Sunday 22 July 2012

Glazed Barbequed Leg of Lamb: the Death of the Sausage


It’s that time of year again, and from what I hear we might finally be getting the weather for it. Oil down the grill and stock up on the charcoal: it’s barbeque season, baby!

Now I’ll be the first to stick up my hand and say that I’m not a barbeque expert. But the basic rules as I understand them are:

1. Judicious use of firelighters good; dousing the lot in petrol bad.
2. Wait for the flames to die down before you try cooking (to avoid that well-loved classic, the raw sausage with extraneous burned bits).
3. When the charcoal’s white, it’s ready to cook. If it’s not, don’t try.
4. Men who claim they know how a barbeque works may not always be telling the truth. Ditto women who claim they don’t.
5. Keep a bucket of water near the fire and children, pets and your fingers away from it.

Finally, and most importantly: there are a million and one things to barbeque that have nothing to do with burgers or sausages. The options for kebabs and skewers alone are endless. As usual, experiment!

Awesome things to barbeque

Whole fish and steak do well here, since they cook quite quickly from raw, and the essential idea with any barbeque is always to have the inside cooked before the outside burns. Make your own garlic butter for the steak by mixing butter, crushed garlic, finely chopped parsley, salt and pepper until they’re evenly combined. For whole fish, stuff the belly with lemon, butter and aromatic herbs and make sure you oil and season the skin. For fish fillets, marinade in something citrus- and oil-based for five or ten minutes before cooking.

With things like chicken, ribs, or larger cuts of meat, you might want to consider braising/poaching them or starting them off in the oven before finishing on the barbeque for flavour. This way you’re more likely to get perfectly cooked meat and that smoky barbeque goodness, rather than having to choose between the two. As we've now comprehensively and sarcastically discussed, with a normal charcoal barbeque it is pretty hard to control the temperature well enough to guarantee a perfect cooking point.

Why banish chicken?

Just make sure it's cooked before you eat it, that's all.

Try poaching whole chicken breasts in seasoned water that’s just below a simmer. When they’re just off fully cooked, remove them and cut into chunks. Whizz up some chillies, garlic, ginger, sesame oil, lime zest and juice, nam pla (Thai fish sauce) and a little soy sauce in the blender to make a paste. Coat the pieces of chicken in it and skewer them along with the veggies of your choice (par-cooked as well if necessary – depends on the size of the chunks). Whack ‘em on the grill to finish and serve with some pak choi (incidentally, blanched and halved these grill very nicely too) and jasmine rice.

It starts and ends in the kitchen

The point is, for a really impressive barbeque you have to think of the actual grilling part as a bit of a show. It’s a social hub, it looks good, and it brings a great flavour to your food, but a lot of kitchen work needs to go in too. Think marinades and glazes (more on how to make both below); starting things in the oven; and some awe-inspiring salads. Break out the roasted courgette and cherry tomatoes, halloumi, mozzarella, avocado, pine nuts, and toasted breadcrumbs (although maybe not all at once...) and don’t forget your signature dressing.

Don’t overlook the humble potato salad, by the way. For a brilliant one, use waxy baby new potatoes and boil them until just done. Halve or quarter them and mix with just enough mayonnaise to coat, but not so much that they’re swimming in it. Stir in a few cloves of crushed garlic, a tiny squeeze of lemon, a big handful of finely chopped chives, and a bunch of chopped spring onions. Season very generously – plenty of pepper especially.


So there you have it. All you really need to do for the perfect barbeque is pick your favourite meat, fish and veg; look up some top marinades online; start stuff in the kitchen where necessary; remember not to cook before the flames go away; give some love to the salads...and try to keep the beers cold. Simples.

Here’s one to get you started.


Barbequed leg of lamb with a honey and soy sauce glaze

Ingredients

1 leg of lamb, boned out – and preferably butterflied – by your butcher (or you, if you’re feeling flashy)

For the marinade/glaze:
5 tsp soy sauce
5 tsp honey
3 tsp Demerara sugar
250ml sunflower oil (add a bit of sesame too, if you feel so inclined)
5-7 garlic cloves, well crushed with a little salt
Juice of one lime

To cook (when starting in the oven):
1 whole lime, quartered
1 whole head of garlic, cut in half horizontally

For a side dish:
Half an aubergine per person

Method

Mix together the marinade ingredients as thoroughly as you can (they won’t want to stay combined; don’t worry). Pour the marinade over the lamb, making sure it gets into all the crevices inside and out. The oil level should pretty much cover the meat: if not, add another tablespoon of honey and soy sauce and another two of oil until it does.

Cover and refrigerate, and allow to marinade for a few hours minimum – overnight is ideal. Turn the lamb over halfway through your marinade time. The point is to tenderise the meat (the acid in the lime and salt in the soy sauce does this) without letting it oxidise (hence the oil to keep it sealed), whilst also imparting plenty of flavour. To make the glaze for the lamb, later on you’ll reduce some of the marinade down until the honey and sugar become gooey and use this to coat the meat, giving it a sticky, sweet and salty crust.

When you’re ready to cook the lamb: get your barbeque going around half an hour before you start the lamb, if it’s one of those that needs ages to heat up. Pre-heat your oven to around 180°C.

Prepare a roasting tin by making a little platform out of the lime quarters and halved garlic head. Take the lamb out of the marinade and rest it, skin up, on this platform. This will help the heat circulate around the meat. The joint should be flattened out, not rolled – it’ll cook quicker that way. It’ll also cook less evenly, but in my experience there’s always one person who likes their meat more well done than everyone else anyway.

Allow the marinade to settle a bit, then pour and/or skim as much of the oil as you can off the top. Reserve both the oil and the soy-sauce honey mix. Set aside half of the latter for later, and pour half over the lamb before you put it in the oven.

Cooking time for the lamb will be around half an hour, or until it’s a little less done than you usually like it. You’ll need to baste it regularly by pouring over spoonfuls of the sticky soy sauce mixture, which will run off less and less easily as it cooks. You can check how fast it’s cooking when you baste it, and adjust your roasting time accordingly.

While the lamb cooks, oil the bars of your barbeque grill with some of the oil left over from the marinade. Slice the aubergine into slices around 0.5cm thick, brush it with some more of the oil, season, and grill it over the barbeque until cooked, brushing with more oil as necessary. Keep it warm.

Just before the lamb finishes in the oven, put the reserved half of the soy sauce mixture into a small pan and reduce it by about half. It should become sticky and syrupy. This is your glaze.

Once the lamb’s done, finish cooking it on the barbeque. Start it skin side down, so you can pick off any lime or garlic from the baking tray that might have stuck to the bottom half. Squeeze the roasted garlic cloves out of their skins and the flesh out of the lime pieces. Mush them all together and toss the aubergine pieces gently in the resulting paste. Season as required.

If you like, you can add a little water to the leftover glaze in the pan until it’s a sauce-like texture, sieve it, and serve it with the lamb. It can be a little salty because of all the soy sauce, but personally I like it!

Brush or spoon plenty of glaze onto the non-skin side of the lamb while it cooks, as it won’t have collected any during its time in the oven. Cook the lamb for about five minutes on each side, or until it’s reached your preferred cooking degree and/or is attractively charred...

Serve the lamb with the aubergine pieces and your favourite green and potato salads.