Monday, April 14, 2008

Lamb with lemon and garlic

Not all the recipes in Delia Smith's How To Cheat at Cooking involve cans, frozen things, or other pre-prepared foods. There is a wonderfully simple one for Greek lamb baked with lemon and garlic. My adaptation is even simpler, because I did not have any flat-leaf parsley, which Delia suggests scattering over the dish at the end in a mixture with lemon zest and garlic -- gremolata.

I was grateful for the illustration in the book. Delia tells you to wrap the ingredients in foil, to which food can stick; the photograph shows kitchen paper inside the foil.

For two.

1 lamb neck fillet, weighing about 350g
Zest of 1 lemon, juice of half
1 clove garlic, sliced
Salt, pepper

Cut the fillet crosswise into medallions -- 2.5cm thick, Delia says. Make cuts in the flesh with a sharp knife, and insert the slivers of garlic. Give each medallion several slivers if that is necessary to use up the clove.

Lay a sheet of foil in and up the sides of a roasting tin. Lay a sheet of kitchen paper on top, and the meat on top of that. Squirt over the lemon juice, and distribute the zest. Grind over salt and pepper. Fold up the foil and paper to make a parcel, and bake the dish at gas mark 1/140C for three hours. It is delicious.

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