Braised lamb shoulder with potatoes and onions

This recipe's an ever giving gift, endlessly tweakable, barely even a recipe, just a rough idea / guideline.  You may choose to heavily spice your lamb (using cumin / coriander / ginger / chilli / paprika) and forget about the herbs, or deglaze with wine / beer / cider or even vinegar, you can swap the potatoes for any other root vegetable and even add fennel or celery for extra depth of flavour.  Every combination tastes different, but provided it's cooked long and slow it will be delicious.

Ingredients (to serve 6);

1 whole lamb shoulder (around 2kg; this tastes better with older autumn / winter lamb or hogget)
6 cloves of garlic
1 bunch of rosemary
1 bunch of thyme
1 small tin of anchovy fillets
1kg of potatoes
1kg of white onions
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Directions

1) Remove your lamb from the 'fridge at least 1 hour before cooking, unwrap and allow to dry and come to room temperature.

2) Preheat your oven to 220C.

3) Wash your potatoes (you may choose to peel your potatoes but it really is a matter of preference) and peel your onions, cut both into chunky slices.

4) Strip the herbs from their woody stems and chop roughly with the anchovies and garlic, combine with the oil from the anchovy tin adding more olive oil if necessary to achieve a loose paste.

5) Place the onions and potatoes in the bottom of a large roasting tin and place the lamb on top, scoring the skin lightly (not into the flesh) as you go.

6) Smear your herby / garlicky paste all over both sides of the lamb rubbing it well into your scores in the skin.

7) Drizzle another tablespoon of olive oil over the potatoes and onions and season well, don't oversalt the lamb (remember the anchovies in the paste!).

8) Cook for 30-40 minutes at 220C until the potatoes have started to brown and the lamb has a delicious crispy skin and then add 250ml of boiling water, reduce the heat to 120C and cover tightly with tinfoil.

9) Leave the lamb in the oven at 120C for at least 3 hours, but it will continue to improve for up to 6, check periodically and top up with water if the roasting tin's dry.

10) Remove from the oven, it should be tender enough to shred with forks rather requiring a knife.  The joint will have produced its own gravy during the long cooking so I take the roasting tin to the table for all to share and serve with a simple green salad or steamed veg (often with homemade sourdough bread to mop up the juices!).

Time consuming but very tasty, and almost impossible to screw up this one's definitely worth giving a go and you can always go to the pub whilst the lamb's doing its thing in the oven, and it makes the whole house smell amazing!