Roast Shoulder of Lamb with Boulangere Potatoes

Roast Lamb Portions: 8-10

Ingredients:

• 1 Shoulder of Lamb
• 1 Bunch of Fresh Rosemary
• 1 Bunch of Fresh Thyme
• 1 Heads of Garlic
• 3 Lemons
• Maldan Sea Salt
• 6 Large Onions
• 10 Large Potatoes
• 100g Unsalted Butter
• String

I first came up with this recipe through a combination of 2 different dishes that I had been taught. The main from my college days, we made a similar dish but it was lacking the quality and refine cooking techniques that would have made it an amazing meal. The idea of marinating and slow cooking the lamb came from my Head chef Daniel Sherlock

The dish itself combines the method of cooking a lovely piece of piece of meat, generally used for dicing and slow cooking, and turning it into a joint, worthy of carving tableside at any Sunday roast. That extra luxury comes from the cooking of the Boulangere Potatoes. This type of potatoes come from the French. After the bakers had baked their bread for the day, the locals would bring their potatoes round to use their slowly cooling ovens which were perfect for this slowly cooked potato dish. My method of cooking the shoulder of Lamb on top of the potatoes is nothing new but with the extra twists make this a must try!

The Lamb

First start off by boning out the shoulder, the basis of this method is called butter flying. The Australians use this method a lot for their larger cuts of meat to speed up the cooking on their barbeques (another must!) but we will not be taking out all the bone. Take out the shoulder blade and the connecting bone, leaving the reaming foreleg of the lamb. Open the shoulder out and open out and thicker pieces of meat.  Don’t throw away the bones taken out, they can be used to make a beautiful stock and used for the potatoes, (quickly colour off the bones in a high heat oven and simply add to a pot of boiling water along with some aromatics and vegetables and cook slowly)

For the marinade, chop only the leafs of your Fresh Rosemary and Thyme down until very small, grate the zest off the lemons and then grate the head of garlic. How much you wish to use on your lamb is up to you but a good healthy coating is what I would recommend, and rub all of this mixture into your butter flied Lamb shoulder along with a really good helping of sea salt and a twist of pepper. Roll this back up to ‘re-form ‘your shoulder and tie up with several pieces of string to hold everything together. Your lamb is now ready for the oven. Place on a tray and cover with foil and roast for about 2 hours (depending on the size) until it starts to soften at about 160 degrees Celsius.

The Potatoes

The potatoes, as simple as they are to make, have some very important points to follow. The first is the onions. Slice around 5 Large onions thinly, and length ways. This may seem like a lot, but once cooked will be hardly anything. Take the sliced onions and cook in butter, some garlic and thyme slowly. Leave this to sweat, there will be a point where you look at the onions and think that they are soft, but believe me, keep them on for at least another 30 minutes. They should take nearly an hour to cook and become what you could call chutney or a jam.

Peel and slice the potatoes thinly and start to place in a greased baking tray, layering up the potatoes and cooked onions one after the other, seasoning as you go until a few inches thick. At this point you need to add the stock. Making your own stock from either chicken or the lamb bones collected from the shoulder will give you a much greater result rather than using something out of a packet. So if you have the time I would highly recommend it. Just add enough stock to just cover the potatoes. At this point takes your lamb from the oven, and collect all of the juices in the bottom of the tray and add to the potatoes as well, trying to avoid most of the fat.

To Finish......

Place the Lamb on top of the potatoes and place back into the oven at a higher temperature of 190 degrees Celsius so the lamb can colour and the stock can evaporate. The end result should leave you with a beautifully crispy lamb on the outside and soft on the inside, and potatoes that should have absorbed all the moisture from the lamb and stock and be amazingly rich and soft. This truly is a recipe from the old school but one that has been brought very much into the twenty first century and deserves to be among any great roast.