Slow roasted minted lamb shoulder with apricot and cranberry stuffing balls

1 rolled boneless lamb should joint
1 tsp garlic paste
Handful of mint
Olive oil

0.5 cup breadcrumbs
0.5 cup porridge oats
10 ready to eat dried apricots, chopped
0.25 cup dried cranberries, chopped
Ground pepper
1tbsp dried onion pieces
Hot water to bind

Baby tatties
2 onions, wedged, 1/8th thick
Stick of celery chopped

Mix stuffing ingredients in bowl and add water (just enough to be absorbed), leave to soak.

Split the mint handful in 2.  Strip the leaves from half and finely chop.  Retain the rest.

Score the joint.

Mix garlic paste, chopped mint and olive oil, rub on joint

Please wedges in pot, spread celery on top and place on the rest of mint.  Top with the joint.  Roll stuffing into balls and place around edge of pan interspersed with tatties.

Cook for 25 mins per 500g plus 25 mins at 170c

Remove meat from pot and leave to rest.  Remove tatties and stuffing balls and place on baking sheet, keep warm.

Add red wine to roasting pot to catch juices.  Press red wine and onion, celery and mint stock, through sieve.  Simmer and thicken with veg stock cube to make gravy.

Apricot and Whisky glazed ham with a crushed peppercorn crust

Ingredients

800g Gammon joint - unsmoked: remove all packaging, including any plastic rings surrounding the meat.

Pre-cooking:
1tbsp Ground three-colour peppercorns
Glug of white wine
Cold water to cover


Cooking:
Handful of dried apricots
1 Knorrs Vegetable stock cube, made up as per directions (450ml boiling water)
1 small onion, wedged, outer skin left on
1 tsp Peppercorns


After-cooking:
1tbsp Apricot & Whisky chutney
1tbsp Crushed three-colour peppercorns
1tbsp Manuka Honey

Method


Submerge the gammon in a bowl of cold water, add a glug of white wine and the ground pepper.  Leave to soak overnight to leech out the salt.  Discard the fluid in the morning.


Place the gammon in a roasting pan with the apricots, onions, peppercorns and stock.  Cover loosely with foil and bake for 1 hr @ 190C


Remove foil and drain out stock (retain for soup or gravy).  Glaze joint with Apricot and Whisky chutney, roll in crushed peppercorns.  Give a spray with oil before returning to the oven uncovered for 20mins.


When cooked, remove from oven and drizzle with honey and leave to rest before slicing.

Happy Hogmanay! Start as we mean to go on...

Chicken and Bacon Ballotine with sausage and cranberry stuffing and Sage and onion stuffing

1. Cut open a cheeslets/twiglets tube or a 2l juice bottle lengthways to make a mould and line with clingfilm. Then line with streaky bacon, making sure you have some overhang along the edges from each strip (if your tube is wider than the bacon, create a weave pattern using two strips). 

2. Cut open each chicken breast and fill with sausage stuffing.  Place the breasts into the mould using 2^nd stuffing to fill gaps, once full pull around the overhangs of bacon to complete the joint.  I used bamboo kebab skewers to secure, but if you want to use string, you could lay it along the clingfilm before you put the bacon in.

3. The finished joint  - Weigh it and cook with chicken roasting timings.

The results!