A Feast Day in The Offing...

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OK - it's going to be a completely lazy and gratuitous food post weekend this weekend. Tomorrow we feast for our son's birthday; and I won't reveal which one for reasons of my vanity rather than his. Pictured is the mis-en-place of the basic ingredients of a dish which I will spend half a day cooking tomorrow. To this a great pile of spuds will be added, along with sundry other flavourings and spices, oils and wine. The star of the show of course will be the wonderful piece of meat seen here acclimatising in the enormous cast iron pot in which the thing will be cooked, very slowly, on the morrow.

The recipe called for a whole leg of lamb, but we went one better and bought 'lamb' from one of our local Halal butchers in Bangor; clue: this ain't no Spring Lamb just a few months old. Nah, this is the real deal. Could be mutton, but probably hogget: either way, way tastier than the over-priced stuff you get in Waitrose or Marks. This piece weighed in at just shy of three kilos and cost the princely sum of thirty-eight quid. Even if we wolf the lot down tomorrow - unlikely - we'll be feeding seven of us; so just over a fiver apiece.

However I expect to get nearer a dozen meals out of it with leftovers, and stock to boot. Take my advice: talk to your local Halal butcher: they do the best chicken and lamb you can get on the High St. these days, and at prices real people can afford. You won't get the bland, watery meat that the supermarkets shove on the shelves, and you'll be quids-in on the cash front as well. I'll post about the finished article tomorrow evening, and let you know which country the recipe hails from. Talk later...

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