Lamb crackling!
A friend of mine mentioned that he had seen a recipe for belly of lamb, also known as breast of lamb and asked me if I had ever cooked it. I had, until then never even thought about it and was intrigued, to the degree that I had to cook it and sooner rather than later. This meant this weekend!
I bought the belly/breast of lamb and a shoulder as well and dedicated a few hours today to cook it.
I cured the belly/breast of lamb overnight and it was ready to be cooked this morning.
I put the oven on low heat and started to slow cook the belly/breast and shoulder of lamb. The belly/breast of lamb cooked for three hours and the shoulder of lamb for four and a half hour.
After three hours I took the belly of lamb out. Once cooled I separated the meat from the crackling and scraped off the excess fat. I kept the meat cold but prepared to cook the crackling again on high heat to give it a final crisp up.
I started with the champagne cocktail and decided to use this as my revised recipe for Bibo, here we go
For three Bibo cocktails
• Juice of 1 lemon
• A squeeze of honey
• Whisky, 1 measure per cocktail
• Fresh mint
• Champange
• Ginger ale
• 1 slice of lemon
Mix lemon and honey and make sure the honey dissolved. Pour over mint leaves, add whisky, champagne and ginger ale and a slice of lemon, ice and serve, it will be so prefect on a hot summer day!
I made a starter of prawns and it was perfect with the whisky cocktail.
After that we were ready to tuck in to the lamb. I opted against carbs and made cauliflower mash, very low in fat and healthy. A salad with peas, baked vegetables from the allotment and a lemon sauce to cut through the richness of the lamb.
Cauliflower mash
Salad
The shoulder of lamb came out lovely, rich and with meat so tender it fell of the bone.
And the crackling? I have to say it was quite a lot of cooking involved but it was quite amazing. I would cook it again for sure but not very often as even if I didn’t cook any carbs to go with the meal, lamb is always rich and the belly and shoulder has their fair share of fat. Even if I cut as much as I could off it is still rich but so nice!
To go with this lovely Sunday dinner we started with a Margaux, always a treat, After that we moved to a Pinot Noir, my latest find, from Romania, very smooth and lovely. Time to clear up and head to bed and prepare for another manic week!
Food Eat Love 
Where was my invite 🙂 This sounds absoutely goregous! I’ve done mashed root vegetables, but never thought of mashing cauliflower, one that I must try very soon.
Cauliflower mash is great, put it in the blender to make it really smooth and lovely with a dusting of smoked paprika! 🙂
Lamb crackling – this was my new food discovery, when I realised that “breast” of lamb was just a posh way of saying “belly” of lamb. Bit of a revelation too. Sounds delicious with the cauliflower.
Love breast of lamb. It was a recent discovery for me too when I realised that “breast” of lamb was just posh way of saying “belly”. Love the cauliflower too.
I didn’t realise it was the same until my butcher kindly told me! It was really worth the effort and I just love cauliflower!