Cook up an easy Easter feast

Updated
Friends clink glasses
Friends clink glasses


Need a dish you can prepare in a few minutes, leave in the oven for hours, and then feed four? This is the one for you. Peeling and cutting the vegetables will take a few minutes, but apart from that, the oven does the work for you. It even makes its own gravy as it cooks!

If you need to stretch the feast further, add more vegetables, a green salad, Yorkshire puddings, or roast tomatoes on the vine and a lightly larger piece of lamb. It would also work just as well with a leg joint and there would be slightly less fat to skim. The long cooking time means the meat will be juicy and meltingly tender.

Ingredients:
1 whole shoulder of lamb (approximately 1.8kg)
50g unsalted butter, melted
2 large onions, peeled and thinly sliced
6 potatoes, peeled and sliced
4 carrots, peeled and sliced
1 head celeriac, peeled and sliced
sprigs of rosemary, chopped
8 cloves of garlic, crushed
500ml lamb stock or chicken stock (use a cube or a concentrated jelly stock pot)
250ml dry white wine (rose also works well)
Sea salt and black pepper

Method:
1) Preheat the oven to 140°C/275°F/gas mark 1.
2) Put the onions, potatoes, carrots, celeriac, rosemary and garlic into a large bowl and season with salt and pepper. Pour over the melted butter and mix.
3) Put the whole lot into a large casserole dish.
4) Pour the stock and wine over the potatoes then lay the lamb on top.
5) Season the lamb with plenty of salt and pepper then set over a high heat.
6) When the liquid begins to simmer, cover with a lid and transfer to the oven for 3 ½-4 hours until tender.
7) Skim off the excess fat and discard. Sieve the remaining juices into a gravy boat and serve alongside the vegetables and lamb.

Alternatively, aromatic Moroccan stuffed lamb takes about two hours and goes very well with this Persian fragrant rice which can be cooked while the lamb is in the oven.

A more traditional roast leg of lamb is quicker to cook, but you'll be cooking vegetables separately so you'll need to time it so that everything's ready to serve together.

More lamb feasts
Roast lamb with wine and juniper
Mediterranean-style roast lamb
River Cafe's grilled spring lamb
Lamb with pomegranate couscous
Parmesan-breaded lamb chops
Kleftiko (Greek lamb)

Not a lamb fan?
Ham in cider roasted with cloves and honey
Roast beef sirloin
Rib roast of beef
Stuffed pork loin roast

Vegetables and side dishes:
Perfect roast potatoes
Roast tomatoes on the vine
Caramelized carrots and parsnips
Balsamic roasted beetroot

Puddings:
Poached pears in cassis
Traditional sweet sherry trifle
More puddings to impress

More food know-how:
How to tell the quality of chocolate
A tasting guide to the Scottish whisky regions
How to read a whisky label
Cheap ways to get your five-a-day
How to chop an onion
Three steak myths debunked

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