Lamb and Dauphinoise Pie

Ingredients

• 3 large carrots, cut into chunks
• 1 onion, roughly chopped
• 1 garlic bulb, split in two
• few sprigs rosemary
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tbsp tomato purée
• 1 shoulder of lamb on the bone, about 2½ kg
• 1 bottle red wine

For the topping

• 10 round potatoes
• 150ml double cream
• few knobs of butter

Method

1. Heat the Simmering oven. In a flameproof casserole dish that is large enough to fit the lamb, snugly scatter over all the vegetables and herbs, and roughly stir in the tomato purée. Sit the lamb on top, pour over the bottle of wine and season generously. Cover the dish and heat up on the Simmering Plate, then put in the oven and leave undisturbed overnight.

2. Remove from the oven, leave to cool, strain juices off and chill the juices.

3. Remove any obvious fat from around the lamb and discard. Lift the lamb out of the dish. Pull apart and shred the meat, discarding any large pieces of fat and the bones. Put the lamb back in the dish with the vegetables, set aside. When the juices have chilled enough, remove all obvious fat and add back to the lamb.

4. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/AGA baking oven. To make the topping, peel and neatly slice the potatoes by hand into rounds. Place in a pan of cold, salted water, bring to a hard boil and drain straight away. Tip back into the pan, pour over the cream and season.

5. Now it’s up to you how fancy you want to be – you can pile the potatoes over the lamb casually, or you can arrange the potato.

6. Drizzle over any remaining cream from the pan and dot with butter.

7. Bake for 40 mins-1 hr until the top is golden and the sauce is just starting to bubble.

Recipe by Annie Smithers.