Recipe #128 – roman lamb stew

I am not sure that this (under the Sage chaper, page 652) is how this is supposed to look but it matters not. It was another delicious dish that is in the ‘definitely make again’ category. And why wouldn’t it be. Beautiful lamb (a leg in this case as the butcher had no shoulders) cooked with carrots, celery, sage, tomato, rosemary and garlic. How can you go wrong? Particularly when you have it with the cauliflower and potato pie discussed in the previous post.

Now the fact that this recipe called for a lamb should rather than a lamb leg got me thinking about whether the two are truly substitutable? So, off to the good folk at Yahoo this time to find out. Based on answers on Yahoo Answers it turns out that three most discussed differences are:

1. Lamb legs are prettier to look at than shoulders – legs are more a ‘dinner party look at me’ cut and shoulders are more your ‘family meat and potato’ sort of cut
2. Shoulders have more connective tissue and benefit from a longer cooking time
3. Shoulders are less expensive (typical of the look at me leg to be more expensive).

So there you have it.