The right BLEND OF SEASONING, spicy and aromatic, can immediately transport you (and your joint of meat) to sunnier climes, writes TRISH DESEINE
The most delicious lamb dish I have ever tasted was at a fruit grower’s lavish home just outside Marrakech. We had been invited to a family feast after visiting their apricot preserving factory, where rows upon rows of women and girls who should have been in school, were perched on thin high benches, sorting freshly picked apricots with nimble fingers. Stewards with wooden sticks patrolled the lines to discipline any workers who might slow the pace a little. Feeling somehow complicit with the unfairness of it all, I for one was glad to leave the heavy, over-subdued atmosphere and the defiant stares of some of those girls. Baby number two was also not too many months away from being born (into an altogether rosier future) and so I was doubly pleased to be out of the heat and be shown into a vast, cool, vaulted, mosaic-walled room.
There, my face, hands and bare feet were sprinkled with cool, rose-scented water, before we embarked on one of the most lavish feasts of my life. The lamb came after seemingly endless tiny bowls of delicately spiced salads, grains and purées, a gorgeously aromatic chicken braised in preserved lemons and just before a sumptuous pastilla, eaten with our fingers, like so much of the meal. Hesitant at first –and quite full up already! – we broke through the crispy warka (brick) pastry, dusted in criss-cross patterns of cinnamon and icing sugar into the hot mass of almonds, eggs, soft onions, spices and shredded pigeon beneath. Along with the meltingly slow-cooked, mechoui lamb we had just tasted, for years the celebratory pastilla became one of my favourite dishes to serve at French dinner parties.
We are spoilt for choice in our wild, wet and verdant country when it comes to lamb, and perhaps at times we take our luck for granted when, a little bored, we are confronted by yet another roast lamb, gravy and mash listed beside the turkey and ham on yet another pub grub menu. On Easter Monday this year, my plans to serve a superb roast, rolled leg of Achill Mountain lamb (crispy on the outside, pink on the inside with whole cloves of garlic adding their stickiness to pan juices simply deglazed with a splash of balsamic vinegar, was my thinking) were scuppered by a sudden funeral, leaving me home alone with my gigantic roast and my big Staub pot. But the roast had to be cooked. And the first sweet slice I ate alone, and quite unashamedly with my fingers – Marrakech style, I tried to tell my upright self, in the kitchen. As for the rest, doomed to reheating and rather un-festive sharing the next day, there was nothing for it but to make gravy, lots of gravy. It may not have been the most noble end for such a superb piece of meat, but if there were a prize for The Most Comforting Dish When Comfort is Really Needed, well, it won hands down.
Chermoula Lamb
This is the nearest I have come to reproducing the taste of that Marrakech lamb. Of course I slow roast a leg or a shoulder, not an entire beast. When the spices are good, and freshly toasted, their fragrance mingled with the robust meat transports me on my own culinary magic carpet, back to the smells and clamour of Jemaa el-Fna.
For 6 (30 minutes preparation / 4 hours–overnight resting / 3-4 hours cooking)
- 1 shoulder or leg of lamb, bone in, about 2-3 kg
(or two smaller shoulders) - 1 small onion, finely chopped
- 1 small chilli, finely chopped
- 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 2 tbs cumin seeds, toasted and cooled
- 1 tbs coriander seeds, toasted and cooled
- 1 tbs ground paprika
- 2 tbs ground ginger
- Juice of 2 lemons
- 75ml olive oil
- Salt and pepper
- 5 or 6 garlic cloves in their skins
1. The day before serving, put all the ingredients into a mini blender and blitz to a fine purée, adding enough olive oil to make a very loose paste.
2. Rub the lamb all over with the paste, going into all the nooks and crannies.
3. Wrap it tightly in cling film, place onto a large platter and chill in the fridge for at least four hours and up to overnight.
4. 4 ½ hours or so before serving, take the meat out of the fridge and let it come up to room temperature.
5. Preheat the oven to 140?C (without the fan) and let the meat cook for three to four hours, basting it as regularly as you can once the juices start to run and turning it once or twice as it cooks. Pop the garlic cloves in around the meat for an hour or so before serving. Cover the meat with foil if you feel it is drying out too much on the outside.
6. Lift it onto a carving board and let it rest for a few minutes before serving. Deglaze the pan with a little hot water or some good beef or chicken stock, removing some of the fat if you wish. Serve with couscous, a leafy salad and a raw, spiced carrot salad to stay firmly on the North African theme.
This article appeared in a previous issue, for more features like this, don’t miss our July/August issue, out Thursday July 7.
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