Roast leg of lamb with basil, pecorino, garlic and wine

If you want to ring the changes on your Sunday roast try this delicious recipe from Diana Henry's brilliant new book From the Oven to the Table.

Diana writes: "This came about after I cooked a Greek dish that had a stuffing made from a Greek cheese (not unlike pecorino) and ground allspice. I’d never thought about a cheese stuffing for lamb before. So this is just something that came out of my kitchen for Sunday lunch one week: Italian ingredients, Greek-inspired.

serves 6–8

120g (4¼oz) pecorino cheese, finely grated

6 garlic cloves, finely grated

sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus more if needed

leaves from a small bunch of basil, plus more to serve (optional)

1.8kg (4lb) leg of lamb

2 medium red onions, cut into wedges

600g (1lb 5oz) small waxy potatoes, scrubbed, then halved or quartered, depending on size

350g (12oz) red and yellow tomatoes, halved or quartered

250ml (9fl oz) white wine

Preheat the oven to 220°C fan (450°F), Gas Mark 8.

Put the cheese, garlic and some salt into a mortar and pound to a rough purée, gradually adding the olive oil. Tear the basil leaves, add them to the mortar and pound them, too.

Place the leg of lamb in a roasting tin. Make deep incisions all over it and push the paste from the mortar down into them. You can also loosen the meat around the bone to make a pocket and push the paste into that, too. Season all over and put into the oven.

Roast for 15 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 180°C fan (375°F), Gas Mark 5. Add the onions, potatoes and tomatoes to the roasting tin, toss them in the fat in the pan, adding a little more oil if it’s needed to moisten them, then season and roast for a final 45 minutes, adding the wine after 20 minutes. The lamb will be pink. If you prefer it more well done, cook itfor a little longer.

Remove the lamb to a plate, cover with foil, insulate well (I use old towels or tea towels) and leave to rest for 15 minutes. If the potatoes are tender, cover them and keep warm in a low oven while the lamb rests; if they’re still a bit firm, increase the oven temperature to 200°C fan (410°F), Gas Mark 6½, return the vegetables to the oven, uncovered, and cook until they’re ready.

Serve the lamb with the potatoes, tomatoes and onions, scattered with a few basil leaves, if you like.

What to drink: Given the inspiration is Greek and the ingredients Italian I'd go for a Greek or an Italian wine - it could be white or red. For a Greek red look for an agiorgitiko or for a white, an assyrtiko. For an Italian red Chianti would actually go pretty well or a light Sicilian red such as frappato or nerello mascalese. Or almost any dry Italian white - I'd fancy a Greco di Tufo.

This recipe comes from From the Oven to the Table: Simple dishes that look after themselves by Diana Henry is published by Mitchell Beazley, £25.00,www.octopusbooks.co.uk. Photograph © Laura Edwards

Lamb Boulangère with spruce beer

I've been looking forward to beer writer Melissa Cole's new book The Beer Kitchen since I heard about it a few months ago. As I expected it's packed not only with delicious recipes but some great suggestions for the type of beers to use in and pair with each dish (see the Cook and Pair suggestions below)

Serves 6–8

Melissa writes: This is one of my go-to lazy Sunday roast recipes. I'm not renowned for my patience and normally for a dish like this you’d be exhorted to poke little holes in the lamb skin and stick anchovies, herbs and slivers of garlic in them – but it’s such a lot of fuss, so I’ve devised a simpler and, pleasingly, more efficient way to infuse these flavours into your meat.

Two quick notes on this: firstly, buy a cheap mandolin – it’s an invaluable kitchen tool, but always use the guard. Don’t argue with me! Cutting yourself on a mandolin blade is a sickening feeling that you'll never forget – trust me. Second, you will need a BIG roasting dish and some turkey foil or a large roasting tray (pan) with a lid.

Ingredients

2.25–2.5 kg (5 lb 8 oz–5 lb 10 oz) bone-in lamb shoulder

4 tablespoons anchovy paste (if you can’t find the paste, pound 20-30 preserved anchovies to a paste in a pestle and mortar)

10 large sprigs of lemon or ordinary thyme, leaves picked and finely chopped

1.5 kg (3 lb 5 oz) waxy potatoes

2 red onions

1 large garlic bulb, cloves lightly crushed

2 teaspoons fine sea salt

2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

330 ml (11 1/4 fl oz/1 1/3 cups) spruce or pine beer (see below*)

500 ml (17 fl oz/2 cups) chicken or lamb stock (or however much will fit, reserve the rest)

For the gravy:

1 tablespoon cornflour (cornstarch)

1 tablespoon dark soy sauce

1 tablespoon red miso paste

Method

Preheat the oven to 140°C (275°F/Gas 1).

Turn the lamb shoulder skinside down and make 3 cm- (1 1/4 in-) deep incisions to create a large diamond grid pattern in the flesh. Take the anchovy paste and a tablespoon of the thyme leaves, mix them together and rub them into the incisions. Set aside.

Into the base of the roasting tray (pan), slice two-thirds of the potatoes and all the onions, evenly scatter over the garlic cloves and the remaining thyme leaves, season with half the salt and the pepper. Mix together with your hands, breaking the onions up into rings as you go.

Roughly smooth out the top of the potato mixture, add the beer and the chicken or lamb stock, then, with the remaining potatoes, make two neat overlapping rings, one inside the other on the top around the outside.

Put the lamb shoulder, flesh side down, in the middle of the potatoes and very lightly score the top in a smaller diamond grid pattern, literally just scratching the surface with the knife. Season with the remaining salt and pepper.

