Mike's Youvetsi: a Greek comfort food

This hearty Greek dish of slow-cooked lamb and tomatoes baked with rice-shaped pasta and firm white cheese is wonderful on a chilly autumn evening. Prepare everything in advance, or the day before, and put it in the oven to reheat half an hour before your guests arrive.

This dish comes from the repertoire of Mike and Michele Karamanof, the second local cooks to be featured in my 'South African Food Fundis' series. Click here to read about the Karamanofs.

Any cut of lamb suitable for long, slow cooking can be used - leg of lamb, shoulder of lamb, lamb shanks, or even lamb chops or ribs. 'Don't use a deboned leg of lamb, though,' says Mike, 'as you need the bone in, for flavour.'

If you like, you can marinate the lamb in the olive oil, garlic, oregano and a little white wine for a few hours before it goes into the oven.

There are many variations of this traditional dish - some include onions, cinnamon, cloves, red wine, bay leaves and so on; add more flavourings as you see fit

This is Mike's version, which I think is perfect as it is, tasting only of its key ingredients: lamb and tomato. If you can't find Greek kefalotyri cheese, use a firm feta. 

Mike's Youvetsi
A leg or shoulder of lamb, or 6 lamb shanks (see notes above)
3 T (45 ml) olive oil
2 T (30 ml) good dried oregano
the juice of a lemon
salt and milled black pepper
4 cloves garlic, crushed (optional)
10 large, ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 x 500 g packet Orzo (or similar rice-shaped pasta)
2 cups (500 ml) cubed kefalotyri cheese or feta cheese

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Place the lamb in a large ovenproof dish or cast-iron casserole dish. If you're using lamb shanks, place them in a single layer in a roasting pan. Pour the olive oil over the top of the lamb and sprinkle with oregano and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper. Place in the oven, uncovered, and roast at 200°C for half an hour, or until the lamb is beginning to brown on top. Tilt the pan and drain all but about 3 tablespoons of fat away. Now arrange the chopped tomatoes and garlic around the lamb, turn down the heat to 120°C, and return the dish, uncovered, to the oven.

Cook for three to five hours (the cooking time will depend on the size of the leg or lamb pieces) or until the meat is fork-tender and falling away from the bone. Baste the meat occasionally with the pan juices while it's roasting.

Remove the meat from the dish and pull it into shreds or chunks - how big these are is up to you. Discard the bones.  Pile the meat onto a plate, cover, and set aside.

Place the roasting pan on the hob over a medium heat. Add six cups of water (or a mixture of white wine and water, if you like). Bring to the boil, scraping at the bottom of the pan to loosen any residue. Tip in the orzo and cook briskly, stirring occasionally, until the pasta is soft and has absorbed most of the liquid. You may have to add more liquid at this point if the mixture seems dry: it should be about the consistency of a risotto: not stiff or dry, but not swimming in liquid. Season with salt and pepper, tip in the reserved lamb pieces and three quarters of the cubed cheese, and mix gently. Scatter the remaining cheese over the top.

Pile the mixture into an earthenware or ceramic dish (about 10 cm deep is ideal) and cover. When you're ready to serve, place in a low oven (110°C) for half an hour, or until heated right through. Serve with a crisp green salad.

Serves 8 

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Seven-hour lamb: fall-apart, sticky, garlicky, lemony heaven

This, like all the recipes below, is an archived copy of a recipe originally posted on my other blog, Salmagundi.

Feck, but it's cold outside. My jeans harden instantly into frozen blue cardboard when I open the front door to let the pup out for a poo. A black frost has withered every plant in the garden. Dogs and cats are piled outside the front door, looking suspiciously rigid, like a pile of hairy frozen logs. (Only joking: they're snoozing by the hearth, in front of the feeble glow that passes for a fire).

Anyway, all I can think about is soft, tender, fall-apart, garlicky roast lamb, even though it's half-past ten at night and I've already sconed, while having a drink with my friend Nina, half a ton of olives and 200 discs of garlicky, olivey, capery marinated mozzarella discs (from the Cheese Factory Shop in Strydom Park - one of the Seventeen Shopping Wonders of Johannesburg; watch this space!).

So this is what I'm going to make my family tomorrow night:

Seven-Hour Lemon & Garlic Lamb

1 big shoulder of lamb (ask your butcher for this), or a large leg of lamb
10 cloves of garlic, peeled
3 tablespoons good dried oreganum
Finely grated rind of 2 lemons
1 tsp coarse sea salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, thickly sliced
Juice of 5-6 lemons
2 cups (500 ml) white wine

Pre-heat your oven to 220 C.

With a sharp knife, stab inch-deep cuts into lamb joint, at an angle. Ten stabs top and bottom will do. Now crush together the garlic cloves, the lemon rind, the oreganum and the sea salt, using a mortar and pestle, or a blender. Add the olive oil and mix to a paste. Using your fingers, stuff this mixture deep into the cuts you've made in the lamb. Rub any remaining mixture over the joint.

Arrange the onion slices in a deep roasting roasting tin, or oven-proof casserole dish, and place the lamb joint on top of them. Now put the dish in the oven, which should be blazing hot. Leave it for 20-30 minutes, or until the meat is nicely browned and the fat is starting to blister and bubble. Now turn the joint over, pour over half the lemon juice, and half the wine, and turn the heat down to 140 celsius. Leave to roast for another half hour, then turn the lamb skin-side up, cover tightly* with tin foil or a lid, and turn the oven down to 120 celsius. Cook for another four or five hours (depending on the size of the joint), topping up and basting frequently with lemon juice and wine. Don't allow the juices in the pan to boil dry - you want about 1 cm of juice at all times. After a total of seven hours cooking time, check the meat: you should be able to pull it off the bone with a fork.

Remove the lamb from the baking dish, put on a plate, cover, and allow to rest for five minutes. Skim the fat off the juices left in the pan. Now pull the lamb from the bone, using two forks, and toss it in the skimmed pan juices. Season with salt and pepper, and squeeze over the juice of half a lemon. Serve with roast potatoes** and veg.


* Note: There is a school of thought that says that lamb should not be covered during this slow-roast period (thanks, Michael-the-Greek). If you don't cover it with foil, it will have a lovely, sticky, lemony glaze, and a fantastic flavour, but it will be a bit dry on the inside.

** Note: Don't put the roast potatoes in the same dish as the lamb. An hour and a half before you're going to serve the lamb, parboil the pots in salted water for 10-15 minutes, or until they are soft and fluffy on the outside but still slightly 'cucumbery' on the inside. Drain off the water and toss the spuds well so they get fluffy and ragged on the edges. Now heat some fat (preferably the fat you've skimmed off the lamb, but olive oil if you're health-conscious) in a roasting tin or baking sheet, on top of the stove, until it's spitting. Add the parboiled potatoes, toss well to coat them in the fat, and put into a very hot oven (at least 190) for an hour or more.

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