Korean Roast Lamb Shoulder

It’s a Sunday, Autumn has hit with a thump and the clocks have changed – damn you time, it will be dark at 4.30 soon!  It is a season that once it gets going I absolutely adore though, the colours fill me with joy, the 5 squirrels in our garden are taking great pleasure in being trained by the kids.  I call it training very loosely you understand.  It involves long lines of string (we haven’t got any rope handy), these are connected from fences to posts with food on top of them.  None of the children have seen these acrobatics from the squirrels but each time they look the food has disappeared.  They are convinced it’s the squirrels and however many times I say to them it’s probably birds they just look at me and roll their eyes, I mean how could it possibly be?  Fair enough, it keeps them quiet. The only down side to the ‘training’ is that every night I go to shut the chickens in and it feels like I’m in Mission Impossible, I can see the local headline ‘Woman found garrotted by string in garden whilst shutting chickens away for the night’.  What a dull exit from this world, let’s hope they get bored before that happens!

And so to the Korean Roast Lamb, this is a Gizzi Erskine dish from her book ‘Skinny Weeks Weekend Feast’ Book.  I don’t own this book but got this recipe last winter time in a Sunday supplement and as the nights start to draw in and the evenings are cool enough for you to want to light the fire it is a lovely dish.  It’s only now that I’m blogging it I have actually read the text accompanying it to find that this is in her book so I’m definitely off to have a look at the rest of the recipes – I am generally not into buying calorie counting books but fingers crossed they are not the same regurgitated recipes as are in most books – I will report back but am sure that based on her previous recipes they will be inventive and a bit different and hope I can easily work out the syn value for Slimming World.

Korean Roast Lamb Shoulder – serves 8 – 8.5 syns per serving

• 6 garlic cloves, grated
• 4 spring onions, finely chopped
• Thumb size piece of ginger, grated
• 3 tbsp sesame oil
• 4 tbsp  white miso paste
• 2 tbsp gochujang (this is a hot pepper paste which we substitute with Chu Hou Sauce which is mainly soybeans, ginger and garlic when the children are sharing this)
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp mirin
• 1 x 1 1/2 kg lamb shoulder
• Seasoning

Mix together garlic, spring onions, ginger, sesame oil, miso, gochujang or Chu Hou sauce, soy sauce and mirin.

Season lamb and smother with the marinade and leave for 2 hours.

Heat oven to 200 degrees C.  Gizzi now browns the lamb on all sides with veg oil, I didn’t do this and put it directly into the oven without browning but do whichever you like but remember to syn the veg oil if you do brown it off.  Put in oven for 30 minutes.

Lower temperature to 170 degrees C and roast for another 3 hours or until the lamb is falling off the bone – this gives you time for a lovely walk while it’s in the oven, or a trip to the pub which is more likely in my house.

Leave the lamb to rest and then slice and pull apart with forks.  Gizzi then serves this in lettuce leaves which is great for Slimming World but my kids demand pancakes so that’s what the picture is of (again, if you use the pancakes (1.5 syns each) and hoisin sauce (2 syns per level tbsp) – syn them).

I serve this with spring onions and cucumber in the lettuce leaves and a steaming bowl of rice and stir fry noodles with vegetables.