Put the lid/foil on and pop in the oven for 30 minutes.

Turn the heat down to 120°C (250°F/Gas 1/2) and cook for 5–6 hours. When the lamb is ready, you will be able to pull the shoulder bone out with little or no resistance.

At that point, lift the lamb out very carefully and place on a large plate, cover with kitchen foil and pop back in the oven.

Carefully pour off any excess roasting juices from the potatoes (it’s helpful to have an extra pair of hands for this if you can) into a large saucepan.

Turn the oven up to 200°C (400°F/Gas 6), take the lamb out and put the potatoes back in. Leave the lamb somewhere warm-ish to rest.

To make the gravy, mix the cornflour, soy and miso in a small bowl, add a ladle of the cooking juices and whisk together with a fork.

Add this mixture to any juices in the saucepan and allow to bubble gently over a low heat and reduce to your desired gravy consistency.

When the potatoes are browned, turn the oven off, crack open the door slightly, and return the lamb to the middle of the dish. Put your serving plates in to warm.

Cook whatever vegetables you require and bring everything to the table to serve.

* Spruce, juniper and pine beers can often be seasonal, so feel free to substitute a tripel, gently heated for a few minutes with some rosemary or pine/spruce tips and left to stand for 10 minutes

COOK

Williams Bros. Alba – UK

Finlandia Sahti – Finland

Pihtla Beer – Estonia

Pinta Koniec Šwiata – Poland

Rogue Yellow Snow Pilsner – USA

PAIR

Tripel Karmeliet – Belgium

Unibroue La Fin du Monde – Canada

Westmalle Tripel – Belgium

Wäls Trippel – Brazil

St Austell Bad Habit – UK

Extracted from The Beer Kitchen by Melissa Cole (Hardie Grant, £20) Photography © Patricia Niven

Warm lamb salad with a pea, mint & feta cheese dressing

A fabulously summery recipe from the very appealing Great British Farmhouse Cookbook - perfect for this time of year.

Unusually it's sponsored by a company - the enterprising Yeo Valley dairy in Somerset - but you don't find their branding all over the recipes which have been put together by Sarah Mayor, the Cordon-Bleu trained daughter of the company's founders Roger and Mary Mead and a farmer's wife herself.

Sarah writes: "We’re not normally huge fans of frozen veg, but with peas we make an exception. They’re normally frozen within minutes of being picked, so they’re actually far tastier than fresh peas that have been hanging around in the fridge for a while."

SERVES 6

1 x 2.5kg leg of lamb, butterflied

2 little gem lettuces, broken into leaves, washed and dried

1/4 cucumber, halved and thinly sliced

salt and freshly ground black pepper

FOR THE MARINADE:

6 tbsp olive oil

the leaves from 2 rosemary sprigs, finely chopped

the leaves from 2 large thyme sprigs, roughly chopped

3 garlic cloves, crushed

finely grated zest and juice of 1 small lemon

FOR THE PEA, MINT AND FETA CHEESE DRESSING:

3 small shallots, very thinly sliced

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

1/4 tsp caster sugar

250g frozen peas

8 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

the leaves from a 20g bunch fresh mint, chopped, plus extra

whole leaves for garnish

200g feta cheese, crumbled

FOR THE GARLIC AND MINT YOGURT:

250g wholemilk natural yogurt

1 garlic clove, crushed

2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

2 tbsp finely chopped fresh mint

1. Mix the marinade ingredients together in a large shallow dish with 1 teaspoon each of salt and freshly ground black pepper. Add the lamb and turn it over in the mixture a few times until it is well covered. Cover and leave to marinate for at least 4–6 hours, ideally overnight.

2. To make the dressing, put the sliced shallots into a mixing bowl and stir in the vinegar and sugar. Set aside for at least 30 minutes so that the shallots can soften. Cover the peas with warm water and leave them to thaw, then drain well and set to one side. Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas 6.

3. Pop a ridged cast iron griddle over a high heat until smoking hot, then lower the heat to medium-low. Lift the lamb out of the marinade, shaking off the excess, then place it on the griddle and cook for 5-7 minutes on each side until well coloured*. Transfer to a roasting tin, spoon over any remaining marinade and roast for 20-25 minutes. Transfer the meat to a carving board, cover with foil and leave to rest for 5-10 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, tear the lettuce leaves into smaller pieces and scatter them over the base of a large serving platter along with the sliced cucumber. Mix the yogurt ingredients together and season to taste.

5. Add the oil to the shallots and swirl together. Stir in the peas and mint and season to taste.

6. Carve the lamb across into thin slices and pop it on top of the lettuce. Spoon over the pea and mint dressing, scatter over the feta and sprinkle with a few more small mint leaves. Eat straight away with the garlic and mint yogurt.

* the recipe doesn't state this but you could cook the lamb on a barbecue if you had a kettle-style barbecue

Suggested wine match: You could go several ways with this - a light red, a crisp white or a strong dry rosé. Red-wise that could be a Saumur Champigny or another Loire Cabernet Franc, a pinot noir or a juicy red like Mencia from the Bierzo region of northern Spain. Because of the yoghurt and spring vegetables a crisp white such as Sauvignon Blanc would work for those who prefer a white or a crisp dry rosé like Bandol from the South of France would also be delicious.

Extracted from Yeo Valley: The Great British Farmhouse Cookbook by Sarah Mayor (Quadrille £20). Photograph: Andrew Montgomery.