Recipe | Lamb knuckle: a good night of sleep

We decided to celebrate the Orthodox Easter with an oven-cooked lamb knuckle. I’ve been reading online recipes claiming that you can cook it in 1 hour (15 min per 250 g of meat). They are all LIARS!!! 750g will take you abundant 3 hours and will force you to find very creative solutions to transform your lunch into an early dinner (pouring bottles of wine can help).

The process starts the night before with a marinate of mustard, olive oil, star anise, juniper berries, rosemary, fresh oregano, dashes of apple vinegar and soy sauce, moshi salt. Make sure to massage it properly and let it rest overnight in the fridge. The morning after, take the lamb out of the fridge as it will need to enter the oven room temperature.

Once ready to start, pre-heat the oven at 200 degrees and place the lamb in a tray with crushed garlic cloves and a glass of red wine of hot drinking preference (we used a Saint-Emillion Grand Cru). Cover with aluminium foil and start the journey into the fire. After 15 min, remove the wine from the tray and place it on a side (it will be used for the sauce). Add a glass of water in the tray and keep cooking for 2h45, making sure not to pinch the meat.

15 min before the meat is ready, simmer the wine in a saucier, add the same elements of the marinate and let it go for a few minutes. Filter and keep cooking at low heat with a small addition of butter, honey and mustard (a pinch of flour could be needed to make it denser).

Ps: it’s more difficult and time consuming than it sounds.