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WITH THOSE TEMPERATURES soaring, some could argue we’ve skipped spring entirely and throttled right through to summer. But hopefully that’s not the case as spring brings an abundance of traditional seasonal dishes to enjoy at leisure – pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, hot cross buns, wild garlic soup and, of course, spring lamb.
Lamb is one of the most versatile, delicious and value-for-money meats you can find in the supermarket. Irish lamb is amongst the best in the world and it’s one of our favourite things to cook, but when you want something delicious and elegantly easy, roast some lamb on-the-bone. Goes without saying, always look for the Bord Bia Quality Mark.
A couple of hours in the oven alongside some potatoes, root vegetables and lots of seasoning and extra flavour makes a full or half leg of lamb juicy, soft, succulent and full of flavour – here’s a one-pan dish that you’ll want to try now spring is here and winter is (hopefully) gone for another year!
Serves 4
Ingredients
Method
Preheat the oven to 180ºC (170ºC fan).
Using a pestle and mortar, bash the garlic, flaked salt and herbs down to a fine paste, thinning it out with a little oil until it’s the consistency of a very thick pesto. Alternatively you could do this with a small food processor or hand blender, or even very, very finely dice it all on a board, but the pestle and mortar is best. If you don’t have fresh herbs, a generous amount of dried mixed herbs will suffice.
Liberally season the half lamb leg with fine, free-flowing salt and freshly-cracked pepper.
Thinly slice the potatoes into half inch slices and arrange in layers at the bottom of a greased, lipped baking tray large enough to fit the lamb comfortably in. These are known as pommes boulangère – potatoes that are cooked in fat/stock under a roasted piece of meat.
Lay the seasoned lamb half leg on top and, using a knife, make fairly deep incisions throughout the meat. Spread the herb and garlic mixture all over the lamb, pushing it as best you can into the little pockets created. Ensure there’s a fairly even coating over the lamb.
Pour about 75ml of stock over the potatoes underneath the lamb just to stop them from drying out, as they will absorb the flavour and fat from the lamb.
Cover the tray with a double layer of foil and put into the oven for 90 minutes.
Then, prepare your root vegetables like carrots and parsnips by washing and slicing. You can even use quartered onions or halved bulbs of garlic here if you like and other vegetables like beetroot, but rainbow carrots give a wonderful colour.
Remove the lamb and potatoes from the oven, take off the foil and crank the heat up to 190/200ºC for the last 30-45 minutes. Arrange the vegetables around the lamb in the tray and return to the oven.
When finished, take out the tray and cover the lamb loosely again with the tin foil for about ten minutes to rest before carving into slices. Carve the lamb first and then plate up with the roasted vegetables and boulangère potatoes.
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Brilliant new, and best wishes to Gerry Adams for a long and happy retirement. He’s more than earned it after 40+ years fighting for civil rights and equality, leaving aside his role in bringing peace to our island.
@John003: Showing your tender years there ‘john’. Gerry Adams was marching for civil rights for years before there was a provisional IRA.
Switch off reeling in the years and pick up a book
Good lad.
@The Risen: Will Jorry tell us where the disappeared are now!?
@The Risen: Yes, I’ll fondly remember him carrying dead terrorists, obfuscating for terrorist murders, his evidence at his brothers trial, his recent position on jailing the murderers of an Irish farmer, his cute ducky tweets, and so much more. Yes, what a loss he will be. I wonder if the leader of any other party had done and said half what this guy has, would you be so saccharine in your adulation.
@charlie rex/charles wrex/alan brogan/Honeybadger197: What has he ‘done’?
@The Risen:?
@The Risen: Have another read of my comment there sunshine. Have you set shields to deflect mode again?
@John003: thumbs up
@The Risen: PIRA was really launched after Blloody Sunday that is when civil rights marches came to end….Gerry Adams had no real part in civil rights marches most of the leaders became part of the SDLP….Brirish government by 1974 had granted most of the civil rights Catholics have today….One of the major rights for Catholics was free 3rd level education….Ironically under SF in government fees now are £5000 a year and have to be borrowed in NI…
@The Risen: Correct. Adams has been involved in civil rights matters since the early sixties. PIRA first emerged late 60s-early 70s
@The Risen: Funny that you say that, I have no recall of Gereen marching anywhere for anything back in 1968/69, if memory serves the peacemaker didn’t surface until 72/73 I am however open to correction by your good self if I am incorrect.
@Unconvertible Rebel: First civil rights match was in Oct 1968 did not really exist before then…..Gerry Adams was not part of it….Next you will say he was in GPO in 1916….
The civil rights movement in NI is widely considered to have began in the early sixties with the HCL and later the CSJ.
