week 40 What to Eat Now - Valentine Warner

You think you go on holiday to get away from routine, but somehow - after fortuitously managed to escape to Cumbria for a fortnight between lockdowns - we still ended up cooking a roast in our cottage on both the Sundays we were there. The only day of the week it feels completely normal to eat a big plate of meat and potatoes in the middle of the afternoon, even if the rest of your regular routine has gone temporarily out of the window.

We didn't actually eat our roast at lunch time when I was growing up, but at dinner time (in the Southern sense). As well as the appropriate accoutrements to go with what ever meat was being   - yorkies, stuffing, mint sauce, apple sauce etc - there's was almost always a white sauce of some type. Either with cheese and baked with cauliflower (or broccoli, or leeks, or shredded white cabbage, which is surprisingly good) or with onion.

The onion sauce always started as a finely chopped onion, that would be prepared on a Sunday morning and then placed in a Pyrex measuring jug and covered with water until later. A becahamel would then be whisked up and the onion added. Reassuringly comforting and, even back in the 80s, rather old fashioned. But, while it might be outmoded, it's also bloody tasty and after seeing a recipe in Valentine Warner's What to Eat Now (yes, I did take cookbooks on holiday with me) it seemed time for a revival.

Sharing in the staring role alongside the revived onion sauce was a rolled shoulder of sweet salt marsh lamb. Reared on the marshlands on the Solway Firth Estuary, a few miles from where we were staying - you could see the estuary from the bedroom window - it was purchased from Cranstons Cumbrian food hall in Penrith. We also picked up some buttercup-coloured Lancashire whey cream butter in Booths to make the sauce.

As an added (and unknown, as I also bought my own onions) bonus the couple we let the cottage from were also our neighbours, and they invited us to help our selves to as many of the homegrown onions in the shed that we needed. I soon realised one would be more than enough...

Roast lamb with roasted roots and onion sauce

adapted from Valentine Warner 

3 big sprigs of rosemary 

1.75kg shoulder of lamb

4 carrots

4 parsnips

1/2 swede

olive oil

sauce

onions 3 medium (or one giant)

25 g butter

200ml dry white wine

1 tsp caster sugar

splash of white wine vinegar

1 tbsp plain flour 

450ml milk

Heat the oven to 220c. Strip the rosemary from its stems, combining the leaves with 1 tbsp salt and a plenty of black pepper. Rub into the lamb shoulder and leave to one side.

Peel the carrots, swede and parsnips, splitting the parsnips and carrots in half and schppi ng the swede into large chunks. Put them straight into salted boiling water and parboil them 6 minutes. Toss them in a bowl in a little olive oil, black pepper and salt.

Tip the vegetables in a baking dish and and place the lamb on top. Cook it for approximately 45 minutes. Remove when the lamb is still a little pink in the middle.

Meanwhile, peel the onions, and finely dice. Melt the butter in a pan. Add the onion, season, and sweat for about 10 minutes. Pour in the wine, sprinkle in the sugar and cook until the onion is soft, about another 20 -30 minutes (this step always takes longer than you think it should).

Add the vinegar and keep on cooking until all the liquid has evaporated. The onions should not be coloured. Sprinkle over the flour and whisk in thoroughly. 

Start adding the milk slowly, whisking all the time. When all the milk has been used, cook the sauce very gently for a further 10 minutes. The consistency of the sauce should be that of double cream.

Remove the lamb and put it on a board to rest, place the vegetables back in the oven and cook for a further 10 minutes if needed. Remove the vegetables and put on a platter.

Slice the lamb and lay over the vegetables. Pour any additional juices from the joint into the sauce, and pour the sauce into a jug. In Valentine's words, this is one heck of a lunch.