Chef Paul Prinsloo won the S.Pellegrino Young Chef award for the Africa & Middle East Region.
Sunday Roast
Rack of lamb: 1.2Kg (6Ribs) 30 Day aged
Spice blend: 10 g (Any meat rub)
Potatoes: 6, large
Green beans: 200 g
Carrots: 1 kg
Red pepper: 5 loose
Rice vinegar: 500 g
Baby onions: 6
Garlic loose
Butter: 10 g
Water: 100 g
Sugar: 50 g
All purpose flour: 50 g
Rosemary
Red wine: 2 cups
Salt: to taste
Black pepper: to taste
"This is Sunday roast in my eyes," says Paul Prinsloo presenting the recipe for his favourite slow-cooked Sunday roast for the family.
In a complete departure from the dish that Prinsloo won the African and Middle East Young Chef finals with, he has instead decided to reflect upon the personal impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on his style of cooking, in this ultimate roast lamb dish.
"2020 was believed to be a great year, end of a decade double numbers, new beginnings - and then a world pandemic happened," he says.
"Everything came to a stop. No more 16-hour shifts 6 days a week, and something happened to me as a person. I found peace and silence again. I had time for family and friends. Growing up, I used to look forward to having Sunday lunch with my family, but that slowly faded away when I stared following my passion. The pandemic gave me that blessing of Sunday family meals."
Join Prinsloo as he takes a step back, and re-discovers the pleasure of having Sunday lunch with his family, in this ultimate roast lamb recipe with all the trimmings:
For the Chimney-Smoked Lamb Rack
Clean extra fat off the rack to expose the bones.
Clean bones from any leftover meat pieces.
Keep all fat aside for confit liquid.
Cover rack's bones with wet paper towel and foil.
Rub meat seasoning on rack (10g of spices).
Hang the meat in a chimney with a moderate fire burning on the opposite side, where the meat is not hanging, and cook for 3 hours.
Add wood to maintain the flames and finish with rosemary in the last hour of cooking.
Lamb Fat Confit Potatoes
Slice up the leftover lamb fat into cubes and place in a deep pan on low heat, to sweat out all the fat, for more or less one hour.
Take the potatoes and slice them into 1.5cm slices and round cuts (If you don’t have a round cutter, squares works just as well). Place potato rounds in fat and confit until soft.
Green beans
Thoroughly rinse green beans to remove any soil, then top and tail beans (cut off tips).
In a hot pan, sauté beans for 5 mins with salt and pepper and garlic and finish off with a heaped spoon of butter.
Remove beans and drain extra fat. Place the beans next to each other and round cut the same size as the potatoes, then place the beans on the potatoes to reheat later, before serving.
Sweet Carrot Puree
Using 1 kg of washed and scrubbed carrots, thinly slice the carrots on a cutting board and put in a pot with water and butter and 50g of sugar. Cook until soft (don’t add too much water because a lot of the flavour goes into the liquid).
After the carrots are soft and breakable to touch, add carrots with some of the liquid into a blender and blend until smooth.
Wood-Fired Red Pepper Puree
Using the fire where the lamb is cooking, place your red peppers to get charred until the skin is completely black +- 30 min.
Remove the peppers from the fire and rinse thoroughly to remove charred skin.
Cut peppers in half to remove seeds and prepare them for the puree
With a hand blender, blend the peppers until smooth, add salt to taste.
Long Grain rice paper
In a deep pan add 3 cups of rice and boil until rice is overcooked and mushy.
Strain extra water and add rice to a blender and blend until a smooth white starchy puree.
Take an oven tray and wrap the back of it with plastic wrap and spread the mixture very thinly out.
Place oven tray in oven for 30 minutes on 70C remove hard crisp and deep fry.
Oven roasted baby onions
Toss baby onions with salt, pepper and oil.
Roast onions at 200C for 15 minutes and remove.
Slice cooked onions. Then char the onions in a hot pan until they have black edges.
Remove the onion skin and put aside to reheat
Lamb and Red Wine Gravy
In a sauce pot, add 2 cups of red wine and reduce until it becomes a syrup, then add 1 cup of confit lamb fat to infuse with red wine.
In a new sauce pot, make a roux with equal flour and butter (20g). Brown the flour and butter, slowly add wine and fat mixture, and let the flour cook out to thicken the sauce.
To plate, do whatever you like - this was my way of presenting a Sunday roast for the family.