RECIPE: Leon's Riga Lamb

Oh man this is gooooooooood. My first recipe suggestion had to be of an outstanding caliber so I chose this champion of meals. You know when you want to feel all rustic and Jamie Olivery by serving up the food you cooked in the oven tray you cooked it in? so you can be all like "Bam! yeah I just made this bad boy, check me out I do this shit all the time..."

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So here it is - I must add that this is not the actual picture of my Riga's lamb - that features a little further down the page. I yoinked this one from my sister's blog cause she did it first... and to be fair it was prettier than mine.

Feeds: 2 if one of them is me
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 3 hours

1 leg of lamb, on the bone
5 cloves of garlic
a small bunch of fresh mint
2 onions
2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes
75ml extra virgin olive oil
300g risoni, kritharaki or small macaroni
2 tablespoons dried mint
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 150°C/300ºF/gas mark 2.

2. With the tip of a sharp knife, make 6 or 7 quite deep holes on both sides of the meat. Stuff these with small pieces of garlic, followed by an equal amount of salt and black pepper mixed together. Plug the holes with a couple of leaves of fresh
mint, and season the meat with a little more salt and pepper.

3. Finely chop the onions or cut into rings, and put them into a large roasting dish. Add the tomatoes and oil and stir well. Put the meat on top, and place in the oven.

4. Cook for 3 and a half hours. Keep adding water to the sauce to prevent it from drying out. If you like, you can baste the lamb with spoonfuls of the sauce so that it forms a crust of caramelized onions on the meat.

5. When 20 minutes of cooking time is left, add a cup of water to the sauce and stir in the risoni or macaroni.

6. Season, sprinkle well with dried mint and put back into the oven until the pasta is tender. 

The macaroni will expand and absorb the liquid sauce, which in turn will have absorbed all the juices from the meat. Keep adding water and stirring every 5 - 10 minutes if you need to so that the pasta stays moist and doesn't stick.

From Leon Book 2 - Available on Amazon

Ok so now here's my actual one. I appreciate it looks like the remnants of a murder scene but that's cause I'd already eaten half of it before taking the photo. And that's garlic in the middle, not maggots.