Happy Easter Weekend, everyone.
My plan was to post this much earlier in the day, but the weather was so nice I went for another walk instead. The photo above is of early this morning and unlike a lot of days recently which have deteriorated fast, this one didn’t and I wanted to make the most of it. But that is nothing to do with the food, so swiftly on to some recipes…
I imagine a fair few of you are cooking lamb tomorrow. If you like the effect of low and slow but don’t want the oven on for several hours, this might be the recipe for you. It gives you another option anyway. And I follow it with a recipe for a rhubarb trifle which can be cobbled together last minute with a quick cake and store cupboard ingredients or made entirely from scratch. The recipes for the trifle, by the way, are all examples of what is known as “PIP” or “Pot in Pot” because you are putting a pot into the pressure cooker rather than the food directly into the base. It is useful for delicate things like rhubarb, for giving a baked or roast effect and getting a more even distribution of heat for dishes where it really matters.
Lemon and Rosemary Lamb Shoulder
Such an easy, forgiving, low prep recipe this. It owes something to a Greek dish which also has a whole diced lemon in it - but I don’t do this here, because lemon pith in a pressure cooker sauce which cooks for this length of time is not a good idea - the whole thing ends up unpleasantly bitter.
My recipe is for a half shoulder of lamb, bone in, which is plenty for 4. If you wanted to do a whole shoulder and your pressure cooker is big enough, I would increase the cooking time to an hour.
Ingredients:
½ lamb shoulder, bone in
3 pieces pared lemon zest, julienned
½ head garlic, broken into cloves, 3 finely sliced, the others squashed
Sprigs of rosemary
2 tbsp olive oil
200ml red wine
2 large tomatoes, pureed (or 200g tinned/passata)
2cm piece cinnamon stick, broken up
Lemon juice
Cut slits all over the lamb and push in pieces of lemon zest, garlic and rosemary. Season with salt.
Heat your pressure cooker. When it is hot, add the olive oil and sear the lamb until it is well browned all over. If you are using an electric pressure cooker with a sensitive burn warning, you might want to this in a frying pan.
Remove the lamb from the cooker and strain off any excess fat that has rendered out. Pour in the red wine and make sure the base of the cooker is thoroughly deglazed. Add the tomatoes, cinnamon stick, remaining garlic and more rosemary. Return the lamb to the pot and season again with salt and pepper.
Close the lid and bring up to high pressure. Adjust the heat so it is just high enough to maintain the pressure and cook for 45 minutes. Remove from the heat and leave to drop pressure naturally. Remove the lamb from the cooker and keep warm. Strain the contents, mashing up the garlic as you do so. Skim off any fat (you will find it sets on top of the liquid quite quickly. Reheat and taste - add a little lemon juice if necessary, and serve as a gravy. Pull the lamb apart into chunks to serve.
What to serve with the lamb?
New potatoes if you have them (it’s a bit early), but I like smashed potatoes. Cook fairly small potatoes in the skins – around 5 minutes high pressure, fast release. Squash the potatoes, and fry in a pan with lots of butter and salt until crisp around the edges. I would also do a large bunch of chard, cooked for zero minutes and served with a squeeze of lemon and more butter.
And to cut through the lamb, something a bit sharp, like these agrodolce shallots (you can also use small onions). The method below works well with fennel too - just cut the cooking time down to 2 minutes.
Peel 12 shallots and sear in olive oil in your pressure cooker. Mix together 50ml red wine or a dry sherry with 2 tbsp apple balsamic, or regular balsamic and a teaspoon of honey. Season the shallots and add a little fresh or dried thyme and some finely grated lemon zest. Pour over the liquids and immediately close the lid. Bring up to high pressure and cook for 4 minutes, natural release.
Rhubarb and Blood Orange (or Mandarin) Trifle
Forced rhubarb and blood oranges will be around for a little while yet. This trifle celebrates them both, but I do also use mandarins in place of the blood oranges if I can get the fragrant skinned sort.
With a trifle like this you can make pretty much all the elements from first principles or swap them out for bought versions. Or in the case of the cake, you could use trifle sponges, madeira…anything you like, really. I don’t always make custard in the pressure cooker – I do sometimes resort to the Bird’s sort, or a quick one made with cornflour and vanilla. The recipe here is a bit of a hybrid, because I didn’t want to increase the number of egg yolks necessary for a thicker custard (eggs have got so expensive, especially if, like me, you want the free to roam, soy feed free sort), so I added a heaped teaspoon of cornflour. I wasn’t sure it would work, but it did, thank goodness!
