Slow-cooked lamb shoulder with garlic and rosemary jus, roast potatoes, and peas; toffee apple pudding with Madagascan vanilla ice cream

There are two things that I am learning far too slowly in my return to cooking. The first is that my dubiously reestablished control over my limbs will always fail at the worst possible moment, such as when taking a roasting dish full of lamb and its bubbling hot juices out of the oven. I am fortunate both that the lamb remained in its dish, and that mum was willing to handle the clear-up operation while I held my burned thumb under a cold running tap for some time.

The second, that I can hardly complain about in the circumstances but will anyway, is that when mum says “don’t cook a lot, I won’t eat much”, the last thing I should do is not cook a lot, as that’s how I end up with three small roast potatoes and two spoonfuls of peas on my dinner plate.

Complaining aside, today has been the sort of day I daydreamed about while in hospital and at the care home: a lazy breakfast of bakery bread – a day old, and from a supermarket, so not the very best but still a thousand miles from cold, bendy, cardboard toast – loaded with butter and peanut butter so thick I could see my tooth marks after each bite, accompanied by a banana that didn’t look like it had gone twelve rounds with Oleksandr Usyk before reaching me.

Then a good couple of hours to read my book in peace, punctuated only by the howl of the wind and the rattle of rain hurling itself at the window, while mum enjoyed a church service followed by a communal lunch.

My own lunch was eaten in the same blissful silence (silent except for the increasingly worrying weather noises, anyway), without requests for missing words, or questions about when The Masked Singer¹ was coming on, or, more heart-breakingly, yesterday’s late night, tearful “I know it’s stupid, but what’s your name?”. I answered that one cheerfully, with assurances it wasn’t stupid or any big deal, then cried quietly for a while once mum was safely asleep.

One thing mum generally remembers well, probably because nearly 40 years of marriage to a frustrated chef left her very attuned to all things foodie, is her likes and dislikes when it comes to food. One of the likes is lamb, so I try to include it semi-regularly on my weekly meal plans.

Today was the very fancy-sounding meal in the post title, which actually came in a cardboard box from Tesco. It was really very good, once saved from a floor-y fate: very tender, not fatty at all, and with a lovely scent of the billed garlic and rosemary. The jus (we all know it’s gravy and you’re just trying to make it sound posh) was verging on excellent, with a herby flavour and a slight sourness that cut through the richness of the meat. I haven’t done ratings in a while, but this was a solid 8/10 in my opinion.

Then toffee apple pudding, another Tesco thing from a box, and an even better one imo: two minutes in the microwave produced a fluffy, flavourful sponge covering recognisable chunks of apple that retained their tartness despite being covered in toffee sauce. The vanilla ice cream might not be mum’s beloved coffee variety (although you wonderful Pineapples have given me several possible ways to address that), but she had to agree it’s good ice cream: rich and creamy, not too cloyingly sweet, and with a distinct but not overpowering vanilla flavour.

Then we watched The Masked Singer and, although mum started to get a bit bored with it by the end (her attention span being not what it once was), fun was had, and mum even recognised a few of the names given as possible answers to “who’s that behind the mask?”

Now she’s asleep, peace has returned, and I’m shortly going to head to the kitchen as quietly as possible to make another mug of hot Ribena, maybe sneaking one of mum’s chocolate digestives while I’m there, and then lie on my bed killing pixilated beings who miraculously spring back to life every time I have to restart the level. I suppose I should be grateful that they are at least not wearing masks.

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1. Not that mum usually remembers the name of the programme, but I know by now what she means by “that thing with the faces”. ↩︎