Don't Sweat the Aubergine

oven. If you can set the dial at 100°C or lower, you can cook your joint more gently uncovered than in a covered casserole, where the temperature will be 100°C or – if there is a build-up of steam – slightly higher. But my oven’s lowest temperature is 130°C, so I usually get more tender results from the casserole.
    If your joint is too large for your casserole dish, use a roasting tin, and cover it with foil.
    You do not need to brown the joint first. You’ll find that the exposed meat and skin in the dish will gradually brown on their own.
    4 • Getting the right temperature . I have two Le Creuset casserole dishes, which behave differently. The contents of the larger, oval one may take 45 to 60 minutes to reach simmering point in a medium oven – at least 15 minutes longer than they would need in the smaller dish. If you’re cooking your pot roast to a deadline, you may want to start it off at a high temperature (gas mark 6/200°C, or higher), or you could find that at least a third of the intended roasting time has been a non-event. Once such a heavy dish is properly heated, however, it will carry on doing its job at the lowest oven setting. Gently does it is the best approach.
ROAST LAMB: LEG OR SHOULDER
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HOW TO MAKE IT
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    Set the oven at gas mark 8/230°C. 1 Strip as much rosemary or thyme as you like from their stems, and add enough olive oil to make a spreadable marinade. Add salt and pepper, and massage the mixture over your meat. 2 Chop a head of garlic in half, and put the halves under the meat in a roasting pan. Put in the oven; after 25 minutes, turn down the temperature to gas mark 3/160°C. Cooking time: the initial 25 minutes plus 15 minutes for each 500g meat. 3 When it’s done to your liking (some like it pink; others, grey), remove the meat to a warm plate and leave to rest for at least 20 minutes before carving. Tip the pan juices into a bowl; skim off the fat. 4 Deglaze the roasting pan with wine, vinegar or stock (see under Roast chicken, here ); warm through this sauce with the pan juices to accompany the meat.
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VARIATIONS
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    If you want more, and thicker, gravy, follow the instructions under Roast chicken above.
    How about caper sauce ? Nigella Lawson’s recipe (from
How To Eat
) is a kind of béchamel ( see here ) with two parts milk to one part lamb stock (chicken stock would be acceptable); you add capers from a jar, without rinsing them of their vinegar.
    Lamb boulangère (again, shoulder or leg) is cooked above sliced potatoes. The lamb is often boned; I’m not sure what benefit that brings. Smear the base and sides of a roasting pan with a walnut-sized knob of butter. Peel and finely slice potatoes (maincrop or new) into a bowl of cold water (to prevent discoloration and to rinse the surface starch); drain and mix with salt and finely chopped garlic, as well as (optional) thyme or rosemary and chopped onion; tip into the roasting pan, and put the meat on top. Add stock or water; it doesn’t need to cover the potatoes, but might come halfway up them. Put in the oven at a low heat (gas mark 2/150°C) for 2 hours, or until the lamb is ready; remove the lamb to a warm plate to rest, and, in the 20 minutes that it is doing so, cook the potatoes at gas mark 7/220°C to brown them.
    Shoulder of lamb, with its high fat content, will respond particularly well to slow-roasting or to pot-roasting, the techniques for which I describe in the pork section, above. Lamb shanks, too, are delicious when prepared in this way. When slow-roasting, you do not need to subject the joint to an initial high heat: the lamb will brown gradually as it cooks.
    When pot-roasting, you might throw into the pot, along with seasoning, a bay leaf, some rosemary, an onion or two, and a head of garlic. You may be surprised by how much sauce you get. Strain it into a jug or bowl, let it rest for a while, and spoon off – into the bin, not down the sink – the fat that has risen to the surface. 4 Pour the sauce into a saucepan, and bring it to a simmer; allow it to reduce uncovered for a while if you think it needs a more concentrated flavour. Be mindful that the salt content, as a percentage of the sauce, will increase as the volume reduces. If you like garlic, you could squeeze into the sauce the flesh from the cooked garlic cloves. The meat, meanwhile, can stay warm in the pot, with the lid on.
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ACCOMPANIMENTS
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    Lamb and gratin dauphinois ( see here ) are a dream combination. Roast