Garlic Roast Leg of Lamb

This roast is one of my favourites, it combines the delicate flavour of lamb with the richness of a gravy based on roast garlic. Don't worry that you will suffer from garlic breath after eating this dish, even though it uses a lot of garlic the roasting seems to alter the penetrating qualities of the garlic and it does not hang around for long at all.

Leg of lamb (or half a leg - preferably the knuckle half, depending on how greedy you are)

3 - 6 cloves of garlic (or more - depending on how much you like garlic!)

50g butter

1 litre stock

• Begin by preparing the lamb.Wipe the surface of the joint with paper towels so that it is dry, with a sharp knife score a few cuts about 5 mm deep into the joint. Next prepare the garlic butter - crush all the garlic and beat into the butter.
• Put the leg oflamb into a roasting pan - the pan should be just a little larger than the leg so that it can lie down comfortably on the bottom of the pan.
• Spread about two thirds of the garlic butter on top of the joint and the remainder on the cut end, working the butter into the cuts you made earlier. Heat the stock to boiling and pour about 200ml into the pan. Put the pan into a preheated oven at 180°C and cook for about 75 minutes.
• After about 40 minutes the stock should have all evaporated, do not add any more stock but rather allow the juices and melted butter on the bottom of the pan to brown off.
• After 75 minutes take the joint out of the oven and knock most of the roast garlic off the lamb and into the pan. Take the lamb out and set aside on a carving dish .Add about half the stock to the pan and scrape all the browned juices and other material into the stock - pour into a saucepan and then add the rest of the stock to the roasting tin and repeat to make sure you have removed everything out of the roasting pan you can possibly manage - remember it is all this lovely browned material that has all the flavour you want in the gravy.
• Now you can bring the gravy to the boil and add pepper (and salt) to your taste. Finally you can thicken the gravy.You can do this either by adding about a teaspoon of cornflour suspended in cold water and stirring that in, or, to make an even richer gravy, by preparing a dark roux with about 40 g flour and 50 g butter in the roasting tin and then adding the unthickened gravy a little at a time to the roux making sure to stir all the time .
• The advantage of the first method is that there is no risk of getting any 'lumps in the gravy', on the other hand the second method does make a richer product.
• Finally carve the meat and serve with roast potatoes, green vegetables and the gravy.

Keypoints
• Don't add too much stock at the beginning - let it all evaporate in the first 40 minutes of the cooking time and then brown off to give lots of flavour
• Make sure you scrape out (deglaze) the roasting pan very thoroughly.
• Avoid cooking too long - leave the lamb 'pink'

Serve 6