I love parsnips...which thankfully you can now buy hereabouts easily, probably for the Brits...not sure if the French eat them.
Tae sma Carol... Wee fiddly white neeps. Swede is also known as golden crown turnip... Kale right, also known as curly kale, which a kind of suger beet that does not get a large bulbous root, and I also grow and love real broccoli and not the calabrese that is sold everywhere as broccoli. Years of living in East Anglia with such crops all round... and now I am as frustrated as hell I usually cannot even find the seed for them here!
For me & I suspect Brian, a neep is orange (= swede). The white ones are turnips but they are a bit furrin & sophisticated N of the Border perhaps - or maybe just too much of a faff to peel when they are small enough to be delicious (magret with glazed navets mmmmmmm). I love Kail too & in England they spell it Kale I think.
I get very confused...is a neep a swede or a turnip??? interesting as I think these veg are often confused in recipes....a proper Cornish Pasty should have turnips...but often in the new Pasty shops they have swede... what do you use? personally I loved mashed swede with lots of butter and white pepper...but I think a Pasty without a turnip with lots of white pepper again, just isnt worth the eating.
Egg-zactly
That's a fowl suggestion
chicken!
Thanks for all the suggestions. So I went out for the lamb and when I got back, Nathalie has woken up with a stinking cold. She’s not any better now so I have had to cancel for this evening, but will keep the suggestions for when we can reschedule. I went for the gigot in the end and it looks beautiful. It’s now in the freezer on hold for a couple of weeks.
Thanks again for the suggestions.
Think I’ll go for Véronique’s suggestion with Brian’s variation. I am not barbecuing in this weather!
A few different veggies - petit pois with mint leaves, butternut squash roasted with garlic, roasted beetroot.
garlic, rosemary and olive oil then brave the weather and bbq it slowly.....mmmmmmmmm
i should have added I use a jamie Oliver recipe which always turns out well.
Oh for an ashet full of gigot! Bashed neeps, oh the bliss, I LOVE them. (My 1/2 Fr 1/2 Venetian OH says they are pig food but no, a worse heresy than chopping down Plato's olive tree)