While our Head Chef, Paul Green, can’t cook for our guests in 1887, he is sharing his recipes on our blogs to give you a little taste of Torridon at home –

In the Easter spirit, here is a delicious slow-roasted lamb leg with a pesto made from in-season ramson.

A nice easy recipe where you can stick it in the oven and go about your day not worrying about tea time!

Wild garlic or ramson is in season now and grows all around us – it will cut perfectly through the tenderly cooked lamb.

We’ll make a gravy from the tray juices and serve with some potatoes, steamed carrots and buttered spring cabbage.

Serves 4/6

For the lamb

1 leg of lamb ( about 1- 1.5kg)

A few cloves of garlic 

Rosemary sprigs

A couple of carrots, onions and a bit of celery

½ a bottle of white wine

500 ml stock/water ( lamb, chicken or vegetable )

For the Ramson pesto

A handful of wild ramsons

Grated Parmesan or other hard cheese

Roasted nuts of your choice such as hazelnuts, pine nuts

A little white wine vinegar

Olive oil

Sea salt

For the garnish

Steamed carrots

Chopped potatoes

Buttered spring cabbage

Method

1. Begin by removing the lamb from the fridge and allow it to come to room temperature, about an hour. Preheat your oven to 150c.
2. Slice a few carrots length-ways, peel and half a few onions and chop roughly the celery – this is called a vegetable trivet and is what we will cook the lamb on.  Make slits all across the lamb leg and insert sprigs of rosemary and some sliced garlic. Drizzle all over with olive oil and season with sea salt.
3. Place this on top of the vegetables in a deep roasting tray and pour in the stock and wine. Cook for 4. h5ours, every so often basting the lamb with the liquor.
4. Halfway through cooking, add the chopped potatoes to the tray. They will absorb some of the cooking juices and be a little crispy too.
5. Once the lamb is tender and flaking, take it off the vegetables and leave to rest on a plate, covered with some foil.
6. Remove the potatoes.
7. The combination of the vegetable trivet, stock and meat juices will create a lovely gravy- mash the vegetables, adding a little more water if needed, bring to the boil and pass this through a sieve.
8. Using a pestle and mortar or a knife, mash the ramson, nuts and add the cheese.
9. Then add oil and season with salt and the vinegar ( there is no set ratio or thickness to the pesto, all personal preference ) Serve with the steamed carrots, buttered cabbage and potatoes.

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