A sort of Kleftiko / Lancashire Hot Pot

After making the curry on Monday I was left with a substantial amount of meat still on the leg of lamb I had bought. Aware of the dangers of re-freezing, I wanted to make another dinner using the lamb that would be very different from the curry. (Usually, I don't like to eat the same meat on two consecutive nights).

My first instinct was to get out the slow cooker and stew the lamb for a few hours until falling off the bone, but I did that last week with some lamb shanks so I needed a new idea. I started thinking about how much the Greeks love lamb as I walked past a kebab stall in town and smelt the amazing aromas of garlic, oregano, lemon and charred meat. Kleftiko is something I have loved ever since my parents and I sampled it in Cyprus in a restaurant where the owner cooked everything in a modified cement mixer and then again in Aegina, a small Greek island near Athens where they baked it in a small clay pot with feta cheese baked right on top. 

In England, there is a famed dish very similar to Kleftiko, also born out of necessity to use cheap cuts of meat, whereby everything is layered and flavoured with a rich stock before being baked in the oven. I decided to 'fuse' these two dishes together and create my own unique version.

Here is a link to this famous English 'peasant' dish:

Lancashire Hotpot

Recipe: Lamb baked in the oven

1 lb lamb leg chopped into chunks

1 red onion, sliced

3 cloves garlic, sliced

1 potato, peeled and sliced thinly

1/4 rutabaga or turnip, peeled and sliced thinly

6 mushrooms, sliced thinly

1 cup mixed fresh herbs (I used oregano, mint, rosemary and parsley)

zest of 1 lemon

1 cup lamb stock (I boiled the bones and left over lamb for 30 minutes in 1 cup water)

salt, pepper

1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled

Preheat your oven to 375oF

Once all the chopping is done, this is really easy to prepare.

Get yourself a nice deep, heavy, oven -proof casserole dish and brush with oil. (I used the oil I kept from making chicken confit a few weeks ago, which was salty and garlicky).

Start layering up your dish by placing 1/3 lamb in a single layer at the bottom

Next, add 1/3 of the onion, 1/2 the garlic, 1/3 of the herbs, 1/3 of the lemon zest, 1/3 of the mushrooms and half the potatoes / rutabaga.

Continue with another layer, finishing with a 3rd top layer of just meat, onions, herbs, lemon zest and mushrooms.

Pour the stock over. (This was a lot of stock leaving a sauce or soup to enjoy. If you want less and a drier dish, reduce the quantity of stock to 1/2 cup).

Sprinkle over the feta and season with salt and pepper and bake for 2 hours.

Although I couldn't decide whether to leave the lid on or off, finally opting to leave it off to brown the meat and feta on top and to evaporate some of the liquid,  The dish was a success. After 2 hours the meat was tender and flavour-some, the top bits having charred a little in the heat of the oven, the potatoes and rutabaga fell apart and the sauce was incredible enough that I finished my meal with a dish of it eaten like soup, it's meaty, herbal, slightly citrus-y juices very satisfying.