Tag Archives: Lamb shoulder

Slowly cooked lamb shoulder and cauliflower soup

Last night after making a pot of cauliflower soup I set about preparing to cook a shoulder of lamb for my lunch this week at work. Having now seen the result I think I’m going to swap around and have left over cauliflower soup for lunch and lamb for dinner when I’m at my place this week.

Yesterday afternoon I returned to Canberra from Brisbane and immediately started shivering on leaving the aeroplane and walking on the air bridge at Canberra airport. My mind immediately went to warm comforting foods hence the need for soup and a joint of meat.

The cauliflower soup is pretty basic. I sauté some onions and bacon pieces and get the bottom of the saucepan nice and sticky. Once the onions are soft I add a splash of white wine, some diced potato and the cauliflower florettes. To this I add some chicken or vegetable stock and then enough water so that after 30 minutes of simmering it has reduced to enough to blend without being too watery. I know what you’re thinking, I’ve spent most of my career in a laboratory; I should be able to be more precise than that. Like I explain to my medical students, medicine and pathology included is like a main meal, experience is what is needed. That is different to dessert and pastries where you need precision. Once the cauliflower and potato is soft I use my trusty Bamix® to blend the contents into a smooth soup. To this I add a few generous lumps of blue cheese and some pouring cream. This gets heated through and then served with crusty toasted bread and butter (or as some tweeps have commented served with butter and some toasted crusty bread).

Cauliflower soup with bread and butter (iPhone)

For the lamb I wanted to cook it slowly without a slow cooker. I decided on a large casserole and a low oven and a cooking period of about six hours while I slept. The preparation is pretty basic with onions, celery, carrot, tomato, red wine, beef stock, bacon pieces and the lamb. In my refrigerator I also noticed some old lup cheong and I thought, why not? What I enjoyed most was getting my boning knife out and having some fun dissecting the joint of meat.

When I woke up this morning my apartment was filled with the aroma of slow roasted lamb. It was amazing.

Lamb shoulder (Nikon D90) I wanted to capture a rustic look

Lamb shoulder (Nikon D90) Vegetables have been cut

Lamb shoulder (Nikon D90) I love a bit of blunt and sharp dissection

Lamb shoulder (Nikon D90) Everything tastes better with bacon and lup cheong

Lamb shoulder (Nikon D90) You should have smelt this when I opened the lid

Lamb shoulder (Nikon D90) I could just devour the meat, it was falling off the bones

Lamb shoulder (Nikon D90) Oh look vegetables too

Tomorrow I head off to Darwin for a night. I’ll be back late Wednesday night for the second half of the second State of Origin match and I’ll be enjoying some lamb stew. Yum!

Great Bowls of Soup: Cream of Cauliflower and Parsnip (bitsandnibbles.wordpress.com)
Broccoli & Cauliflower Soup (jessaneenskitchen.wordpress.com)
Chunky Cauliflower and Cheese Soup (mommyhatescooking.com)
Cauliflower Soup (getyourvegon.com)
Curry Cauliflower Soup (Paleo/Primal) (thisblogisforwomen.com)
Roasted Cauliflower – Pioneer Woman (bookcasefoodie.wordpress.com)
Nutritious Stew – Oxtail or Beef (thenutritionguruandthechef.wordpress.com)
Soup at 5am. (jessicakarli.wordpress.com)
Twice-Baked Cauliflower with Cauliflower Leaf Pesto (treehugger.com)
How To Make Cauliflower Taste Good. (jovinacooksitalian.com)
One Pot Curried Cauliflower Rice (redtri.com)
Indian Cauliflower (idealhousewife.wordpress.com)
A short visit to Sydney and then a lamb ribs dinner (garydavidlum.com)
Butternut Soup (douglasgreen.wordpress.com)
Slow-Cooker Lamb Vindaloo (dishesanddishes.wordpress.com)
Roasted cauliflower and white bean soup (theitalianfork.com)
Weekday Vegetarian: Roasted Cauliflower Soup with Aged Cheddar (treehugger.com)
From Pinterest Wisconsin Cauliflower Soup (cantbeme.com)
Loving leftovers: Moroccan Harira (3outof3.wordpress.com)
Carrot Cauliflower Crusty (ninikbecker.wordpress.com)

My weekend in food and ‘health’

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This week at work has been fairly full on. I’ve come back from a week away in Washington and there is a lot on in the branch. We also had senate estimates this week which just adds to the longer hours. We were there to give evidence at 2250 AEDT on Wednesday night. We finished after 2300 AEDT.

