Tandoori Leg of Lamb Spicy Roast - 2, Mamta's
Masaledar Bakre ki Raan
Mamta Gupta
1st 4 pictures by Heather Gregory. She has butterflied the leg, removing the bone. I prefer to cook it on bone. You can use whichever way suits you best.
This is a dish for a festive or a special occasion or a Sunday Lunch! An easy dish to prepare, where a mix of spices gives the leg of lamb that extra delicate Indian flavour. It can be served with an Indian meal or as a traditional roast with a difference. My girls have always loved it served with a Yoghurt Mint Sauce and roast potatoes.
You can make it with butterflied lamb too (as shown in pictures), even on a BBQ. See instructions below from reader Heather Gregory of Australia.
Serves 6
The marinade used here can also be used to cook a roast chicken.
Ingredients
2 kg. (approximately) whole leg of lamb*
8-10 garlic cloves
Marinade
2 large onions peeled and roughly chopped
2 inch piece of ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
4-6 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 inch piece of fresh turmeric root, peeled (use 1 tsp turmeric powder, if you can't find it). You can use a full tsp. of sweet paprika powder instead.
2 tsp. coriander powder
2 tsp. Garam Masala
1 tsp. cumin powder
3-4 green chillies or 1-2 tsp. chilli powder
Juice of 1 large lemon or 2 tbsp. bottled lemon juice. I often use lime. Peel thick skin off with a knife and add the whole lime, and half of rind, to the blender
2 tbsp. cooking oil
2-3 whole onions, peeled and cut in halves.
A small bunch of coriander leaves
Salt to taste
1 tbsp. gram flour or besan (optional, it helps to coat the leg better)
1 tbsp. mint sauce or 2 tbsp. chopped mint leaves
1 small carton or 1 cup of thick, Greek style yoghurt (or strain ordinary yoghurt through muslin)
*You can use equal amount of Lamb shanks instead of leg of lamb
Instructions
Put all marinade ingredients, except yoghurt, in a blender and blend to a paste.
Add yoghurt and give a quick whizz to mix it well.
Make slits in the lamb leg all over.
Insert garlic cloves in the slits.
Cover the leg all over with the marinade, ensuring that some enters the slits.
Leave in an airtight container in the fridge overnight or at least for 3-4 hours. If it is not in an airtight container, the whole fridge will smell!
When ready to cook, line a baking tray with aluminium foil.
When ready to cook, preheat oven to 220C/200C Fan/Gas mark 7.
Line a baking pan with aluminium foil.
Place halved onions on top, evenly spread, to make a base for the leg to rest upon.
Place the marinated leg of lamb on top of the onions.
Cover with aluminium foil.
Cooking
Put the tray on the middle shelf of the oven and roast for about 35-40 minutes.
Now reduce the temperature of the oven down to 160C/140C Fan/Gas mark 3.
Add lamb stock of choice around the leg. I often use stockpot added to hot water, with a little red wine added.
Cover with the foil again.
Our family like it well cooked, the meat falling off the bone a little, roughly 4 to 4 1/2 hours. You can cook it for less, 1 1/2 -1 3/4 hours, if you like the meat pink.
take it out and rest it for bout 10 minutes.
When you carve, the meat will literally fall of the bones.
To make the gravy, mash the onions underneath the lamb, which will be well cooked by now, into the liquid using a potato masher.
Strain the liquid into a pan and bring to boil. I just add some lamb gravy granules to thicken it and give it a quick boil. The gravy is ready.
Serve with Peas Pulao (Pilaf or Pilau) and Yoghurt Mint sauce or as part of a festive meal. You can also serve it with roast potatoes and a selection of vegetables, as a 'Roast Dinner'.
How to Butterfly a leg of lamb, instructions by Heather Gregory of Australia
You can ask your butcher to butterfly the lamb, I find butchers quite like doing this sort of thing, but you can fairly easily do it yourself. Choose a short leg of lamb, the one without the extra, complicated bone at the top. Place the lamb on a large chopping board, fat-covered side down, so that the side with the bone closer to the surface and it is facing up. Then you cut through to the bone and work around the bone slowly with a small, sharp knife, e.g. a paring knife, until the bone is released. Then if necessary cut the lamb a bit more so that it lies flat and is of fairly uniform thickness. Proceed with the recipe as written, except that it is not necessary to cut slits in the lamb (as there is a very large cut surface to absorb the flavours). A few hours of marinating will be fine as the meat is much thinner. I marinate it in the morning and cook it in the evening.
Cook for an hour in a preheated oven at 200C/400F/Gas mark 6. It can also be cooked on a barbecue with a cover, in about the same time as in an oven. If you have a roasting rack for the barbecue, it would be good to use it. The only change I made to the recipe was to leave the mint/mint sauce out. I don't like mint much. It was delicious.
Notes
To make yoghurt sauce, mix 2 tbsp. of mint sauce to a carton of yoghurt. If it is too thick, dilute it to a sauce consistency with a little milk. There is no set amount to the quantities of mint and yoghurt in this, it is made according to your taste.
This marinade can be used for pieces of lamb too. Get your butcher to cut the leg into 2-3 inch pieces. To cook, BBQ on a skewer or oven-cook on a tray, on full heat, for 30 minutes or so.
I sometimes cook several shanks of lamb, one per person, instead of a leg of lamb. Shanks can be cooked on a BBQ.
Also see Lamb, Spicy Roast Leg of - 2.
