Matt Preston peels back the secret to the perfect lamb roast

I love roast lamb. Whether it's slow roasted and falling off the bone, or braised with the flavours of Greece as a "stifado'' with tomatoes or with artichokes.

Whether it's baked in a Moroccan tagine with dates and a souk load of spices, grilled over coals on gigantic skewers until crispy-edged and wrapped in soft flatbread, or even ground into a mince, flavoured with cinnamon and sprinkled on an Arab pizza.

Then there is the much maligned Anglo treatment of lamb such as the good old chops 'n' two veg or the lamb English way, roasted as a leg and served with a shimmering garnet jelly of redcurrant or a vinegary dressing of sweetened mint. And what about Indian lamb saag or a fluffy Hyderabadi biryani? Yum!

And I've only just got started as there is much to love about lamb around the world.

But here's the question that worries me. Do I love the lamb or do I love those members of the allium family that are present in every version of these lamb dishes.

You see more than lamb, I love onions so much so that I am disguising this story as a lamb story in order to get it past the powers that be who might baulk at us running another onion story so soon after my column on French onion soup. Shh!!! Don't tell anyone - I swear they only look at the pictures anyway!

This of course is a totally different take on the humble onion as we are looking at all the onion family and this is a family tree with enough branches to make Gossip Girl a genealogist's breeze. And it's especially subversive because while there are few things as innocent as a lamb, the onion and its relations are the Corleone family of the vegetable world. Banned, despised but occasionally even worshipped.

The inhabitants of Pelusium in lower Egypt might have worshipped the onion and garlic but they'd never eat them. They are not alone. Pharaohs were sent to "sleep with the onions'' when they were buried in their tombs with onions rings over their eyelids or, like King Ramses, with onions in the eye sockets. This would bring a tear to his eyes; if the embalmers had left either of them in.

The Indian religion of Jainism advises its followers to avoid onions and garlic for three reasons; because to eat a root like these is to kill it and thus possibly also the little critters in the soil that depend on it for life; because their smell on the breath or on the person can distract others while meditating; and because as these roots don't see sunlight they might make people think negative or impure thoughts.

The first reason above is also why Shojin-ryori Buddhism forbids eating them too, while Mahayana Buddhists of China, Japan and Vietnam are also banned from eating the "Five Acrid and Strong Smelling Plants'' (leek, garlic, shallot, asafoetida, Chinese garlic) lest they excite the senses.

Certainly the smooth round curves of a perfect onion and that crisp sheath of papery skin does have something quite sensual about it compared to the lumpen potato or the workman-like swede.

It gets worse for the humble onion family who, one suspects, desperately needed a decent publicist over the last three millennia. Mohammed says that where the feet of the devil-trod garlic and onions grew garlic in the left footstep; onion in the right.

There are a few people who stood up for the "stinking rose'' and its relations. On the run, Moses's followers moaned in Numbers 11.5: "We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely, the cucumbers and the melons and the onions and the garlic'', and in the Middle Ages, onions along with beans and cabbages were the most popular veg.

Onions were also among the first veg planted by the Pilgrim Fathers in America but the onion reached its most photographed zenith when Shah Jahan picked it as the shape of the dome of the Taj Mahal and architects around the time of Ivan the Terrible did the same when building the equally photogenic St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.

Onions and their relations are especially fine because raw, their flesh is pungent and has both crispness and heat in the flavour, but as they cook they become mellow, soft and sweet.

The onion family are also brilliant partners to lamb.

In my house, no lamb roast is complete without slow-cooked caramelised onions folded through a white sauce to make a rich onion sauce.

If you puree the onions before adding to the bechamel, or pass this finished sauce through a fine sieve, you have what the French call a "sauce soubise'' which is a classier and a bit more foppish as a sauce for lamb, chicken or vegetables. If that's all too heavy you can just blitz the onions with a little low-fat ricotta and some stock or a similarly rich sauce without the butter and milk or cream. Sorry, I'm getting distracted. Onions do that to me.

Here what I've done is taken some of my favourite ways to treat members of the onion family to make a sort of Jacksons' dish where every member of the family is performing - the freshness of leeks barely braised in a French manner, the shallots showing off how delicious and sweet they can be when slow cooked to a dark sticky conclusion, the brown onions marrying perfectly with the lamb juices to make a gravy so thick it's almost a puree and also those red onions providing a contrasting zing and bite thanks to their bare rawness and a quick pickling.

And if you start thinking impure thoughts after eating this lot, just make sure you give the one you love a serve too!

Try MATT PRESTON'S ROAST LAMB recipe

Serves 4

For a serving idea, see below.

MATT'S VEGIES

Leeks a la grecque: Cook 2 washed, trimmed leeks gently in olive oil so they go translucent. When softened let them cool and mix in a splash of sherry vinegar.

Caramelised eschallots: Melt 50g butter in a pan big enough for 500g of peeled eschallots to lay on one level. When melted, add eschallots. Cook slowly for 15 minutes. Add another 50g butter and stir until it melts. Pour eschallots into a baking tray and pop into the oven with lamb. They will go dark and sticky. Remove just before serving.

Pickled red onions: Slice 500g red onions as thinly as possible. A mandolin is great for this. Put half in a heatproof bowl. Pour over boiling water. Count to 20, then drain and refresh them in cold water, then pat dry. Mix with the unblanched onions. Toss them in 1/4 cup of red wine vinegar with 1/4 cup currants.

To serve: Put a generous splash of the onion puree in the recipe, right, across four plates. Dot each with 5 marjoram leaves. Pile meat torn from the shoulder along one side of the line. On the other side place a pile of sticky eschallots and some butter from the pan, a little mound of the leeks and a larger mound of pickled red onion. Serve bowls of roast potatoes, sweet corn kernels and sweet peas.

Follow Matt Preston on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mattscravat

Matt Preston writes for the taste section, available every Tuesday in The Courier Mail, The Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun, every Wednesday in The Advertiser and in Perth's Sunday Times.

Source

Taste.com.au — May 2010

Author

Matt Preston