Lamb and Dill Sauce

[volospian]

I cooked this last night and thought I'd share it with you. No pics, as I didn't think at the time, sorry. Also, you may notice little in the way of measurements... that's because I just threw stuff together. I've done this dish loads of times over the years and remember some of the measurements while others are just bunged in but it is a simple enough dish to get right, as long as you get the sauce to the right thickness.

While the rest is fairly variable, I find that a pint of stock usually reduces down to about the right amount of liquid to give the sauce a good consitency. That's based on serving 2, so if you wanted to ramp up the quantities to serve more people, you'd obviously need to add more stock to suit.

I imagine you could use lamb stock rather than Chicken, although the original recipe I read for this, many years ago, said chicken so that's all I've ever used.


Lamb shoulder (I used a pice that was about 1kg, and served 2 to 3 people)
1 pint of chicken stock
a couple of carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
a stick of Celery, roughtly chopped
an Onion, peeled and roughly chopped
a couple of Bay leaves
Dill
Whole Black Peppercorns
Double Cream (although I used Creme Fraiche as that's what was to hand)
Lemon Juice
Butter
Plain Flour

Trim as much fat off the lamb as you can and stick it in a lidded pot along with the carrots, celery, onion, a couple of bay leaves, a handful of black whole peppercorns and a few sprigs of dill.

Add the chicken stock, bring to the boil and then simmer for a few hours, until the meat is just falling off the bone. If the liquid doesn't cover the meat fully you may need to turn it now and again.

Once the meat is cooked nicely, take the meat out and cut it into chunks. Place somewhere moist and warm (well, warmish, it gets reheated, just don't let it dry out while you do the next bit).

Sieve the remaining liquid into a bowl or something and keep, you can discard the carrots, onions and so on.

Use the butter and flour to make up a roux and then add the liquid. Before you add the liquid, if it looks like the resultant sauce will be too thin, boil the liquid first until it reduces down. I probably had... maybe a third of a pint, perhaps, which was just right for the amount of roux I made... Then add some cream, more fresh dill and some lemon juice to taste.

Add the meat back to the sauce and heat it until it's all nice and hot again.

Serve.

I served mine with steamed fine beans, sugar snap peas and boiled potatoes (although I boiled them in a mild chicken stock for extra taste).

I served it with a red wine (as that's what I had in the house), but the sauce was still a little creamy and it may be better with a crisp white to cut through the cream a little, such as a sauvignon blanc, perhaps.

[Rich_L]

Mm sounds great!

Lamb can be kinda hard to get over here sometimes so it's nice to have a few recipes like this to call on, I imagine it would work well with shanks too.