On Easter Sunday we thought we'd vary the usual lamb dish and go for mutton. We'd spotted some the day before at the excellent Snape Maltings Farmers' Market. Mutton is basically older lamb, ie sheep, and so has more flavour though is less tender. It is technically at least 2 years old, lamb being under 1 and hogget in between the two. The advice from the farmer was to roast it at a lower temperature and a little longer than for lamb.
The cut we bought was from the top of the leg. I put it in a roasting pan and laid some anchovy fillets underneath and used the olive oil from the jar to smear over the meat. I poured a bottle of red wine into the bottom of the pan and roasted the joint in a fan assisted oven for a couple of hours at about 150'C.
After allowing the joint to rest with the oven switched off the meat turned out to be really succulent and tasty without being too high and sheepy. I boiled down the remaining wine in the pan to make a thin sauce having added some thyme and rosemary from the garden. The anchovies added some umami body and richness to this sauce but absolutely no hint of fishiness. I served the mutton with flageolet beans, the traditional accompaniment to lamb in France. Mashed potatoes would have been more British I guess. And capers too.
As I wasn't sure how sheepy the mutton was going to be I'd prepared two different wines, one stronger and gamier than the other.
In the end we had the Rioja Imperial Reserva, rather than the Lebanese chateau Musar, which is my usual wild game wine; it was perfect, its tannins and acidity cutting through the richness and its marked oaky flavour echoing the herbs (and perhaps fancifully, the bottle of Rioja that went into the sauce). It was more than a match for the mutton. Young lamb is the traditional accompaniment to ancient old Rioja in northern Spain (and to claret, especially Pauillac, in Aquitaine). Whilst young lamb is an excellent foil for these wines, allowing them to show at their best, I think that a vigorous, younger wine like this 2001 is best partnered with the stronger taste of mutton.
