Roasted Vegetable and Slow Cooked Lamb Salad
Serves: 4
Time: 6-8 Hours
This is a dinner that requires a lot of cook time but once the lamb is in the oven it can do it’s thing without you. Sometimes I will cook my lamb overnight which is a great way to eliminate the time factor. Otherwise, if you are wanting to do it on the day, you need to have the lamb in the oven by midday.
Leftovers
There are plenty of leftovers, so lunch tomorrow is the exact same, or for some variety you could fill a pita pocket.
What you'll need
Plan ahead
To prep your sweet potatoes for tomorrow take an oven tray and line with paper, then prick your sweet potatoes with a fork and lightly rub with oil and salt.You want to get the sweet potatoes in at the same time as the lamb so that they can both cook at 200C for 40 minutes.
1.5-1.8kg boneless lamb shoulder (go for one that has a really decent amount of fat on it as this is what will make your meat juicy and soft).
No time for slow cooked shoulder? How about lamb backstrap which cooks in under 10 minutes?
1 cup of cooking wine
4 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons of fresh chopped rosemary large stalks removed
1/4 Jap pumpkin
3 medium sweet potatoes
1 can of chickpeas
1 bunch of rocket
1/4 cup whole almonds
2 tablespoons currants
1/2 cup Greek yoghurt
1/2 lemon
From the pantry
1 tablespoon tahini
olive oil
salt and pepper
Vego’s
The roast vegetables and salad are delicious without the meat.
Prep and Cook
Preheat oven to 200c
Cook Lamb
Roughly chop garlic and rosemary and rub all over the lamb. Season well with salt and pepper.
Drizzle with a little oil then place on a deep oven tray lined with paper.
Fill the bottom with red wine; if your tray is on the larger size you might want to add more wine, the idea is to have enough liquid to cover the base.)
Cover tightly with foil and place in the oven for 40 minutes.
Overnight cooking
If you are going to cook your lamb through the night, you will still want to complete all the preparation steps. After you have cooked your lamb for 40 minutes, turn your oven down to 140 degrees. In the morning when you get up 8 hrs later, your meat should be beautiful and soft. Separate it with forks then leave to cool. Once cool, pop the whole tray in the fridge. When you are ready to start dinner take the foil off your meat and crank that puppy in the oven at 200c for around 40 minutes. This way you'll end up with lovely soft meat that also has some great crispy texture.
After 40 minutes, turn the oven down to 160c and cook for another 3 1/2 hours.
All lamb will cook at different lengths depending on a myriad of reasons - age, quality, fat and feed just to name a few, so it is a good idea to check your meat every few hours to see how soft it is. Once it begins to soften you can stretch it out with forks so that more of the meat is in the juices. Always re cover with the foil.
When your fork can slide through the thickest part of the shoulder and pull it apart with ease then your lamb is ready to go onto the next stage. If after the 3 1/2 hours this part is still tough continue to cook checking every half hour.
Remove the foil from the lamb and turn the oven up to 200c.
Place lamb back in the oven and cook for 30 minutes.
Remove from oven and leave to rest.
Roast Veggies
If you are thinking about serving this dish to guests, please take the time to roast all the ingredients separately to make sure they are perfect. This was just a family dinner for us so I instead went for the one tray bake approach.
Peel sweet potatoes and cut into large chunks.
Cut the skin off the pumpkin and remove seeds. Chop into large chunks slightly bigger than the sweet potato.
Drain chickpeas.
Combine the pumpkin, sweet potato and chickpeas in a bowl and drizzle with oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper then toss well.
Layout on a baking tray lined with paper.
Place the veg into the oven to roast at the same time when you turned the oven back up to 200c for the lamb. Cook veg for 45 minutes.
Plate it Pretty
Mix yoghurt with the juice of half a lemon and the tahini and salt and pepper.
Wash and pick rocket.
Roughly chop almonds and mix with the currants.
Smear a large tablespoon of the yoghurt mix in a semi circle across 1 half of your serving plate. Turn the plate so that the largest part of the smear sits at 6 o’clock then take a handful of the roasted veg mix and make a line from 1 o’clock to 7 o’clock.
Scatter over the veg with rocket.
Top with pulled lamb and sprinkle with the almonds and currants.
Enjoy!
Lunch tomorrow
We had heaps leftover so lunch tomorrow is exactly the same but minus the yoghurt. If you wanted to add some extra carbs this would make a tasty sandwich in a pita pocket (have added this to the extra lunch list).