As most of you know, I love to cook. I don’t often feature the results on my blog, because I’m by no means a qualified food photographer, and most of what I photograph comes out looking like the left-overs from an airline tray. But I bought a beautiful saddle of lamb today. It was such a nice piece of meat, I thought I would showcase it here.

Saddle of lamb

If that’s not enough to whet your appetite, maybe a vision of the end product will. I’m trying a new, slow-cook recipe, cooked simply with rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper. I’ll finish it with a red-currant glaze.

The recipe, and the slow-cooking theory, can be found on The Guardian’s food pages: Love Me Tender.

Here’s the recipe:

Saddle of lamb

You will need to visit your butcher, as this cut of meat is not obtainable from supermarkets. Ask your butcher to trim the saddle so that it looks like a T-bone in cross section, with the fat still across the top and the chine bone trimmed off so that the base will sit as flat as possible in the pan. This should produce a symmetrical piece of meat, protected in fat on one side and bone on the other.

Serves four to six.

1 saddle of lamb

If you have the time, you can marinade the lamb for 24 hours in the following:

Olive oil
Several bunches rosemary and thyme
3 cloves garlic

Take a pan big enough to hold the saddle and pour in enough olive oil to ensure that there are no air gaps between the surface of the oil and the meat when the lamb is put in the pan. The oil conducts the heat from the pan more gently than air.

Put the pan on the lowest heat and cook the lamb, turning one-eighth of a turn every two to four minutes. This regulates the temperature and prevents the meat from getting too hot; if the oil in the pan sizzles, it is too hot.

Keep turning the meat as it gradually reaches an internal temperature of 56C, as measured on your meat probe. This will take up to one and a half hours. It seems like a lot of work, but if you’re in the kitchen anyway, you might as well be doing something useful. When the meat has reached this temperature, it is ready to serve. The meat does not need resting.

Bon Appetit!