For the cake:
75g ground almonds (optional)
75g plain flour OR 150g if not using the ground almonds
1 tsp baking powder
100g butter, softened
100g caster sugar
Zest of ½ blood orange or 1 mandarin
2 eggs
Butter and line an 18cm round tin with baking parchment. Put 2cm water in the base of your pressure cooker and add a trivet. Set over a medium heat – you want the water to start heating enough to create steam by the time you are ready to add the cake.
Mix the ground almonds, flour and baking powder together and add a generous pinch of salt. Beat the butter with the caster sugar and zest until soft and aerated, then add the dry ingredients and eggs. Mix to a fairly stiff batter, then scrape into your prepared tin. Cover with baking parchment or reusable alternative, and place on the trivet.
Place the lid on without closing fully and when a decent amount of steam is being generated, time for 10 minutes. At this point, close the lid, bring up to high pressure and cook for another 10 minutes. Leave to drop pressure naturally. Remove from the cooker and turn out onto a cooling rack. For the purposes of a trifle, it is best to make this a day in advance and leave it out so it has a chance to dry out a little.
For the custard:
4 egg yolks
2 tbsp caster sugar
1 heaped tsp cornflour
300ml whole milk (or half milk, half single cream)
½ tsp vanilla extract or a split vanilla pod
Put 2cm water in the base of your pressure cooker. Place a folded up piece of fabric in the base of your pressure cooker and cover with 2cm water. Put the egg yolks in a heatproof bowl with the caster sugar, the cornflour and a pinch of salt and whisk to combine, making sure it is completely lump free. Stir in the milk and add the vanilla. Cover the bowl securely with baking parchment or similar – I use rubber bands.
Place the bowl in your pressure cooker and close the lid. Bring up to high pressure and adjust the heat so it is just high enough to maintain the pressure. Cook for 5 minutes, then remove from the heat and leave to drop pressure naturally. Remove the bowl from the cooker and give a quick whisk to make sure it is smooth – it should have set to a fairly wobbly custard. Leave to cool to room temperature, then transfer to the fridge to chill.
For the rhubarb:
Note – the timings for this are different from those in Modern Pressure Cooking – the forced rhubarb I have been using recently has been cooking much faster. I do occasionally need to add more time, especially if doing a larger amount but 2 minutes should usually be enough.
300g rhubarb, cut into 2.5cm lengths
Zest and juice of ½ blood orange or 1 mandarin
2 tbsp caster sugar
Put 2cm water in the base of your pressure cooker and start heating it. Add a trivet. Arrange the rhubarb in a dish small enough to fit into your pressure cooker and add the zest, juice and sugar. Cover with foil or parchment and secure in place. Put in the pressure cooker and close the lid.
Bring up to high pressure. Cook for 2 minutes and fast release. Carefully strain off the syrupy liquid – you don’t want to break up the rhubarb – and transfer to a separate bowl.
To make the trifle:
I made individual trifles because at least 2 of the people I was serving didn’t want alcohol – and everyone else did. But it will make one which should be enough for 6 people.
1 cake (you won’t need all of it, which is no bad thing), or madeira, or trifle sponges
3 tbsp jam (I used the mandarin jam I made last year, here, but use anything you like)
The rhubarb and it’s cooking liquor
50ml sweet wine or sherry
A few amaretto (optional)
The custard (or use a shop bought one, 400ml should be plenty)
300ml double cream
1 tbsp icing sugar
25g flaked almonds, lightly toasted.
Slice the cake in half, so you end up with 2 shallow disks. Spread one of the disks with jam and sandwich them back together.
Cut the cake up into squares, and divide between a trifle dish (or individual ones, as I have done). Mix the rhubarb syrup with the sweet wine or sherry. Pour this over the sponges. Top the sponge with the rhubarb, followed by a few crumbled amaretti. Spoon over the custard.
Whip the cream to the soft peaks stage – you don’t want it too firm as it won’t spread easily over the custard otherwise. Mix in the icing sugar and spread over the custard. Top with the flaked almonds.
Best left to chill for a while before eating. And before I go - let me just lob in the jelly bomb. I didn’t put any in this one, but I do think a jelly set in and over the sponge, made from the rhubarb cooking liquor and wine would be a wonderful thing…
I’m a bit late reading this to cook it for Easter and we ate out this year anyway, but this sounds an excellent plan for next weekend. There are only two of us at home but the leftover lamb should make an excellent curry. I bought a babka last weekend which is like a very rich brioche. I had some over and rather than letting it dry out and throwing away I sliced it and froze it. I had thoughts of a bread and butter pudding but I wonder whether it would make a good trifle base? There is only one way to find out.
I made the lamb today. You were spot on about all the fat but it did separate quickly and I spooned it off. I added some leftover wild garlic pesto to the gravy/juices. We will have the rest early in the week in a curry. Altogether very tasty and trouble free and meant I could get on with a few chores while it cooked.