Roast lamb with spiced apricot and pine nut stuffing and gravy

I cooked this today for Sunday lunch. It's dead easy to make and absolutely delicious! It combines classic leg of lamb with apricots, pine nuts and Ras el Hanout, a Moroccan spice blend sometimes called 35 spice mix. It is the defining smell of tagine, and wonderful to cook with in many other ways. The sauce or gravy is thick, intense, meaty, aromatic and a little sweet to balance with the lamb.

You can buy Ras el Hanout ready mixed from supermarkets if you don’t happen to have any of the real deal from Morocco hanging around. Or if you prefer, you can make up something equally tasty at home. The exact ingredients are up to you, but you might start with about teaspoon each of black pepper, coriander, ginger, cinnamon and cloves. Then you could add in perhaps half a teaspoon each of some or all of allspice, cardamom, cumin, fennel, fenugreek, nutmeg, paprika, turmeric or chilli. If you can find any dried rose petals to throw in, so much the better.

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Ingredients

For about 6 people
  

About 1.5kg boned leg of lamb
2 onions
Butter
Garlic
Ras el Hanout spice mix
50g breadcrumbs
Packet of dried apricots

Handful of pine nuts
An egg
A pint of lamb stock
Plain flour
Optionally, a little concentrated veg stock
Some coriander or parsley to sprinkle if you like

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The stuffing

 

Put a finely chopped onion on to saute with a decent knob of butter, and when the onion is soft add four chopped cloves of garlic, a big tablespoon of Ras el Hanout, and a big pinch of salt. Give it all a good stir, sizzle for a few more minutes until you can really smell the spices, then take the pan off the heat. Stir in about 50g of breadcrumbs, two handfuls of finely chopped dried apricots and a handful of pine nuts. Then crack an egg on top and thoroughly mix the whole lot up. This is your raw stuffing.

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The lamb

To prepare your leg of lamb, carefully remove the string and open the meat out on a board, with the inside facing up. Smear the stuffing all over the meat, pushing it into all the cracks and gaps. Then carefully roll the meat up and tie it up with the string again.

Weigh your stuffed lamb to calculate your cooking time - 25-30 minutes per pound depending how you like it done. Put a little oil in a roasting tin and lay a bed of roughly chopped onions in the middle - these are great for the gravy later. Rest the lamb on top of the onions, rub some more Ras El Hanout into it, and stick it in the oven at 190C.

Now you can take it easy for an hour or so, perhaps put up a Christmas tree...

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The sauce

Put a pint of quality lamb stock on to boil with another two handfuls of chopped dried apricots and another large tablespoon of Ras el Hanout. Boil it rapidly until it has reduced by about half, and then leave to simmer for about half an hour to stew the apricots. Add some water if it gets too thick.

When the lamb is done, tip the pan juices into your sauce, and scrape the roast onions and all the brown bits in too. Check your sauce’s taste - it should be sweet, rich and meaty. Add some water if you need to increase the volume, some concentrated vegetable stock if you want to intensify the flavour, and season to taste with salt.

Finally, to thicken your sauce, mix a large teaspoon of flour with a little water, then mix half of this into the sauce. Stir and cook for a few minutes, then add the rest if you want the sauce to be thicker - it should be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. When you’re happy, simmer it for a good few minutes more while you carve the lamb to make sure any floury taste is cooked away.

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And to serve...

Serve your carved lamb with the stuffing and the sauce in a jug on the side. You could sprinkle with a little coriander or parsley if you like. This goes great with honey glazed roast carrots and whole roast new potatoes.