Mustard With Mutton

This is another recipe from the Red Spice Road cookbook and it’s awesome. The meat is succulent and falling off the bone from hours of slow braising with a wonderful Asian soy based sauce that’s thick and flavourful.  It’s a quick dish to put together but it does need a lot of time in the oven – you won’t need to do a thing though whilst it’s cooking so it has a lot of wow factor for very little effort.  You’ll want to serve this with lots of steamed rice to mop up the juices and a salad of finely shredded cabbage, mint and cucumber with an Asian style dressing of light soy, sugar, rice wine vinegar and sesame oil is wonderful paired with the lamb.

Ingredients – Serves 4    Adapted from John McLeay, Red Spice Road 

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2½ kg lamb shoulder, bone in – I used 2 small lamb shoulders instead, trimmed of excess fat and seasoned with salt and pepper
600ml chicken stock
2 medium onions, peeled and diced
6 garlic cloves, peeled and diced
2 inch piece of ginger peeled and diced
150ml light soy sauce
125ml sweet soy sauce
2 tablespoons grated lemon rind
4 tablespoons oyster sauce
Garnish
4 spring onions, white and green parts finely sliced
Handful of coriander leaves
1 tablespoon grated lemon rind
1 lemon quartered

Method

Preheat oven to 160C. Place a large oven roasting pan over medium high heat and add the vegetable oil.  When hot place the lamb shoulder in skin down and fry for a few minutes on each side to get some colour. Remove from the heat and add all the other ingredients.  Place some baking paper on the lamb then cover tightly with foil. Cook in the oven for 4 hours.  Remove the foil and paper and cook for a further 30-45 minutes to get a little more colour on the lamb and to reduce the sauce a little.

Remove the lamb from the oven and carefully transfer it to a serving dish.  Pour over some of the cooking liquid and pour the rest of the sauce into a gravy boat to serve separately. Garnish with spring onions, coriander and lemon rind over the lamb and place the lemon quarriers around the platter.