Slow-Roast Shoulder of Lamb with Anchovy and Rosemary

There's a point, about three hours in, when the kitchen changes. You stop noticing the smell because it's everywhere: rosemary gone warm and resinous, the lamb quietly rendering its fat, the anchovies long since dissolved into the juices. It smells like the kind of Saturday where nothing else needs doing.

I make this when the evenings draw in and the house needs warming. Not just with heat, though the oven does that too, but with the particular comfort of something that's been cooking slowly all afternoon. A lamb shoulder is a forgiving cut. It wants time and low heat, and in return it gives you meat that falls from the bone and juices so deep and savoury they barely need anything alongside. The anchovies are the secret. They melt into the lamb completely, leaving no trace of fish, only a salty, savoury depth that you can't quite place but would miss if it weren't there.

This is not a complicated dish. You stud the lamb, brown it, cover it, and walk away for four hours. The oven does the work. Your job is to put it in the middle of the table, still in its roasting tin, with the juices pooling around it, and let people pull it apart. There are few better feelings than putting a warm plate in front of someone and watching them reach for a second helping before the first is finished.

I wrote it down in the notebook years ago: lamb, anchovy, rosemary, Saturday. It hasn't needed revising since.