@Unconvertible Rebel: 3 coffees later, I just copped on, it’s actually over FIFTY years, not 40!
Half a century. Wow.
@The Risen: Half a century, 2,000 years… Who’s counting???
@Unconvertible Rebel: uncovertible liar more like
@Unconvertible Rebel: Quick one for you;
An Irishman, an Welshman, A Scotsman, A Frenchman, A German and an Englishmen walk into a bar…
And the ENTIRE WORLD knows that the Irishman is the joke.
“Civil Rights Movement”? Is that what you call a half century of targeted, savage violence? Good to know, I guess.
“Lets machine gun an entire pub of innocent people just to get one person we don’t like.”
“Lets blow up a post office… because …. REASONS!!”
” I really REALLY don’t like that train bridge!!!”
“Lets collectively bite the hand that fed and educated, be negligent of the fact that there is ALWAYS ANOTHER HAND and impotently did not expect it to be a fist. Then when discarded like uncontrollable animals who have no qualms shooting a vacant enemy in the back do you have the nerve to call it a “Civil Uprising”.
If you look up “opportunistic acts of Cowardice” you’ll find a link to the wiki page of the Easter Rising.
Imagine what those few true sons of Ireland, most of whom had no choice but to enlist after being Locked Out, who managed to return from places like the Western Front thought of the actions? Probably thought much the same as Yeats did after the actions of the Lockout;
“Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.”
@RDP:
Have you eaten some magic mushrooms by any chance?
@Tweed Cap:
“According to the Confessio of Patrick, when he was about 16, he was captured by Irish pirates from his home in Britain and taken as a slave to Ireland”
“King Diarmait Mac Murchada of Leinster was forcibly exiled by the new High King, Ruaidri mac Tairrdelbach Ua Conchobair of the Western kingdom of Connacht. Fleeing to Aquitaine, Diarmait obtained permission from Henry II to recruit Norman knights to regain his kingdom. The first Norman knight landed in Ireland in 1167, followed by the main forces of Normans, Welsh and Flemings. Several counties were restored to the control of Diarmait, who named his son-in-law, the Norman Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow, heir to his kingdom. This troubled King Henry, who feared the establishment of a rival Norman state in Ireland. Accordingly, he resolved to establish his authority.”
“The Irish Parliamentary Party strove from the 1880s to attain Home Rule through the parliamentary constitutional movement, eventually winning the Home Rule Act 1914, although this Act was suspended at the outbreak of World War I. The Easter Rising staged by republicans two years later brought physical force republicanism back to the forefront of Irish politics.”
I wish I did have some Magic Mushrooms, or at least something to take the shame of being Irish away if just for a few minutes.
@John003: the IRA that carry out 60 percent of terrorism in NI . Detonated 1656 IEDS on everything from pubs , shops , trains , hotels , school buses did it all to bring about peace in NI . What you go to tell us next. Isis is fighting to bring about peace in the Middle East .
@RDP: Ashamed of being Irish ? I didn’t realise that paragraph you just wrote was the measuring tool we all must use to define our shame level. Or perhaps in your head there’s a shame and insecurity that has nothing got to do with being Irish. None of what you said has any relevance to me or my Irishness and my pride of it. Best of luck with your issues.
@The Risen: Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams has described the horrific abduction and murder of mother-of-ten Jean McConville as something that “happens in war”. Criminals.
@Paul Mc Nulty: Proud of Slaughtering Patrick’s family.
Proud of swearing loyalty and lands to Henry II in exchange for troops.
Proud of falling to your knees instead of fighting/dying on your feet when given the choice.
Proud of harbouring a despotic criminal all because he’s catholic.
Proud of shooting your “enemy” in the back after agreeing to wait until the war was over.
Proud of slaughtering innocent civilians.
MY issue, Paul, is TOO many Proud Irishmen, take way too much pride in a blood soaked lie. And everyone knows, the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it, if the land is isolated… Better yet.
@RDP: you’re an absolute muppet. Thee worst type of “Irishman” you can get, a self loathing west Brit that spouts absolute nonsense and hides behind a fake page. If you are that ashamed of being Irish there’s plenty of boats and planes that leave every day. Or better yet try swim to that blood crazed land you are defending, and I hope you don’t know how to swim.
@Jeremy McCarthy:
Of course, it HAS to be me who’s the muppet, and the worst kind, the kind that can read and doesn’t do as they’re told. And aren’t you just brimming with examples of how wrong I am by blessing this comment section with your unbound knowledge and endless humanity the Irish are known for… And not cowards in balaclava’s.
Maybe you should take off the Balaclava before you start posting, I hear they can cut off the oxygen flow rather quickly.
Yeah, my page is fake. Like many things and people, Jeremy.
