I bought a leg of lamb of very good quality from Waitrose weighing 1.94kg. I used the recipe in Heston Blumenthal at Home. It took quite a while to get the anchovy pieces, garlic slices (I poached in milk AFTER slicing) and rosemary leaves in. I’ve discovered that it’s best to push them in quite far so that they flavour the meat, not just the skin.

I used the small oven and with the dial at 50C the oven thermometer read 90C. The leg of lamb had been defrosting so it started off at room temperature. After 2.5 hours in the oven the meat’s internal temperature had reached 61C and lots of salty (from the anchovies) juices had run out. I made a gravy by sieving the juices and using just 1tsp of flour to thicken. The meat’s temperature goes up during resting so the lamb was more done than I wanted but it was still good. Next time I will check the oven temperature even more carefully and check the meat’s temperature ater 2 hours.

To accompany the roast lamb I made roast potatoes based on Heston’s recipe in the same book except that I boiled the potatoes in salted water (10g salt per litre of water) in accordance with his recipe in In Search of Perfection. The potatoes were done about 15 mins early but then they were quite small. I just took them out of the oven and put them in a warm bowl lined with a sheet of kitchen roll. They turned out very well.

I also made roast squash which I peeled and cut into approx. 1 cm wide slices and coated wih oil, hot paprika and a little salt. These were done after half an hour at 175C, then just to add colour I turned the fan on and cooked for a further 5 mins on each side.

Mark keeps complaining that I overcook baby courgettes when I pan-fry them so after slicing down the middle lengthwise as usual I smeared the flat side with the smallest amount of oil and cooked them on a hot griddle pan instead. They were perfect.