I adapted my recipe from this recipe which I’ve used before.

For an Indian style HALF shoulder, the spice mix I used was

1 tsp cumin, ground
1 tsp coriander seeds, ground
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp (garlic) salt
1/2 tsp red chilli powder
1/2 tsp cloves, ground
1 tsp fennel seeds, ground
1 & 1/2 tsp turmeric
fresh garlic and ginger, chopped finely
Enough groundnut oil to moisten the mix for it to adhere to the meat (not required if using garlic and ginger paste as it contains groundnut oil)
Yoghurt (optional)

I used 1.5 times the above for a whole shoulder and it was fine to cover the top and flavour it. In fact twice the marinade is too much and FAR too salty.

Method
Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius. Line a baking tray (for a half shoulder I used a small oven). Stab the skin-side of the shoulder all over. Rub a thin layer of spice mix on all the other sides, then use the remainder to form a thick layer on the skin side (which will be on top), rubbing well into the scores. Cover with foil and bake for 3 hours, removing the foil for the last hour. The aroma of spices while it cooks is heavenly. Lots of the lamb fat should melt out. Rest under foil for 15 mins before serving.

For a whole shoulder 3 hours at 150C works well.

An excellent addition is thinly sliced aubergine coated in a little yoghurt placed under the shoulder. I cooked a whole shoulder with 1 sliced aubergine under it, making sure the slices stayed underneath the lamb otherwise they are prone to burn. You could get 2 sliced aubergines under though; 1 aubergine goes to nothing as thye lose so much water. I guess sliced potatoes would work as well.

This is quite rich, so serve with some lemon wedges and plain yoghurt to cut through the fattiness. As it is dry, serve with veggie Indian side dishes with a bit of moisture e.g lentils or green beans cooked with tomatoes. Plain rice or perhaps chapattis are good carb options.

7 Jan 2013
125C is too low to melt the fat out. Also the shoulder needs to start out at room temperature to cook in 3 hours. Found this out the hard way when we had Mark’s family round for dinner last night. We couldn’t eat the lamb because there was still too much fat in it. A bitter disappointment, especially after all the effort that had gone into making the other dishes.

29 Jan 2013
Tried a slightly different recipe tonight: Anjum Anand’s honey-roasted lamb. It turned out wonderfully tender and juicy with a flavoursome crust.

I adapted it for my half shoulder of lamb in the following ways:
– I didn’t bother to marinade beforehand. The meat was still very good though and serving the crust with the meat was more than satisfactory
– I used ground almonds instead of flaked (?)
– I cut the amounts of lemon juice and honey by about half
– I cooked for 3 hours at 150C with the shoulder starting at room temperature, then rested before serving. I cooked it uncovered for half an hour to let the almond crust colour a litte, then covered with foil for the rest of the cooking time, basting with the rendered fat after 2 hours of cooking.

Notes for next time:
– The half shoulder was from Sainsbury’s. The meat was quite dark red to start with and turned out better than the pinker half shoulders I have bought in the past from Waitrose. So it seems that even for these cheaper cuts it’s worth buying quality.
– After 3 hours the meat was very tender but there was still a thick layer of fat on top which prevented the marinade flavouring the meat. Next time I’d like to try removing at least some of that fat before cooking.
– The garlic and ginger paste sill tastes a bit raw in the finished dish. Might be worth frying it off, even just a little, before mixing into the marinade.

25 Jan 2018

– 3 1/2 hours at 160C for a whole shoulder from Sainsburys trimmed of fat worked well.
– Don’t bother to marinade the bottom of the meat (which is in contact with the baking tray) because it just burns and the flavour doesn’t get into the meat. If it is possible to horizontally section up the meat and put a layer of marinade in that would probably work better.

I don’t seem to have made any notes about this and just took a photo of the flavouring ingredients and the finished dish. I think the inspiration must have come from Ken Hom’s pad thai recipe. I do remember that I left the fish very slightly undercooked on the non-skin side so that placing it on the soup would finish it off.

This is a recipe from Nigel Slater’s Real Cooking book. I had been looking forward to cooking it for some time and so I bought red mullet (not snapper) fillets and (baby) spinach. But, partly due to the recipe and partly due to my rather thin home made langoustine stock, it was rather bland. This was in spite of my adding deseeded green chilli and a lot more garlic than was called for. To be fair though, I didn’t taste it right before serving – I’m always forgetting to do this – which would have given me a chance to rectify the situation somewhat.

I found some mistakes in the recipe: 1) the title says grilled fish but in fact it fried then poached while sitting in top of the soup, 2) the recipe calls for skinned fillets but the photograph shows the skin plainly left on the red mullet. And while we’re on the subject, the marinade was far too strong for mullet.

If I make this again I will use more robust fish such as salmon and big up the salt, hot and sour flavours. I’ll also use a more concentrated and so more tasty stock.

Oven with fan on, 160 degrees, 15-20 mins. No need to brush sausages with anything, just line trays with baking paper. This method gives the sausages a good outer colour without drying out the filling.

Sausage fusilli recipe by Jamie Oliver

Made this for Abbie and Stuart when they came over for a simple lunch. OK, so it wasn’t amazing but it was fine. The sausage was nicely pepped up with Italian flavours. I think it would have been better if when went on the pasta had more of a sauce-like consistency. Maybe next time I will reduce the wine and lemon juice and replace with some tinned tomato.  Having said that, I probably won’t make it again as Mr W was not impressed with it. He called it ‘student food’.

This is from Gordon Ramsay’s Great Escapes. I found the recipe on a food blog:

Ingredients
half a butternut squash
half a sweet potato
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp onion seeds
2 garlic cloves
3-4 dried chillis
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method
Peel the squash and spud and chop into little 1 cm cubes.
Boil for a few minutes in salted water until slightly soft, drain well.
Heat the oil in a pan and toasted the two types of seeds gently for 30 seconds.
Add the garlic and fry gently.
Tip in the chillis
Add the squash and spud and fry until they are very tender and slightly crispy

My adjustments
Used 1 whole butternut squash and no sweet potato
Added 1 tsp salt to the water for blanching
Roughly doubled the amount of garlic
Reduced the amount of chilli