Redcurrant and mint lamb steaks served with honey roasted sweet potato and parsnips and green beans

This was a Sunday dinner meal for me and my family. We usually have the traditional British meal of meat, potatoes and vegetables on a Sunday evening however I'm not that traditional so I did change it up slightly (but not that much, as I do love the homely meals!) I made a sauce for the lamb which was taken from a Nigella Lawson cookbook called Kitchen, which I've mentioned before. I have to say that the sauce was absolutely delicious, it made the meat so succulent and the taste of the redcurrant made it very sweet but rich at the same time with the other ingredients. I served it with honey roasted sweet potato and parsnip wedges and then green beans with sesame seeds, crunchy sea salt and black pepper.


Serves 3 people

Ingredients

For the sauce (Nigella Lawson - Kitchen):

1 tablespoon garlic oil
Juice of 1 clementine/satsuma
1 tablespoon redcurrant jelly
dash Worcestershire sauce
dash red wine vinegar/sherry vinegar
Salt and Pepper
Small bunch of fresh mint, finely chopped. (Or dried mint, which I used ... cos I'm lazy...)

4 lamb steaks

2 large sweet potatoes, sliced into wedges
1 parsnip, sliced into wedges

1 red onion, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon of squeezy honey

Half a pack of green beans (enough for 3)
A good sprinkling of sesame seeds
Crunchy sea salt
Black Pepper

Preheat the oven to 200C.

First, start off with the vegetables as they will take the longest. Chop the parsnips and sweet potato into wedge type shapes, add the chopped red onion, drizzle with olive oil and pop in the oven for around 40 minutes.


Then prepare the sauce for the lamb. In a plastic jug, add the clementine/satsuma juice, redcurrant jelly, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, salt and pepper and whisk well.


Around 20 minutes before the vegetables are done, start on the lamb. I used a griddled pan to fry the lamb steaks, not healthy at all! However, I do find that doing it that way doesn't make the lamb shrink, like it does in the oven, and I just prefer this method of cooking it. So I get the pan hot and put a little bit of oil in there, place the steaks in and stick the lid on. I find that the heat contained inside the pan with the lid on helps the lamb to get juicier and to cook quickly (at least that's my reasoning!)


Keep checking the lamb at intervals and once one side looks cooked, turn over. These should take around 10-15 minutes to cook. Once they are cooked to your preference, take out and put on a warm plate and cover tightly with foil. The meat needs some time to rest!

At this point, around 5-10 minutes before the veggies are completely done, pull them out of the oven and drizzle with honey. Then pop back in for the remaining time.

Then in the same pan you cooked the lamb in, use it to make the sauce. Keep all of the fat, oil and the crispy bits from when you cooked the lamb in the pan, get the heat going again and pour the sauce mixture into it. Turn it down to a simmer, and let it cook until slightly thicker.


Whilst the sauce is sizzling away and the veggies are almost done, cook the green beans. When cooked, drain and add the sesame seeds, crunchy sea salt and black pepper.


Now to finish up. For about 2 minutes, add the lamb steaks to the pan where the sauce is cooking. It gets the steaks all juicy and infused with the sauce flavours and warms them up. Then serve them up onto a warm plate, add the veggies and green beans. Then drizzle the rest of the sauce over the steaks.