Yemeni & the Gulf · Main
Mandi Laham
- Advanced
- 40 min
- roughly 4 of 4 for cost
Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, wood-smoke running underneath, with a clean, bright snap.
Ingredients
- 1.2 kg lamb shoulder on the bone, in 4 pieces
- 2 tbsp hawaij lil shorba
- 1 tbsp salt, plus 2 tsp for the rice
- 500 g basmati rice
- 900 ml water or light lamb stock
- 1 onion, quartered
- 1 loomi (dried lime), pierced twice
- 4 green cardamom pods, cracked
- 1 small cinnamon stick
- large pinch saffron, steeped in 2 tbsp hot water
- 1 lump of hardwood charcoal and 1 tsp oil, for smoking
Equipment
Grill · Sheet pan
The skills inside
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Rub the lamb with the salt and hawaij, working the mixture into every cut face, and leave it out while the oven heats to 160C (320F).
- Rinse the basmati until the water runs clear, soak it for 30 minutes and drain it well. 30 min
- Spread the rice in a deep roasting tray with the water, onion, loomi, cardamom, cinnamon and salt, set a rack over the tray and the lamb on the rack, seal the whole thing under two tight layers of foil and roast about 3 hours, until the meat gives at the bone and the rice has drunk the stock and the drippings. 180 min
- Lift off the rack; the meat is pale, not browned. Slide it under a hot grill for 5 minutes if you want the fat cap coloured, and fork the saffron water through the rice. 5 min
- Stand a small metal dish on the rice, drop in a coal heated to red, pour on the oil and cover the tray at once; after 5 minutes lift the dish out and serve the meat on the rice. 5 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Roasting in a hot oven 56 recipes
- The oven was fully up to heat before anything went in, given time beyond the indicator light rather than judged by it.
- Every piece has air around it. Nothing touches its neighbour and nothing is packed to the edge of the tray, because crowded food steams itself in its own moisture and never browns.
- Colour is even across the whole tray, the tray having been turned at least once: no pale row at the back and no dark row at the front.
- It came out BEFORE the target temperature, not at it. Carryover keeps driving the inside up by several degrees after it leaves the oven, and that rise is part of the cooking rather than an error in it.
- The temperature was read at the coldest part rather than the easiest one to reach, and read again after the rest.
Where it goes wrong The tray was crowded, or the oven was not truly up to heat. The food releases steam faster than a cool box can carry it away, so it sits pale and slack, and the extra minutes spent chasing colour take the inside well past where it should have stopped.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Cabernet or Rioja Reserva
- Also Right
- Malbec
- From the Taps
- Porter
- Zero-Proof
- Pomegranate spritz
Lamb’s sweet grass-fat wants structure: tannin from Cabernet, smoke-echo from Rioja’s oak, or Syrah’s pepper for the spiced routes.
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