“Many of these [Roman] coins and artefacts may also have come from raids rather than trade. The Romans may have decided against invading Ireland but the Irish had no such qualms about invading Roman Britain. They specialised in quick in and out raids where they attacked a town or community, grabbed whatever they could and returned back to Ireland as quickly as possible.”
ireland-calling.com/ireland-and-roman-empire/
First century, 1970′s … Old habits, eh.
———-
“British Army officers threatened to resign if they were ordered to take action against the UVF. By 1914, Ireland seemed to be on the brink of a civil war.[14] The crisis was ended in August that year by the outbreak of World War I[15]. The Home Rule Bill was enacted, but its implementation was postponed by a suspensory act until the end of the war.
“The Supreme Council of the IRB met on 5 September 1914, just over a month after the British government had declared war on Germany. At this meeting, they decided to stage an uprising before the war ended and to secure help from Germany.[16]
“After the war began, Roger Casement and Clan na Gael leader John Devoy met the German ambassador to the United States, Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, to discuss German backing for an uprising. Casement went to Germany and began negotiations with the German government and military. He persuaded the Germans to announce their support for Irish independence in November 1914.[25] Casement also attempted to recruit an Irish Brigade, made up of Irish prisoners of war, which would be armed and sent to Ireland to join the uprising.[26][27] However, only 56 men volunteered. Plunkett joined Casement in Germany the following year. Together, Plunkett and Casement presented a plan (the ‘Ireland Report’) in which a German expeditionary force would land on the west coast of Ireland, while a rising in Dublin diverted the British forces so that the Germans, with the help of local Volunteers, could secure the line of the River Shannon, before advancing on the capital.[28] The German military rejected the plan, but agreed to ship arms and ammunition to the Volunteers
……
There was great hostility towards the Volunteers in some parts of the city. Historian Keith Jeffery noted that most of the opposition came from people whose relatives were in the British Army and who depended on their Army allowances.[160] Those most openly hostile to the Volunteers were the “separation women” (so-called because they were paid “separation money” by the British government), whose husbands and sons were fighting in the British Army in the First World War. There was also hostility from unionists.[161] Supporters of the Irish Parliamentary Party also felt the rebellion was a betrayal of their party.[162] When occupying positions in the South Dublin Union and Jacob’s factory, the rebels got involved in physical confrontations with civilians who tried to tear down the rebel barricades and prevent them taking over buildings. The Volunteers shot and clubbed a number of civilians who assaulted them or tried to dismantle their barricades.[163]
That the Rising resulted in a great deal of death and destruction, as well as disrupting food supplies, also contributed to the antagonism toward the rebels. After the surrender, the Volunteers were hissed at, pelted with refuse, and denounced as “murderers” and “starvers of the people”.[164] Volunteer Robert Holland for example remembered being “subjected to very ugly remarks and cat-calls from the poorer classes” as they marched to surrender. He also reported being abused by people he knew as he was marched through the Kilmainham area into captivity and said the British troops saved them from being manhandled by the crowd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Rising
I guess Wikipedia’s a fake page too.
The future augurs well for SF. They are moving from the old guard to a new generation with some serious talent on board and have a large number of the 18-50 demographic.
@For Connolly: Are you going to comment using your werejammin a/c to make it a hat trick?
@Honeybadger197: Hi charlie rex/charles wrex/alan brogan/honeybadger.
Careful you’re not crushed under the irony of your comment.
@For Connolly: new clowns same circus…accountability sought from everyone not in SF…protect a child molester, bully party colleagues, introduce people to the killers of their family members no problem if your SF…non SF squash a speeding ticket and your a heinous criminal.
@The Risen: Please explain. I’ve asked you several times but you always disappear.
@The Risen: Very good!
@Mary Loony Mc Donald: wow the irony of you thinking your comment is one of the high ground. Especially since you mentioned child molester , speeding ticket in the same comment. Considering it was shamefully what this state under the government of fg used to try and destroy an innocent man who highlighting the issue of speeding tickets.
@LITTLEONE: whereas Gerry Adams goals was to subvert the state, it’s security apparatus, it’s institutions and its constitution by the use of guns and Semtex.
jorry hasn’t gone away ye know
he’ll be the puppet master for whatever puppet is installed by west belfast
@Honeybadger197: How many accounts exactly do you use to post with and give yourself a good old thumbs up? Pathetic.
@Niall Quinlan: I have only one account Niall. I suppose its easier for simple minded folk like yourself to build strawman arguments. You’re like a less acute version of that Oneill idiot who thinks anyone critical of Adams is a DUP member.
@Honeybadger197: You’re afraid to show your identity. You’re just a weak vessel. You’re opinion carries no weight.
