For those of you who don't know, scrag end is the scruff of the neck. It looks very similar to lamb chops but is more fatty so needs to be cooked slowly at a lower temperature. The beauty of it is that the first day you can make a stew and then with any leftovers you can make Lancashire hot pot or Shepherd's pie.
I'm going to show you my recipe for a stew using this wonderful flavoursome cut of lamb.
You need:
1 Kilo (2 Ilbs) of scrag end (approx £4)
1 or 2 onions
2 to 3 cloves of garlic
Rosemary and thyme
1 Cinnamon stick
2 Glasses of red wine
1 pint of water (or enough to cover the lamb) with a veg stock cube dissolved
1 tin of tomatoes
Now, I don't happen to have any carrots so I'm going to use what I have, celeriac, potatoes and cauliflour and cook those separately, but you could add carrots and suede to this recipe.
Instructions:
Pre heat the oven to 160 degrees
To make this lovely warming stew, you'll first of all need to flour the meat and chop the onions. Add these either to a cast iron cooking pot or a frying pan (then transfer to a casserole dish) and seal the meat (lightly brown it, not too much) now pour in the wine, water and stock, the herbs, cinnamon stick and the cloves of garlic (maybe chop in half but remember they will dissolve into the juice over time) and season with rock salt and cracked black pepper.
Put in the oven for 3 hours. I like to make this at about 2 or 3pm on a Saturday afternoon just in time for Strictly Come Dancing.
Now the garlic cloves, it might seem like a lot but they actually dissolve and turn into paste in the stew. You don't have to worry about stinking of garlic because roasting or cooking them like this takes away the strong flavour.
I will be serving this with celeriac and potato mash and some cauliflour that I happen to have in the fridge.
We've also just made pumpkin pie using James Martin's recipe. Yum, smells delicious! :-)
I'll post up some picture later on.
Enjoy!
Sian x
