Slow Roast Lamb Shoulder with Moroccan Flat Bread

Cooking surfaces

BBQ Temperature

Main ingredient

Cook Type

 

Low and Slow then Bake

All your Friday night kebab dreams come true. Super succulent lamb served on a Moroccan flat bread with tzatziki, red onion, red cabbage and some chilli sauce. While I’ve associated this with Friday nights, it’s an amazing meal that I would be happy to serve to any of my friends. The photo of the dish even gained probably one of my favourite Twitter comments so far, ‘Christ Nic, that looks the bollocks’. Lamb shoulder has amazing flavour which I enhance here with a wet rub of garlic, rosemary, Maldon salt, black pepper, capers and anchovies. I know a lot of people will turn up their nose at the anchovies but trust me, you have to try them as they add so much to this dish without it tasting of anchovies at the end. I use a technique here with the red onions I learned from Martin Morales at a cooking class he gave to 10 of us at the Rick Stein Seafood School in Padstow. Martin opened a restaurant in Soho called Ceviche and was offering a master class on the preparation of his signature dish ‘Don Ceviche‘, a sea bass dish where the fish is cooked in ‘Tiger’s Milk’ a lime based chilli marinade. Anyway the technique with the onions is to slice them finely and then drop them into iced water to take off the worst of the bite, it really works. The flat breads are care of Jamie Oliver and the recipe is super easy.

Ingredients

For the lamb

  • Shoulder of lamb
  • 1 tin Anchovies in oil
  • 3tsp capers
  • 1tbsp chopped rosemary
  • Garlic, 5 cloves
  • 1/2 tsp Maldon salt
  • 1tsp coarsely ground black pepper
  • 2tbsp olive oil

For the flat breads

  • 350g greek yogurt – don’t use Greek style yogurt
  • 350g self raising flour
  • 1tsp Maldon salt (crushed)
  • 1tsp baking powder

For the Tzatziki

  • 3/4 of a cucumber
  • Garlic, 1 clove crushed
  • Juice of 1/2 a lemon
  • 6tbsp greek style yogurt
  • 1/2tsp Maldon sea salt

For the garnish

  • 1 red onion
  • 1/4 of a small red cabbage
  • Sriracha sauce (chilli and garlic)

Method

For the lamb

  1. Mix together all the ingredients bar the lamb in a mortar and pestle. You’re aiming to make a coarse paste.
  2. Smear the paste all over the lamb and put into the fridge overnight to let the marinade do its work.
  3. The following day fire up your Big Green Egg and set it up to cook indirectly with the plate setter feet up and the stainless grid on top. You’re aiming for a temperature of 110°C.
  4. Put your lamb into the Egg in a drip pan.
  5. Cook the lamb until the internal temperature reaches at least 90°C. This is going to take 8-10 hours. Don’t worry if the temperature seems to be rising quickly at the start of the cook, it will plateau at about 65-70°C for a while before starting to rise again.
  6. Once cooked it should feel soft and should pull apart easily.
  7. Take the lamb out of its tray, now containing juices, and wrap in several layers of foil. Rest it for at least 30 minutes. I rest my meat in a cool box.
  8. Once the juices have separated skim off the oil.
  9. Add 1 cup of water to the remaining juices.
  10. Once rested put the lamb in to the juices and pull it. This is much easier with a pair of meat claws. Mix together with all the juices and keep warm for serving.

For the flat bread

  1. Put all of the ingredients into a mixer and mix until a dough is formed. You do not have to knead this mixture.
  2. Separate the mixture into 2″ diameter balls.
  3. On a floured surface roll out each ball to about 3mm thick.
  4. Heat your Big Green Egg up to 300°C with the baking stone on top of the plate setter (feet down).
  5. Cook your flat breads for about 2 minutes each side (or until they get golden brown spots).
  6. Set aside for serving.

Jamie’s original flat bread recipe.

For the Tzatziki

  1. Chop the cucumber in half length ways.
  2. Use a teaspoon to scrape out the majority of the seeds.
  3. Dice the cucumber into 5mm cubes.
  4. Add the crushed garlic, lemon juice, salt and greek yogurt.
  5. Mix together.
  6. Season further to taste.

Serving

  1. Place your flat bread on a plate.
  2. Add a couple of tablespoons of the tzatziki and spread out.
  3. Place the sliced onions and cabbage on top.
  4. Add a good portion of lamb.
  5. Top with a bit more tzatziki.
  6. Add dollops of Sriracha chilli sauce to taste.

Notes

 

Any left over lamb can be used in my shepherds pie recipe.

The Amazing Ribs web site has a great article explaining the plateau or stall. You will see this with any large joint of meat as the outside layers of the meat dry out and form a bark.

For the flatbreads you need to use Greek Yogurt, not the Greek Style Yogurt as that will produce a very wet dough.

 

2 Comments

  1. Bides

    I always use Greek Style Yogurt in my flat breads, and they always turn out perfect. Tims Dairy yogurt is actually better than Greek yogurt from Greece. Respectfully, I think your recipe instructions on this are misleading.
    On the upside, the lamb turned out delicious.
    Thank you!

    Reply
    • Nic Williams

      I find the Greek Style yogurt too runny and it splits easily when cooking. To be honest I make my own yogurt from full fat milk and then strain it to get the consistency I am after.

      I’m glad you loved the lamb.

      Reply

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