Gigot à la cuillère...

or in other words 'French slow cooked spoon lamb'! Over the Easter weekend, made this classic French Bistro dish whereby the idea is to roast the lamb for 7 hours in order that the meat becomes so beautifully tender that it can be carved with a spoon. The beauty of the dish is that it doesn't really involve much cooking so needless to say, it suited me just fine (and turned out to be a huge success if I may add)!

After seasoning and browning my leg of lamb on the hob, I added garlic, white wine, carrots and onions to the casserole, and put it in the oven for 7 hours (turning it twice in between). After 7 hours, all that was required was to boil the meat juices until they were reduced by a quarter, before adding some madeira wine to the mixture (I didn't have any madeira wine to hand so had to substitute with marsala wine but I doubt that it made a huge difference). Following a sprinkling of thyme, the dish was ready to be devoured at the table. And indeed the dish lived up to its name - the meat was wonderfully tender and succulent, and offered no resistance when being carved with the spoon.

(Btw, I apologise for the blandness of this post but thanks to the simplicity of the dish, there was no opportunity to go wrong and liven up this tale.)