What I’m serving for Easter

An easy leg of lamb seasoned with Marmite, but don't let than scare you, and the salsa verde of County Durham.

I imagine quite a few of you will be thinking about what you’re going to serve at Easter, so I thought you might enjoy this recipe. I make it almost every year. It’s very low maintenance, which is good if you’re making it for a crowd, as I invariably am. I say it serves six here, but you can stretch it to eight or even more, depending on how many side dishes you make to go with it, and how many of your guests are small children.

This recipe is from the Not Like Mother Used to Make chapter in my book, Notes From A Small Kitchen Island. The introduction above the recipe tells you quite a lot about how, and where, I grew up.

My slow-roast lamb is luscious and garlicky, which would probably have offended my northern antecedents, who greeted the arrival of garlic in the trattorias and brasseries of County Durham circa 1970 with no small amount of suspicion, bordering on disdain. My mother, being a free spirit and one of the first people in the county to wear cork wedges, suede trouser suits, and, famously, a crocheted bikini made by my Auntie Dolly, was an early adopter and always loved, and still loves, garlic, so this is for her.

Durham salad, always present on the Sunday lunch table of my childhood, is northern salsa verde. Sometimes it’s made with the vinegar from a jar of pickled onions, sometimes plain old malt vinegar. Today, embracing my fancy London ways, I make it with white wine vinegar. Even with this concession, you certainly know it’s there. I like the simple sweetness of buttered carrots with this They are enough. If there is any Durham salad left over, it is lovely tossed with boiled new potatoes.

I use melted butter and a dab of Marmite to season the lamb. Don’t worry if you’re Marmite averse. You don’t really get a huge MARMITE HIT, it just adds a certain savouriness, a short cut to flavour.

Roast lamb with Durham salad

Serves 6, at least

For the lamb
2kg shoulder or leg of lamb
1.3kg potatoes (Desirée or Maris Piper work well), peeled and thinly sliced, about 3mm thick (see TIP*)
3 medium onions, about 600g, halved and thinly sliced
1 leek, white and pale green part only, about 100g, thinly sliced
4 bay leaves
4 sprigs fresh thyme
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
800ml lamb or chicken stock
5-6 garlic cloves, halved, any green germ removed
70g butter, melted
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp Marmite

For the Durham salad
1 bunch of fresh mint, about 25g, stalks removed and discarded
4-5 soft lettuce leaves, about 25g
2 tsp caster sugar
1 spring onion, trimmed and very finely chopped
90ml white wine vinegar

Remove the lamb from the fridge at least an hour before you want to cook it, so it can come to room temperature. Heat the oven to 160C/140C Fan/Gas 3.

Line the bottom of a large, heavy roasting tin or earthenware dish – I use ne that is 30 x 24 x 10cm – with half the potatoes. Scatter over the onions, leeks and herbs and season with salt and pepper. Add the remaining potatoes and pour over the stock.

Pierce the lamb in 10 to 12 places with a small, sharp knife. Insert the garlic into the cuts. Put the lamb on top of the potatoes, skin side up. Whisk together the butter, Worcestershire sauce and Marmite and brush it all over the lamb, letting any excess trickle onto the potatoes. Grind on a generous amount of pepper.

Cover the tin or dish tightly with foil and place it in the oven for 3 hours. Remove the foil (save it for when you’re resting the meat later) and roast for a further 1 ½ - 2 hours, until the meat is very tender and the potatoes have absorbed most of the liquid. Place the lamb on a warm serving platter and cover loosely with foil while you finish the potatoes. Turn the oven up to 190C/170C Fan/Gas 5 and return the vegetables to the oven to crisp up on top for 20-30 minutes.

While the meat is resting and the vegetables are crisping up, make the Durham salad. Place the mint and lettuce on a chopping board and sprinkle over the sugar. Shred them very finely with a sharp knife, then tip it into the bowl with the spring onion. Stir in the vinegar and leave to macerate for 5 minutes before serving with the roast lamb and the potatoes, perhaps with some simply boiled, buttered carrots on the side.

*TIP
I have sliced off the tips of my fingers with a mandolin more times than I care to remember, so I am very wary of them, even though I now have a chain mail glove which Is supposed to make them safer. I still don’t trust the cursed implements, so I prefer to use a sharp knife and take my time. But you may well be braver than me. Slice on, you crazy diamond.