The weekend has been a much sought after break. I’ve been looking forward to dinner with friends this weekend. We had dinner parties planned on both Friday and Saturday evenings. Catching up with friends is always so good. Coincidentally we were repeating a weekend from earlier in the year http://wp.me/p16Zhd-jV

On Friday evening the menu was prawns, roast beef and pavlova.

The prawns were as fresh as they could be. Only frozen once and cooked as soon as they were thawed. The main course had a number of highlights. Freshly baked bread being one thing but the star was a slow cooked standing rib roast. The prime rib was cooked for about twelve hours at 50 °C and then pan seared to give it a lovely crust. Dessert was an amazing pavlova. The picture of the pavlova speaks for itself. It was served with home made vanilla bean ice cream. It was so rich and creamy.

Fresh prawns with a seafood sauce.

Yep, it's a salad. The olives are local.

Creamy potato bake.

Fresh bread made on the day. With real butter, what can be better?

Standing rib roast. Doesn't it look amazing.

Plated up. This dinner was so well balanced.

A heart shaped pavlova. Lovely fresh fruits including blackberries picked locally.

Pavlova served with home made vanilla ice cream.

It was a great night finished with dark chocolate and more good conversation.

On Saturday night we caught up with friends for a shared dinner party. Regular readers will know that Bron has become a star with Yorkshire puddings and a request came for roast lamb and yorkies plus Bron’s sticky date pudding. The main course was all about the lamb shoulder. The lamb shoulders (about 10 kilograms of lamb) had been prepared by a butcher and split to ensure an even cooking. The lamb pieces were placed over cloves of garlic and rosemary stems. Over the lamb more garlic and rosemary were added. Aluminium foil covered the meat and then the roasting tray was placed in the oven at 230 °C for 30 minutes after which is was turned down low to between 150 and 170 ⁠°C for seven hours. The low slow cooking ensures a succulent product with meat that pulls away easily from the bones.The secret to this meal was putting the lamb in the barbecue for about half an hour. The result was a beautiful caramelisation of the meat leaving us with some crackling too. It was accompanied by smash potatoes and roasted carrot, sweet potato and parsnips.

After the main we had Bron’s sticky date pudding with butterscotch sauce, custard and vanilla ice cream.

10 kilograms of lamb shoulder in three oven trays.

This is me sampling some of the lamb. Look at that growing mountain of meat.

Smash potatoes and roasted sweet potato and parsnip.

Can you believe how much meat we went through?

Bron made enough yorkies for everyone to have two or three.

Ready to serve.

My first helping of lamb and vegetables.

My second helping of lamb.

My first helping of Bron's sticky date oudding with butterscotch sauce, custard and vanilla ice cream.

My second helping of pudding.

After dinner we had to have fruit.

Terry's chocolate orange ball.

This morning I woke up feeling awful. I had a headache, muscle pain and some joint pain. Even though room temperature was about 22 °C, I was shivering. A hot shower and a cup of tea didn’t help so I spent most of today in bed drinking water every hour and passing really concentrated urine. From time to time I could feel myself being viræmic. I still have a pounding headache but felt like I need to blog so I can say I did something today.

A weekend in food (garydavidlum.com)
Easy Pavlova, 366/30 day 17 (shanarose.wordpress.com)
Is there a word better than awesome for tonight’s dinner? (garydavidlum.com)
Standing Rib Roast (aminerecipes.com)
Tender Prime Rib Roast with Mushroom and Bacon Sauté (marksdailyapple.com)
facing my demons … Passionfruit Pavlova (stresscake.wordpress.com)

My succulent roast lamb shoulder

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It’s been a busy week, albeit a short week with a public holiday on Monday. Yesterday I spent most of the day at work trying to catch up. I didn’t get very far. Today I was going to do more but thankfully got caught up watching Bathurst and then the Wallabies play the Springboks.

This morning when I went grocery shopping I came across a bit of lamb shoulder. It’s not often you see shoulder amongst all the legs (maybe I don’t look hard enough). Like pork, I think the shoulder of a lamb is more succulent and juicy than the hind leg or rump.

Lamb shoulder

It was a bit expensive.

Price tag

I really love the feel of handling meat, especially when it’s room or better, body temperature.There’s nothing like feeling the muscle fibres and having a knife in your hand. I really like butterflying a leg of lamb and dissecting the muscle compartments with my fingers. My boning knife is my favourite tool when working with lamb.