What follows is a recipe that should be in everyone's cookbook. The short version is: take a shoulder of lamb, rub some tasty Moroccan spices all over it, cook for six and a half hours, gorge yourself. The slightly more verbose version goes something like —
Preheat your oven 220°C/gas mark 7. Put a large shoulder of lamb in a baking tray.
In a dry frying pan toast
- 1 tsp cumin seds
- 1 tsp coriander seeds
- 1 tsp fennel seeds
- 1 tsp black peppercorns
- 1/2 a cinnamon stick
It'll take around 4 minutes for them to cook at medium heat, stop when they smell incredible. While they're toasting add to a bowl
- 1 pinch cayenne pepper
- 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
- 2 tsp sweet paprika
- 2 large sprigs of rosemary, leaves picked and finely chopped
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp olive oil
Once the seeds are toasted grind them to a powder in a pestle and mortar. Add that to the bowl and mix well. Rub half the mixture over one side of the lamb, making sure to get it in all the crevices. Pop that in the oven for 30 minutes. Your kitchen should now be a heady place. Take the lamb out and use the back of a wooden spoon to rub the remaining spices over the lamb. Add around 100ml of water to the baking tray (take care not to wash any of the spices off the meat), cover the tray with tin foil, and stick it back in the oven at 120-130°C/gas mark 1-2. Return in 6 hours to claim your prize.
The way the meat falls of the bone once cooked begs to be eaten with minimal cutlery. In my house we typically have some warm flat breads or pittas, some salad, houmous, a couscous-mint-raisin medley, and possibly some baba ghanoush. It's exceptional.
The recipe and resulting meal works for me on a number of levels. I'm inclined to think the tastiest food is that which takes the longest to cook and prepare: bread that you've let rise three or four times, a stew that's been bubbling away all afternoon, or a roast like this one, that takes the best part of a day. Something about the anticipation, or the effort that's gone into it (certainly that's the case with bread), makes it better. Then there's the eating. Getting messy fingers while picking at lots of different dishes is fun, and feels like how food should be enjoyed.