Slow Roast Lamb with Vegetables

Put a few peeled and sliced cloves of garlic and some sprigs of fresh rosemary in a roasting dish. Trim any excess fat off the shoulder of lamb, paint all over with a little olive oil, season well all over with salt and fresh black pepper, put in the roasting dish and cook slowly at 325°F/170°C/Reg3 for about three hours. Preferably do this the day before.

Take the lamb out of the roasting dish, allow to cool and wrap in foil if doing the day before. Keep the fat and juices in the roasting pan and cover if doing this the day before. Keep the meat and roasting pan in the fridge if applicable.

Prepare the vegetables, top and tail the beans, scrape and quarter the carrots, and scrape and cut the beetroots into slices. Cut off the meat from the lamb shoulder discarding all the skin, bones and fat. Dice the meat into thin strips  Picture  .

Reheat the lamb cooking dish if necessary and spoon off most of the excess fat into a dish, leaving a couple of tablespoonfuls of fat in the dish. Stir in a tablespoonful of flour an stir over a low heat scraping off the meat scraps. Add a glass of red wine and stir well, followed by about ½ pint/250 ml of lamb stock and make a gravy. Season with salt and pepper and put to one side  Picture  .

Finely chop some fresh rosemary and add three tablespoonfuls to the lamb, and season with salt and pepper. Spoon the lamb into the moulds in a cooking dish and flatten a bit with a fork. Put a teaspoonful of the kept lamb flat on the top of each mould  Picture  .

Put the sliced beetroots into an ovenproof dish moistened with a little olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. Put into the oven at 400°F/200°C/Reg6, and cook for about 40 minutes turning from time to time. After ten minutes or so add the lamb to the oven and cook for 25 to 30 minutes.

Meanwhile cook the beans and carrots, drain and season with salt and a tiny bit of olive oil. Reheat the gravy over a medium heat. Use a fish slice to put a lamb mould on to a serving plate and surround with the vegetables  Picture  . Remove the mould, pour over a little gravy and serve immediately  Zoom   with some additional gravy on the side.