Slow-roasted blade of lamb, with an anchovy & rosemary crust
A vegcentric diet, to us, means celebrating and enjoying seasonal, vegetarian dishes 90% of the time, and high welfare, sustainable meat or fish 10% of the time. As and when we do enjoy meat or fish it’s a real treat and more often than not it’ll be for a special occasion feast with family and friends. This is our absolute favourite lamb recipe, it’s one we cooked with guests at a Zoom dinner party, and one we hope to enjoy with our family this Easter.
Ask your butcher for the ‘blade end’ of the shoulder, rather than the full shoulder or the ‘knuckle end’. This meat is softer, richer and perfectly suited to slow-cooking and ‘pulling’. The blade contains less bone than the knuckle end, giving you more bang for your buck, and it’s a more convenient shape and size for the oven too.
We serve this lamb with two sauces, rather than a traditional gravy: an anchovy & lemon crème fraîche, and a zippy green sauce made with fresh herbs. The two play off each other incredibly well and work together to ‘cut through’ the fat of the lamb.
Prep time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 4 hours
This This recipe serves between 4-6 people depending on the weight of the cut you have. We had a 1.8 kg blade end shoulder of lamb which was sufficient for 6 adults.
Ingredients:
For the lamb:
1.2 - 2 kg of blade of lamb
1 whole bulb garlic, cloves peeled
40 g rosemary stripped from stalks
1 tin anchovies (-2 fillets for the white sauce)
50 ml red wine vinegar
25 ml olive oil
25 ml water
2 tsp flakey sea salt
For the zippy green sauce:
45 g baby spinach (or 30 g spinach + 15 g dill / parsley)
30 g fresh mint leaves
1 lemon - juice only
2 tbsp water
¼ tsp flakey sea salt
For the anchovy & lemon white sauce:
2 anchovy fillets
1 small clove garlic, finely minced/grated
½ lemon - zest & juice
200 ml crème fraîche
¼ tsp flakey sea salt
¼ tsp cracked black pepper
Method:
Remove the lamb from the fridge and allow it to come to room temperature. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees.
Trim away excess fat or tough skin. Place the joint ‘fat-side-up’ in a suitably sized roasting tray and score the fat in a criss-cross fashion.
Make the crust: in a blender or nutribullet whizz together the peeled garlic cloves, rosemary leaves, drained anchovies, red wine vinegar, olive oil and sea salt. (Remember to reserve 2 anchovies for the white sauce). This will make a thick, pale green slurry.
Pour and pat this slurry all over the scored lamb, then pop the lamb in the preheated oven (or at the top of the bottom right Aga oven).
Roast the blade for 3 ¾ - 4 hours in total with the following adjustments:
After 90 mins cover the tray with tin foil and return to the oven for a further 90 minutes.
After another 90 mins (now 3 hrs in total) remove the tin foil. Cook the lamb uncovered for the final 45 mins-1 hr to allow for caramelisation and concentration of flavour.
If things are looking particularly juicy, or you would prefer a little more char on your meat, turn the heat up to 190 for the final 15 minutes (or put in the top right oven of the Aga).
Once cooked keep the lamb warm under tin foil until you are ready to pull and serve.
Both sauces simply need to be whizzed in a blender or nutribullet, and these can be made ahead of time and held in the fridge. The key with the crème fraîche based sauce is to mince the garlic as finely as possible before blending to ensure even dispersion of flavour.
We recommend ‘pulling’ this lamb in the roasting tray along with all the crispy bits! If there appears to be excess fat/oil in the tray, pour this off before shredding your lamb, but be careful not to lose any flavoursome juices.
Serve the juicy pulled lamb with the 2 sauces, boiled skin-on potatoes, and steamed greens. Rustic yes, but absolutely stratospheric flavour!