It has been almost a year since I posted anything. I have no idea why I stopped posting the usual medley and I certainly can’t say I was too busy. If anything I have had more time on my hands over the last year than I have ever had. Between Covid lockdowns and a reverse shoulder replacement – if you would credit it, where my right arm, instead of ending in a ball which fits snugly into the socket on my shoulder, now holds the socket while the ball is screwed into my shoulder blade – which took quite a while to recover from and then further major surgery to repair a ruptured Achilles tendon on my right leg which involved another 14 weeks of very restricted movement. So for nearly eight months I have been house bound, sitting around on the back deck, reading, dozing, listening to music and doing bugger all else while the garden and the rest of the world go to wrack and ruin. Thank God for fantastic West Australian weather! No chance of me catching Covid, I can tell you, restricted to the back deck and unable to swim, drive or walk anywhere. And then, last night in bed, of all places, I was imagining a succulent lamb roast for the long Labour Day weekend here in Perth so here goes for my first blog in nearly a year.
I love lamb in that I feel it is the most free-range of all meats, unlike poor old cows herded into dusty feed lots and fed with minced pig brains or some such muck, or wretched battery chickens cooped up in appalling conditions, or gross sows rolling over and suffocating their squealing piglets. No, lamb, for me is the essence of good red meat and I like to envisage lambs romping and skipping over the springy turf. (God, the temptation to use ‘gambolling’ to describe the wooly little brutes frisking about in sun drenched meadows was almost overpowering!)
Recently however, whenever I roasted a leg or a shoulder – sometimes with garlic and sticks of rosemary and cinnamon pushed into knife stab holes, sometimes slathered with anchovies which dissolve in the roasting, other times coated in spices, honey, nuts and yoghurt – it has turned out tough and not particularly good – I ate it anyway, of course. Perhaps it is my gas oven, maybe the door is not a complete seal or the temperature gauge is not working or else, God forbid – it is me and my cooking methods? But how can you go wrong with lamb?
Anyway, after another disappointing roast last weekend – tasty but tough and chewy – I decided to try a new approach and I fished out my ancient Slow Cooker, acquired from David and Elaine B (Hi Guys wherever you are !) when they were leaving Brunei Darussalam to return to the UK in the mid eighties. For the most part, I have only used the slow cooker for things like corned beef and an occasional chunky veg soup and each time, this battered but venerable, 35 year old appliance has worked wonders so I decided to try slow cooking my rolled, boneless half leg of lamb.
First up was to throw a tin of tomatoes, a generous few slugs of Shiraz, a few stalks of rosemary, a good splash of balsamic vinegar and a decent spoonful of smooth Dijon mustard and a whole head of garlic, with just the tips cut off, 
into the crock pot, aka slow cooker, and left the lot to heat up while I browned the meat in a wok. A bit messy and splashy but it began to smell lovely as the fatty outer layer of the roast began to brown. Gorgeous smell.
I tipped the meat into the slow cooker on top of the gooey mix of tomatoes etc, put on the lid and planned to leave if for at least five hours.
Unfortunately, I knocked the wok with the hot oil onto the kitchen floor, giving the worn jarrah floorboards a slippery sheen, nearly breaking my other leg as I slithered across the floor. Note: Be careful when browning a roast in a wok!
Next up was the Swiss style potato dish – Rösti. I used three peeled potatoes – any type of spud will do for this dish and I just picked up the first few spuds I saw in the market this morning. I grated the spuds coarsely and then roughly squeezed the excess water out of them. I ended up with about four or five handfuls of grated spud which I tipped into a bowl, along with half the grated white onion.
In
to that, I added a good teaspoon each of ground black pepper, sea salt and dried Italian herbs, along with a bit of melted butter.
More butter and a good splash of oil into a frying pan and let it get really hot before I tipped the grated potato and onion mix into the pan and smoothed it out as best as 
I could with the back of a wooden spoon. 
I didn’t bother to stir or shake the pan, I just left it on high for about 10 minutes before carefully tipping up one edge of the stuff to see if it was browning nicely on the bottom. It was, so I carefully placed a large cutting board over the pan and flipped it over and then slid the rösti back into the pan so the other side could get browned.
While all that was happening, I turned off the slow cooker, fished out the lamb, practically falling apart after nearly six hours, and forked it apart with two forks. 
I poured the juice from the crock pot into a small saucepan and brought it back to the boil to reduce down and then stirred a spoonful of cornflour to thicken it.
The rösti slid out of the pan onto a cutting board and made a satisfying crunch when I cut into it with a pizza cutter. The pulled, tender, succulent and juicy lamb piled on top of the rösti with a velvety smooth, rich, meaty sauce, a side dish of steamed spinach (and the rest of the bottle of Shiraz) made an excellent dinner.
Disclaimer
Looking over the above, while every word is true, I have to admit my photography has room for improvement. My only excuse is greasy hands, a slippery floor and an Iphone 6 with an annoying habit of turning itself off!
Ingredients:
Lamb leg, rolled roast, 1,25kg, Tinned tomatoes, Balsamic vinegar, Red wine, (Shiraz), Dijon mustard, Garlic, Rosemary
Rösti, 3 spuds, 1/2 onion, mixed herbs, salt & pepper, Butter & oil
Red Branch Chronicles 