Ok Sunday, finally the best day of the week arrives, we had the lovely and newly married Kavish and Keyasha round for lunch having just arrived from South Africa this morning. Obviously they need a good meal after such a long flight!
Cue clean cheating, clean eating with a couple of rogue additions to make life easier and to make it a little more palatable to people who are not yet initiated into the world of clean eating! Little do they know they’ll be my guinea pigs for the day 😜
We started off with some snacks, I baked some pittas in the oven for ten minutes sprinkled with cinnamon and made my sweet potato crisps, we also had some of those new Pringles nachos which were yummy with a dip made of spicy chilli sauce mixed with mayonnaise.
For main I roasted a leg of spring lamb. In a sauce pan, I melted coconut oil with cumin seeds, curry powder, chilli powder and salt. I sliced 4 garlic cloves lengthways and put them in slits I cut into the meat. Then poured the spice sauce over the top.
Then, I lined a roasting tin with foil and added sliced onion, carrots, parsnips and any other veggies I could lay my hands on! I poured in a glass of red wine and a glass of water added the leg of lamb and popped in my meat thermometer and off it went to oven heaven at 180 degrees.
I do not roast my meats in the oven based on time. I only ever use a thermometer, in my experience this provides a much more accurate result.
We only have one hob working at the moment so making a roast is an interesting challenge, I par boiled peeled potatoes for 10 minutes then did the same with peeled parsnips. I lined another tin with foil and added a tablespoon of coconut oil and melted it in the oven. Then I added some salt, drained the spuds and roughed them up a bit before adding them to the roasting tin for 1 hour, turning them every 20 minutes.
I put the parsnips in another roasting tin with 2 tablespoons of maple syrup and a tiny bit of coconut oil. I set aside to roast later.
I split Brussels Sprouts in half and lightly fried them on high in a little coconut oil to char them, then added a small amount of water and put the lid on to steam them through.
Then I boiled up some carrots and green beans and left them plain because of the flavours going on with the lamb and the to-be-gravy. I roasted the parsnips for about 20 minutes before everything else was ready.
I took the lamb out when my thermometer went off and left it wrapped up to rest, strained the liquid from theroastung tin into a saucepan and boiled it down to concentrate the flavours with a pinch of salt and pepper. Once the meat had rested, I sliced it up and poured any meat juices into the gravy. Everyone had seconds and thirds so I can only assume it was a good feed.
For dessert I made Deliciously Ella’s sweet potato brownies adding flaked almonds for texture and with melted 75% dark chocolate sauce and a little bit of shop bought vanilla ice cream. I wanted to see if serving a healthy/clean dessert with dinner guests would work. I think it did (you’ll have to ask the guests😜) but I definitely wouldn’t do it every time – every now and then we all need a little bit of naughty but I’m glad I tried it.
Laura of London 