Roast Hogget, Crisp Parsnips, Gratin of Potatoes, Green Beans and a Dark Rich Onion Gravy

The dish will be more successful with a whole leg of hogget rather than the half legs that supermarkets usually display on their walls of meat. They’d produce one to order, but take this opportunity to discover if there are any benefits for you shopping at an independent butchery. I was offered a choice of different sized legs, and the confidence in the butcher’s eye as he handed me the big paper parcel was the ultimate guarantee of quality.

(Serves 8-10)

Ingredients

• Apart from the leg of hogget, you need:
• 10 big potatoes.
• 15 medium onions
• A head of garlic.
• A handful of rosemary.
• 10 parsnips
• Plenty of tender green beans.
• 500 ml cream
• Milk.
• 75g butter
• 1 bottle merlot.
• Olive oil.
• Salt
• Pepper
• 4 Tbl flour to thicken gravy
• Water or stock to make the pan brownings into gravy.

Method

Six hours before you want to serve the meal, turn the oven to 120 C° and peel the onions. Slice ten of them in half from root to stem and then slice each half from top to bottom so you have thin crescents of onion. Cut this way they melt more successfully than as rings or half rings.

Pile the sliced onions in a wide roasting pan, lightly salt them and bed the leg of hogget on them. Tip 2/3 of a bottle of merlot into the roasting pan and cover. It’s best if the pan has a tight fitting lid, but a very carefully sealed foil dome works just as well. Put into the oven and leave well alone.

Blend the oil, peeled head of garlic and rosemary into a slurry with about ½ a cup of oil and ½ tsp salt. Keep what’s left in a jar in the fridge; I use it on pretty much everything except ice cream.

Three hours before dinner slice the peeled potatoes and remaining 5 onions, using the slicer-disc of your food processor and tip them into a wide gratin dish that has been smeared with the butter. You can use a deep casserole, but it’s best if the potatoes are about an inch thick with a lot of surface area and because I didn’t have a gratin dish large enough I used another big square roasting dish. Toss the potatoes and onions with two and a half teaspoons of salt and a little pepper then press firmly and evenly into the dish. Tip the cream over the potatoes and carefully add milk until you can see it when you press the top potatoes down. Dribble 3 tablespoons of the rosemary, garlic mixture over the top, cover tightly and put in the oven 2 ½ hours before you want to eat.

One and one half hours before, take the hogget from the oven, turn it up to 180 C°, and uncover the pan. There will be a goodly amount of soft sweet onion, red wine and meat juices within. Cover the hogget only, tightly with foil, leaving the pan open and return to the oven. Put the parsnips, cut into even sized halves and quarters and tossed in garlic and rosemary oil in the oven on another roasting tray. Check regularly for the next 50 minutes to make sure the onions and pan juices don’t burn; add water or stock to prevent that happening.

With 40 minutes to go take the meat from the oven and let it stand; the onions will be well browned and the pan juices dark and syrupy; keep the meat covered, but uncover and continue to cook the potatoes, add more garlic and rosemary oil to the parsnips and sprinkle them with salt.

20 minutes before eating, transer to a serving platter turn off the oven, and put the meat in with the door open, whilst you make the dark rich onion gravy and cook the beans.

The meat will be so tender you can cut it with a blunt spoon, the potatoes rich and savoury, the parsnips crisp and faintly bitter, the beans fresh and tender and the gravy most delicious.