Betty, my lovely grandma, turned 89 last week. We didn’t see her on her actual birthday, as she was visiting in Windsor, but she did come over to our place yesterday for some lunch. I decided to keep it pretty simple, because Gran is old and doesn’t seem to like “fancy” meals that involve garlic, chilli, or (gasp!) fresh herbs. She does have a penchant for sweet things though, and will often forego a full meal in order to have room in her tummy for dessert. I think I get my sweet tooth from her. So, anyway, we slow roasted some lamb and potatoes, and had a layered meringue with mango and passionfruit and mascarpone for dessert.
We got the recipe for the lamb and potatoes from an ace Greek cookbook called Vefa’s Kitchen that we scored at Christmas. It is MASSIVE, quite weighty, and so far we have only trialled one recipe, but successfully so. The lamb is so easy to do, you just rub it with lemon juice, oregano, salt and pepper, bung on some olive oil, and pop it into a very slow oven for 3-4 hours. In the last hour, you add the potatoes, with lemon juice, oregano, salt and pepper plus some knobs of butter, and increase the heat. The lamb turns out super tender and tasty, but if you have an oven like ours, you need to watch it closely, as the gas has a habit of just cutting out when the oven is on such a low heat, which totally sucks.
Here is our finished lamb and yummy potato product, with broccoli added to the mix as a concession to Gran’s old school tastebuds:
Ben was a total champion, and carved all of the lamb while I entertained, then arranged it artfully on a platter. What a good boy. Gran pronounced the lamb a success, and all went well.
I got the recipe for the dessert from the Bourke Street Bakery Cookbook, and this combination of meringue, mascarpone, mango and passionfruit is pretty fuck off awesome, although it doesn’t make for a particularly pretty looking dessert.
Also, I think I need to face up to the fact that I suck hard when it comes to making meringues. The recipe requires you to mix up some egg whites with sugar, then spread it out onto three sheets of baking paper in the shape of the container it’s going to be eventually placed in, and bake for 25 minutes. Well, I did that, but it didn’t WORK! My first batch of meringue layers were hopelessly undercooked, and when I attempted to get them off the baking paper they just disintegrated. Needless to say, I had a terrible temper tantrum, and Ben required a fair amount of patience when he attempted to calm me down. I eventually sucked it up and made a new batch of meringue – again, not super awesome, but at least I was able to get it off the paper when it had finished baking (I left them in for about 10 minutes extra each). Here is the end result:
As I said, not a particularly attractive looking dessert. But once you’re eating it, you won’t give a crap about the attractive factor, because it’s smooth and sweet and delicious. Check out the layers of awesome that it has: