Alternative Christmas Dinner

For the first year (I think ever) we didn't have turkey for our christmas dinner. We bought a beautiful joint of sirloin fore-rib of beef to have with a parsnip, shallot and sausage mixture, roast potatoes, green veg and red cabbage.

For the beef we placed a few roughly chopped carrots, onions, celery and garlic in the bottom of a roasting tin and then placed the seasoned beef on top with a good slug of olive oil. To roast it we put it in the oven at 230C for 20 mins before turning it down to 180C for 18 mins for every 500g. This resulted in roast beef which was medium rare. Once it was down we took it out of the roasting tin and wrapped it in foil and covered it in tea towels to rest.




To make the gravy take the roasting tin with the veg and the meat juices in and carefully spoon off most of the fat and discard or put to one side for beef dripping. Put the whole tin on the hob, stir in a couple of spoonfuls of flour and get it nice and hot before pouring in a large glass of red wine. Now use a potato masher to mush all of the veg up scraping all of the yummy goodness from the bottom of the pan as you do. Add some boiling water to thin the stock to the right consistency and simmer for about 5 mins. To finish sieve out all of the vegetables and other lumps and you'll be left with a yummy gravy. Check the seasoning and add salt and pepper to taste. This is probably vaguely a Jamie Oliver recipe.

Whilst the meat is cooking thinly slice half a red cabbage and half an onion. Place it in a pan with a grated apple, two teaspoons of sugar a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, seasoning and a stick of cinnamon. Cook on a medium to low heat for about an hour until it is nice and soft. This is a recipe I have been given by my mum, which we have been making for years (it originally used malt vinegar but I tend to use balsamic vinegar now).



For the potatoes we used Jamie Oliver's perfect roast potatoes and had garlic, rosemary and red wine vinegar as our chosen flavour combination. They really are great roast potatoes.



For the shallot, parsnip and sausage mix we took 8 good quality sausages (ours were from a local farm) and twisted each in the middle and cut to make 2 mini sausages. We placed these in the bottom of a roasting tin along with halved parsnips, shallots and sprigs of rosemary and then poured over a mixture of 1 tbsp of balsamic vinegar, 1 tbsp of olive oil, 1 tbsp of sweet chilli jam and 2 tbsps of maple syrup and then roasted at 180C for 45 mins, turning every so often. This was adapted from Waitrose Kitchen magazine.



We served all of this with a bowl of mixed greens including some tendersteam broccoli and sugar snap peas. Overall it was a great dinner even if there was no turkey!

Incredible Roasted Shoulder of Lamb Courtesy of Jamie Oliver

There is something magical about Sunday roasts, especially in the autumn and winter. They always remind me of growing up and my mum cooking a big family meal. Apart from a phase of being veggie in my teens I have always loved the smell that fills the house as the roast cooks hours before it's time for dinner. For me meat either has to barely see the heat or be cooked very low and slow for hours and hours. This recipe is the latter. Fortunately I always prefer to eat Sunday roasts at dinner time as if I eat a big meal at lunch I never feel like doing much after! If is wanted to eat this at lunch I would've had to be up at a seriously unpleasant time for a Sunday...

This is a super simple way to give a shoulder of lamb a lovely dressing up.

Similar to the duck pasta in my last post this is a recipe I have made lots of times so I have played with it a little.

Jamie just says to place the rosemary and unpeeled garlic cloves underneath and on top of the lamb, but if I have time and can be bothered I also chop some of it up and make deep incisions in the meat with a sharp knife. I then push pieces of rosemary and garlic into the slits in the meat. Today I also added some small slices of anchovies as I had them in and lamb loves anchovies. If you don't love them as much don't worry they totally melt away and just leave a lovely savoury flavour.

I still put the lamb, in an oven proof tin or pan, on a bed of rosemary and unpeeled garlic cloves and then more on the top. A whole bulb of garlic sounds like an awful lot but when garlic is roasted it changes from being quite potent to a lovely mellow flavour.

Next it's time to roast the meat. Start by heating your oven as high as it will go. Once it's up to temperature then put the meat in and turn the temperature down. Jamie says to roast it for 4 hours but I like to do it at a slightly lower temperature (140C) for about 6-7 hours.

Once it's cooked remove it from the tin and leave it to rest in some tin foil. Just before serving pull the lamb from the bones using two forks.

Pour most of the excess fat from the tin/pan and then use the delicious juices and scrummy bits to make the gravy. It is well worth making the gravy it is far far superior to gravy made from granules and not at all difficult. The gravy is finished with chopped mint which really lightens the gravy and means you don't also need mint.

Jamie serves it with smashed root veg and greens which it delicious, but as it was sunday. I decided to go for roast potatoes (skip these for a paleo and clean option), greens and carrots instead.

You can find the full recipe on the Jamie Oliver website here http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/lamb-recipes/incredible-roasted-shoulder-of-lamb-with_1

Here is the lamb ready to go into the oven




And here is the shoulder once it has been cooked ready for resting.