Marinated lamb with potato salad

My personal recipe book contains a number of newspaper clippings: recipes that I like the sound of but have rarely (if ever) got round to testing. Here is one such cutting, attributed to Ruth Quinlan.

Serves 6.

Ingredients:

2 whole fillets or 6 steaks lamb
4 cloves garlic
4 twigs rosemary
1 tbsp. ground black pepper
1 kg new potatoes
200 g green beans
1 tbsp capers
2 tsp paprika
1 lemon (juice and zest)
150 ml olive oil

Method:

Chop the garlic and rosemary leaves and mix with the pepper and enough oil to coat the meat. Leave in a cool place for at least six hours or overnight. Boil the potatoes and the beans. While still hot, break the potatoes in half using your finger and toss with the rest of the ingredients. When the barbecue is red-hot, sprinkle salt on the meat and cook the steaks for eight minutes and the fillet for 15 - 20 minutes. Rest the meat in a warm place for ten minutes. Serve with the warm potato salad. If you are using fillet, slice thickly. In case of rain, grill (full power) or roast (220 degrees C/mark 7) the meat. The same cooking times apply.

Simple roast chicken

I love chicken with all the trimmings - and at some point I must find out why the word "trimmings" is used to refer collectively to things like bread sauce, sage stuffing and pigs in blankets. But the apparent effort of producing these extra things, delicious though they are, I think puts us off having roast chicken on a week night.

Here, then, are my views about three essential ingredients to add to your plump raw chicken: plenty of salt rubbed into the skin; butter ditto; and a lemon stuffed inside. If I were allowed a fourth ingredient, it would be twigs of thyme, tarragon or rosemary, tucked all over the bird. (I am wondering while I write this whether an onion could also be fitted inside, and black pepper ground over the skin: enough!)

After five minutes' preparation, the chicken can then be put in the oven. Mashed potato and green peas to accompany the bird. A quick gravy can be made from the buttery, lemony juices.

Rosemary bread

A sliced baguette. Rosemary from the front garden. Olive oil. Salt. And in the oven. Dedicated to Granny.