Don't Sweat the Aubergine

potatoes are almost as good. Lamb goes very well with white beans or chickpeas; if you like, you could mash the chickpeas with some garlic, salt and oil to make a kind of hummus. Spinach is another happy partner.
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WHY YOU DO IT
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    1 • Searing . For the point of this high heat, see Roast chicken, here . Lamb, which has more fat than do chicken and pork, can take a 25-minute blast of 230°C without losing too much of this lubrication.
    2 • Don’t mess about with the meat . I have got fed up with recipes that invite you to make incisions in the lamb and stick slivers of garlic and rosemary, and sometimes anchovy, into them. The garlic sticks to my fingers, and then the rosemary does too; I spend ages faffing around, irritatedly conscious that more dextrous cooks can probably perform this task in less than half the time I’m taking. Never again. I think I have a culinary justification for giving up preparing lamb in this way: moisture seeps out of the incisions. So the flavourings go on the surface.
    The advice about the cut bulb of garlic comes from Nigel Slater (
Appetite
). You can squeeze some of the pulp with a wooden spoon into the sauce. Instead of, or in addition to, garlic, you could put slices of onion under the meat.
    3 • Timings . The books tell you that these timings and temperatures should produce lamb cooked to medium. For pink meat, allow 12 minutes for each 500g; for well-done, 20 minutes. Again: you cannot guarantee that your oven or joint of meat will conform to the theories. Keep checking.
    4 • Skim the fat . Lamb has a good deal of it. You probably don’t want a fatty sauce if you’re serving the meat with a rich accompaniment such as gratin dauphinois, but may not be so fussy if you’ve got boiled potatoes or rice. As a home cook, you have the advantage over the restaurant chef – who would rigorously skim such a sauce – in not being obliged to sacrifice flavour for aesthetic standards.
ROAST BEEF
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HOW TO MAKE IT
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    My best advice, for all cuts, is to follow the timings and temperatures I gave for lamb ( see here ). If you keep the temperature high throughout, as some recipes advise, you risk expelling the fat that gives the meat a tender feel in the mouth. Wipe the meat dry with paper towels, then rub a little oil over it (the oily layer cuts down the evaporation of liquid, but if you were to rub it on to a wet piece of meat it would be less effective ), and some salt and pepper, even though they will hardly penetrate.
    Beef will be all the better for a rest of half an hour after cooking, and that delay has the advantage of giving you time to bake a Yorkshire pudding. If the batter occupies the top shelf of the oven, though, getting the roast potatoes crisp will be a challenge – unless you have two ovens. Perhaps you could try this: start the potatoes on the top shelf, above the beef; when you take out the beef, turn up the oven to gas mark 7/220°C, put the potatoes on to the middle shelf and the pudding pan with its fat on top; add the batter when the fat is hot (see below). There’s a good chance that the potatoes will crisp up.
YORKSHIRE PUDDING
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HOW TO MAKE IT
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    For 4 to 6
    280ml milk 1
    1 egg
    A little salt
    112g self-raising flour
    Put milk, egg and salt into a bowl. Add flour, a tablespoon at a time, whisking gently with a balloon whisk as you do so. 2 The batter should have the consistency of single cream. Allow to rest for at least half an hour before using. 3
    Heat the oven to gas mark 7/220°C, and put a layer of dripping (appropriate if the pudding is to accompany roast beef), lard or sunflower oil into a roasting pan; put the pan into the oven for at least 5 minutes, to get the fat hot. 4 Pour in the batter, and cook for about half an hour, or until brown, puffy and set. This should be enough for 4 to 6 people.
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WHY YOU DO IT
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    1 • The ingredients . The quantities I’ve given used to be the standard ones. But they’ve gone right out of fashion. Now you see recipes involving 2 or even 3 eggs, or 2 eggs plus 2 yolks, or 2 eggs plus 2 whites. I think that these batters can be a bit rich, and I prefer, for Yorkshire pudding and for pancakes, the original version. Self-raising flour will, obviously, help the batter to rise; for pancakes, use plain flour. For a lighter batter, you could use half milk, half water.
    2 • Gentle mixing . Recipes often tell you to make a well in the flour, and break the egg into it. They don’t often give