My first rolled lamb breast (yorkie & roasties recipes)

I have a baseline price with meat, I dont like paying more than £2.50 per kilo. Lamb is one of my favourite meats but at a minimum of £5 per kilo, I can never normally afford it. Breast of lamb is one of the cheapest cuts you can get and I was fortunate enough to get a 1.1 kilo joint reduced to £2.80 a few days ago at Tesco. Close enough :)

Its quite a fatty joint, Ive never cooked one before, but I did a bit of googling and asked my friend, it seems slow cooking/roasting is the way to go. I originally wanted to stuff it and slow roast it, but in the end I went for the slow cooker in the hope that i'd get a little more meat from it.

Apparently, veg takes longer to cook in the slow cooker than meat, so you should always put veg at the bottom. So I had half a swede (reduced, 15p), chopped half and 3 carrots, put them in. A bag of baby button mushrooms from the freezer went in, and some chopped pepper. The chicken stock left from last weeks chicken, a carton of passata, 2 good handfuls of fresh rosemary (from the freezer), salt, pepper and a bit of boiling water to dissolve the chicken stock. I fried a red onions and 3 garlic cloves and added them. Then I placed the lamb ontop and stuck it on low for about 8hrs.

If your wondering about the box ontop and the tea towel, well thats what happens when you overload your cooker. The lid wouldnt shut so it couldnt get up to heat, the jug on the left is the pint of liquid I removed in order to shut the lid, the box is to keep it shut as liquid kept trying to escape. And the tea towel, is because said liquid was successful at escaping! I owe the poor thing a very large clean up operation tonight.

Serving with home-made yorkshire puddings, stuffing balls (leftover in the freezer from last week) and roast potatoes.

Yorkshires and I have a very turbulent relationship, much like me and pastry. They either work beautifully or they go horribly wrong. These ones came out like this:

It was a batter mix (I still have 20 to use up!) But mixing your own batter form scratch produces way better yorkshires. Jamie Oliver has a brilliant recipe:
3 eggs
115g plain flour
pinch of salt
285ml milk

Pour a little oil into a muffin tray wells, I use a pastry brush to brush oil round the sides too so they dont stick as they rise. You need to heat this oil until it is smoking! Talking seriously hot here. I left the tray in for half an hour on 250. When the oil is hot enough, quickly pull the tray out and pour the mixture into the wells, about half full or so. Put them back in a shut the door. My oven is rather pathetic so I do yorkshires on their own so it can concentrate all the heat on them or they just dont rise well enough.

Another tip, if you can, keep a muffin tray just for yorkshires! Not only does the tray get rather manky, but with using oil in them all the time it builds up a nice non stick coating after time.

 Now, for roast potatoes, you can just chop the potatoe, pour over some oil and bang in the oven for 45mins. simples. Today I was really craving very crunchy, fluffy roasties. So I put a bit more effort in. Peel, chop and boil them for about 10 mins. Just long enough that the outside softens, but you dont want them cooked. Drain them. Then rough them up. Honest! bang and shove and toss them around in the colander until the outside is all fluffy:

This way, the oil clings to them better with a rough surface, so does the salt and gets them a lot crispier. Also The insides are really nice and fluffy as theyve already been softened slightly by cooking.

Pour oil over and toss around to cover evenly, Salt well (it helps them to crisp up), pepper and ive added some rosemary since im serving it with lamb.

 Put in the oven for about half an hour, maybe 45 mins. Im adding the stuffing balls to the same pan after half an hour.

The lamb will be sliced and served with the veggies and stock poured over. Leftover lamb with be chopped and put back into the stock (as a stew/casserole) and served for lunch tomorrow with rosemary focaccia bread.