coxy's blog

What I Used
1x Welsh Lamb Steak
2x King Edwards Potatoes
3x Sprouts
3x Lengths of Asparagus
1x Orange
1/2x Large Carrot
Handful of Spinach
Handful of Green Beans
White Wine
(Sea) Salt
(Whole Black) Pepper
(Dried) Rosemary
Olive Oil (or alternate cooking oil)
2x Vegetable Stock (OXO) Cubes
(Bisto) Chicken Gravy Granules
300ml Boiling (Tap) Water

Measuring Jug
Roasting Tin
Pan
Frying Pan
Colander
Various Utensils
My Hands
My Brain

(this next bit looks longer than it actually is)

What I Did

Turn everything on; fill a kettle with water and set it boiling, put a pan on the stove to boil and add the water from your kettle, along with some salt. Turn the oven to gas mark five (375°F) and put the roasting tin in there. You could also put the frying pan on a medium heat and put some oil in there. Whilst everything's heating up, grab the lamb and press some salt, pepper and dried rosemary onto both sides - then set it aside for later. Congrats, you have just 'seasoned' some meat.

Wash the potatoes, the carrot and the spinach - basically anything that's got dirt on it. My carrots and potatoes were filthy because I got them from the local market. In fact, I bought everything for this meal from my local farmers market - it works out cheaper, and tastier.

After you've washed the dirty stuff, peel the potatoes and cut them in half. If you want, you can do the same with the carrot - I've found that carrots taste nicer when they're not peeled and still whole - try it. Now throw both the carrots and the potatoes into your pan of boiling water. These cook for about 5-10 minutes - this is where a cookbook would usually tell you to 'parboil' something, which basically means half-cook, or part-boil obviously. It tells you this because you're going to roast them in the oven.

Whilst your carrots and spuds are 'parboiling' you can do something useful; I chose to update my Twitter/Facebook status with talk about carrots. What you could do is something even more useful - and that's prepare the sprouts. You do this by removing the first few leaves off the outside of the sprout and then cutting an 'X' in the stalk bit. I have no idea why you do this, but apparently you do - everyone says to. DO IT!

I personally don't know how the best way to prepare/cook asparagus, so what I did was just chopped off the base of the stalk. Maybe you could do the same? Maybe you don't even need to do that? I did it so they fit in the pan that I was using - and they came out okay. Cut an orange in half too and the ends off the green beans.

When you're done preparing the sprouts, asparagus and stuff, and around five mins has passed, take the potatoes and carrot(s) off the boil and spoon them out of the boiling water and drop them onto your hot roasting tin that's in the oven. Don't throw or pour the water from the pan away - that's just wasteful - you can still use it. Leave it boiling on the hob.

Grab half the orange and squeeze the juice from it over your carrots and potatoes. Drizzle some olive oil over everything in the roasting tin and slide it back into the oven. You're left with half an orange. You can either; a) eat it now. b) slice it up and throw it in the roasting tin. or c) chase your cat with it - they don't like citrus fruits! I did b).

Take the lamb that you seasoned earlier and throw it in the pan; cooking the meat until it's brown on both sides. Make sure the pan isn't super-hot and the meat's not going to brown in a matter of seconds because this would mean that it won't be fully cooked in the middle and burnt on the outside. If you think this is happening, turn the pan down a bit. I cooked the lamb for around 4 minutes on both sides, but this is going to vary depending on your cut of meat. The good thing with lamb or beef is that it doesn't have to be fully cooked anyway - mine was still red/pink in the middle but that's just how I like it to be! See meat temperatures.

Fill and boil the kettle again. Crumple two vegetable stock cubes into a measuring jug and add 300ml of boiling water from the kettle. If you don't have a measuring jug, feel free to use anything else that will hold boiling water and guess measurements. Congrats - you have just made some 'vegetable stock'. Check on your roast veg in the over and give the roasting tin a shake, or turn your veg over with various kitchen utensils.

Take your meat off the heat when you're happy with how it looks and set it on a plate to one side. Keep the frying pan on the heat. Grab the sprouts, asparagus and green beans and throw them in the pan of boiling water that you used earlier for the parboiling. This time you're going to fully-cook the veg. You can also throw the spinach in here, but it could get a little messy. What I did was set a colander on top of the pan and put the spinach in, covering the colander with the pan lid. This steam-cooks the spinach instead. Clever, eh? Not really.

Fetch the white wine and put a splash in the pan. I have no idea how much, I'm improvising - you should too. When it's nearly disappeared or 'reduced', pour the stock into the frying pan and turn down the heat to 'low'. This is where you return the lamb to the pan and allow it all to simmer. If you have a lid for the frying pan, you could put it on now. If not, never mind.

Now I have some time to check up on my Facebook status for comments. Some of my friends enjoyed my status, leaving nice comments, others didn't and left nasty comments. Boo! Keep an eye on your food and occasionally turn your meat over in the stock.

When all the veg is cooked, your roast potatoes look like roast potatoes and your asparagus is cooked, but not too soggy-looking, start serving. Take the roast potatoes and carrots from the oven and put on a plate. Drain the boiled veg and take the spinach, placing them alongside the other veg. Lift the lamb out of the frying pan of stock and place in the remaining space on your plate.

Put two heaped teaspoons of Chicken gravy granules into the measuring jug; you're going to make gravy out of the stuff that the meat was cooking in. Pour the stock from the frying pan into the measuring jug and stir. Taste it to make sure it's not minging, and then pour over your meat.

Congrats, you just cooked the Sunday Roast that I've just cooked.