If you make up the Casserole Base, divide the mixture and freeze it, then when you need it it’s pretty easy to jazz it up by adding some tomatoes, garlic, herbs and lemon juice. If you’ve got time to make the Olive and Fetta Bread then voila – you’ve got a Greek style meal!!!
It’s winter and what could be better for a family meal than an old style lamb casserole. This one needs very little preparation, just trim the chops, coat them in flour, chop up an onion put the lot in a casserole dish and cover with the combined flavorings. Put the dish in the oven and forget it for 2 hours while you get on with all the other things you need to do after a long day at work.
Mum collected this recipe from the Herald Sun back in the ’80s, back then her curries were always made with curry powder. This must have seemed a bit exotic to her – curry rubbed onto the skin of a lamb roast. Her lamb roasts were always baked plain and served with homemade mint sauce and, of course, gravy.
This hearty lamb casserole comes from an Australia Meat Board leaflet published back in 1970. Mum and I have both made in many times, it’s a great winter warmer
We’re just back from a terrific holiday in Europe. We ate lots of great meals in Italy, France and England, but as always it’s good to be home – back to the land of affordable lamb and beef. This is my favourite Lamb Roast recipe, I wrote it down for Mum years ago. As you can see it’s a bit sketchy, there’s no quantities you just put as much onion and potato in the baking dish as you need.
LAMB ROAST
Fry onions in butter or margarine. Tip into the bottom of a baking pan and cover with sliced potatoes. Pour over beef stock until not quite covered. Generously rub salt and pepper into a leg of lamb. Put the lamb on a rack over the onion & potato mix and bake at 180o. Cooking time depends on the size of the leg of lamb, but it needs a bit extra time to crisp up the onion & potato.
This recipe was published by the Australian Meat Board to promote lamb and Mum would have picked the leaflet up from the counter at her local butcher’s shop. It’s a recipe I’ve cooked a lot over the years and still do. You can’t beat a lamb casserole on a cold winter’s night can you?
Instead of using mince steak this meatloaf uses minced lamb and it’s other unusual ingredient is a container of potato salad. Usually potato salad accompanies a meatloaf instead of being mixed in, but the potato and it’s mayonnaise dressing combined with the French onion soup mix make this a tasty change.
I get the impression that this recipe is one Mum wrote down while she was on the phone with a friend. It’s written on the type of notepad Mum kept by the phone and it has that abbreviated feel of being hurriedly written down.
These were one of my father’s favourites and Mum often made them when she had some leftover lamb roast. I’m guessing that she first made them back in the 1940s and after I got married I typed up the recipe and added it to my collection. As Mum’s original is almost impossible to read I’ve included my version here as as well. I’ve no idea why they’re call Madras Cutlets, I suppose the curry powder gave them an exotic Indian flavour!!!
This is one of Mum’s classic handwritten recipes. Firstly, it’s written on a scrap of paper that comes from the minutes of meeting she had attended and secondly it’s rather short on detail. It also has a mix of Imperial and Metric measures. I’ve rewritten it to give you a clearer idea of how it should look.
LAMB CHOPS WITH BEANS
Heat oil in frying pan and brown chops, remove and place in casserole dish. Cook onion and bacon in frying pan, then add to casserole. Add the other ingredients and bake in a moderate oven 180o for 1½ hours.
Beb's Recipe Drawer 