Oven-Roasted Lamb Shawarma, and Why I Didn’t Use the Slow-Cooker

There’s something primal about biting into a roasted piece of meat. There’s the exterior bark that’s a little charred and caramelized. that bark protects the interior meat that’s tender and juicy after basting in the fat from the skin for hours. It’s called the Maillard reaction and it’s the reason that most slow-cooker recipes tell you to brown the meat before putting it in the cooker. Because if you don’t, the meat will be tender but the skin will be gelatinous. And gelatinous fat has nothing to do with crispy, salted perfection…

…and neither should it have anything to do with this lamb recipe. Because this recipe is gold.

It’s from Jerusalem, a cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. I only cook from this book when I feel gourmet. The recipes are rich in fat and flavour and often take more than a little bit of time to prep and cook. It’s slow-food at its most idyllic, with enough awe-inspiring photographs of food and Middle Eastern markets to double as 2013’s best coffee table book.

But it’d be a shame to leave it on the coffee table. It belongs in the kitchen. So choose a day when you have some free time and enjoy. I can’t give the recipe, but I can give you an idea of what’s in it and how it works.

Lamb Shawarma, from Jerusalem: A Cookbook

This recipe is called shawarma but Ottolenghi and Tamimi note that most people don’t have a vertical spit kicking around their kitchens. Instead, they call for you to marinate the meat and then roast it. Often I’ll transfer slow-cooking meats to the slow-cooker so I can walk away and know the meat won’t dry out. Here, I wouldn’t dare.

Whole spices:
black peppercorns
cloves
cardamom
fenugrek
fennel
cumin
star anise
cinnamon
nutmeg

Ground spices:
ginger
sweet paprika
sumac
sea salt

Fresh ginger, garlic and cilantro

lemon juice
tons of oil
1 6-lb leg of lamb
water

Sounds complicated, right? Actually, it isn’t, really. You toast the whole spices and grind them and add them to the pre-ground spices before mixing them into the rest of the ingredients except the lamb and water. Then you rub it all into the scored meat, let it marinate at least a couple hours or, preferably, overnight.

Then you roast it for 4 1/2 hours, basting regularly. I stick some whole cloves of garlic, shallots and chunks of carrot and potato under the rack I placed on the roasting pan. This way the basting juices fall away from the meat and you end up with more crispy skin instead of a roast on top and a braise on the bottom. And the salty, spicy lamb juices cook the vegetables. They’re heavenly. If you don’t think you like vegetables, I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.

Then let the lamb rest, then carve. You serve it in pita with harissa, chopped onion and parlsey, or on a plate with pita, chopped salad, tahini, fries, pickles and a fermented mango and fenugreek sauce called amba.

Don’t forget to scrape the bone marrow out of the lamb bones. Serve it with salt on pita. It’s pure umami. Liquid fat is better than gelatinous fat.

Wow. You should buy this book just for this recipe. But there’s also the Maqluba for another rainy day.