@LITTLEONE: Did the state/FG try to have Maurice McCabe shot for highlighting the issue of speeding tickets? No, it’s a little different from Sinn Fein/IRA’s tactics. Ask people like the family of Jerry McCabe. That’s what we’re dealing with here.
@Honeybadger197: No need to use insulting language pal. I may not agree with your political views and vice-versa so let’s just leave it at that.
Wow, the article is 20 minutes old, and the usual dozen or so FG accounts haven’t shown up to ruin the comments section for the grown ups.
Enjoy it while it lasts everyone, they’ll get the alert soon enough…….
@Dermo Adams: They’re over on the leo/meehole article trying to convince readers that Leos omnishambles last week was actually good leadership.
@The Risen: No wonder theres no sign of them, they’ve more than got their hands full with that one…..
@Dermo Adams: There’s the first 3 now, all appearing together. That trains never late!
@Dermo Adams: Hi Dermo, what did you make of Adams performance at his brothers trial?
@Dermo Adams: They’re all just SPs who need to be publicly discredited (PROTECT THE CULT).
@Dermo Adams: Yeah, Damn those opinions I don’t agree with. What place have they here anyway???
Jerry is like the hotel Californian, he is checking out, but he never leave, the shinners will but in place a proxy.
@Maurice Slater: the illegal, child-murdering army gets a new commanding officer – it’ll be a day to celebrate for sure. Me hole.
@Maurice Slater:
After all the continuous scandals of FG and AGS I will vote SF above the three Parties that were/are in government over the past 20 years.
Marylou in charge for next election….. Now what will fg and ff do… Stick with Martin and hapless leo .. or go with new blood.
@LITTLEONE: never one to defend FFG .. but putting SF and blood in the same sentence is never a good idea.
@LITTLEONE: Mary Lou of course hasn’t had to make a real decision as yet. Like Michelle O’Neill. Apples and oranges as they say
It seems more likely to be Mary Lou, at this a stage. I suspect the party will be under pressure to have a formal contest.
The problem is the pressures on the GFA with the party politicking of the Tories and DUP, means SF now needs a strong cohesive leaders ship within their own heartlands.
The Ard Choimhrle may drive policy and direction, however Adams or McGuinness calling for accommodation with Unionism sounds benovalence, where as a similar sentiment from someone without the track record could be construed as weakness within their constituency.
They have a difficult path to tread and Michael and Leo will be working full tilt to spread dissention within the rank and file!
I suspect we can expect some interesting releases this New Year under 20 yr rules!
@Jarlath Murphy: YEAH maybe we’ll get to know just exactly who it was that ordered the Kingsmill massacre, the Enniskillen massacre the LeMON massacre, the murder of Billy Fox, the murder of Tom Oliver etc. etc.
@John Mc Donagh: We live in hope!
Anything is possible I guess, however recent revelations on MI6 running Loyalist and Republican Agents of influence it may well transpire that the conflict was prolonged deliberately?
I love how people of a certain ilk completely and utterly try to change actual history. This is not a democratic selection of new leader it is a selection by a few of a new leader. As Gerry Adams said about the IRA ‘we haven’t gone away you know’
Fly a flag when you’re ready. Shower of eejits.
Won’t make any difference who the Army Council names to be their puppet leader of Provisional SF. Only when their Ard Fheis drones realise applauding a mass murderer is wrong, will change be visible
Mary Loooooooou…break out the ear defenders!
Yawn politics. All talk and spin..
The GE could happen at anytime and give Mary Lou time. They should do it as soon as possible. This change has been vomit and majority imho look at SF for their policies. Good news in the development of the country. Good opportunity as the twins are likely to need a partner after next elections.
@lavbeer: change has being coming …. vomit (spell check lol). Change is needed asap for them. MM won’t want any bounce nor will LV. Expect a Q1 general election.
I do not anyone cares really. A former FF being leader of SF. Well I never
This place is full of bitter unionist trolls.
@Gavin O Doherty: And full of the new Anti Irish FFFGLAB clowns
@Gavin O Doherty: Almost as many as the bitter Republicans…
Emotional time for gerrry .but he knows the future is bright for Sinn Fein. Thank you for service to Ireland and sinn fein .. he will be always around to help wherever he’s needed .
Any truth in the story that somebody broke into Sinn Fein’s head office and stole next years elections result??
..i predict gerry adams will be elected as the new leader of sinn fein…shot me if i’m wrong !!! :/
Yawn.
Someone doesn’t like me pointing out the obvious facts available for all to see.
There’s no censorship or agenda/s at the Journal.
Journalists of moral integrity are we.
Nothing to see here here, move along, move along.
Mary Lou next leader Jerry told her so
Mary Lou next leader Jerry told her
have your say