This is a fabulously easy meal that is equally good for a midweek family meal, Sunday lunch or supper for friends. Start cooking it in the morning and just leave it on a low heat for 6-10 hours so you could slam it in the oven at 7.30am and it would be ready to eat when the children come home from school. Serve with baked potatoes, mash, roasties or spiced rice or jewelled couscous and some green veg. It’s equally good in the summer served with fatoush or other Middle Eastern salads
Serves 6
1 shoulder of lamb
2 onions, thickly sliced
8 garlic cloves, left in their skin
1 lemon, thickly sliced
1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
Heat the oven to 220c/gas 8/AGA roasting oven. Score the fat on the lamb crossways, drizzle a little olive oil into a large roasting tin, lay the onion slices, garlic and lemon slices in the bottom and lay the lamb over the top. Spoon the pomegranate molasses and olive oil over the lamb and rub into the cracks in the fat so the lamb is well covered.
Dry roast the cumin and coriander seeds in a dry frying pan until fragrant, roughly crush in a pestle and mortar. Mix with the ground cinnamon, salt and fennel seeds and scatter over the lamb. Cover with tin foil and roast for 20 minutes. Turn the oven down to 150c/gas 3 or transfer to the oven floor of the simmering over of an AGA for 5-9 hours, basting occasionally to make sure it keeps moist.
Lift the lamb onto a large plate and shred the meat from the bone, removing the fat. Spoon off most of the fat in the roasting tin and transfer the juices to a jug, the juice will be delicious as it is and you shouldn’t need to thicken it. Serve immediately with the roast onion and garlic on the side.