Autumn Roasts

Autumn is the beginning of the comfort food season. Slow roasting meat and veg. makes for no-fuss cooking and tasty, warming food to brighten the dark evenings..

The golden colours of Autumn are reflected in the recipes below – Lamb and Autumn vegetables roasted until they are the colour of the Autumn leaves - rich yellows and browns with flashes of red (if you add a red pepper!).

Roast Shoulder of Lamb with Apple and Parsnips
Ingredients: 1 Shoulder of Lamb, 2-3 Dessert Apples, 2 medium Parsnips, 1 medium Onion, Wine (white or rosé), Salt and Pepper.

Ask your butcher for a shoulder of lamb with the bone still intact but the blade removed. Core and roughly chop the apples and lay in the bottom of a roasting pan or dish. Peel and chop the parsnips and onion and mix with the apples.

Lay the shoulder on top of the veg. and add 2 full glasses of wine plus 500ml water. Cover loosely with foil and slow roast in the oven at 160o C for approximately 4 hours.

Check the liquid levels every hour or so and baste the meat. You will probably need to add a little water to the dish to keep the liquid levels at 1-2cm deep.

The slow roasting allows most of the fat to render out and should give you a nice blend of crispy skin and moist interior. Serve a small pile of the apple/parsnip/onion with each portion.


Roast Autumn Vegetables
Ingredients: Pumpkin, Acorn Squash, Parsnips, Carrots, Onion, Courgettes, Aubergines, Red Peppers, Garlic, Fresh Herbs such as Rosemary and Bay, Olive Oil

Proportions for this dish are very flexible. Feel free to use all the veg mentioned or just a few - pumpkin, parsnip and onion work well for example.

It is best to use more pumpkin, squash and carrots (up to two thirds) and less of the softer veg such as courgettes and onions.

Peel the root veg. and de-seed and scrape the squashes and chop all into roughly equal pieces. Garlic can be left whole or peeled. Rosemary works best but any fresh herbs will add flavour.

Mix all the chopped veg with a generous splash of olive oil, add a good sprinkle of salt and pepper and roast for two hours at 160o C.