migrant|roo

Man, it's rare that I spend so long preparing and cooking something that ends up looking a bit unspectacular, but today was one of those.

Slow-cooked Lamb shoulder, with gnocchi and caremlised butternut squash

Taking the meat off the shoulder and trimming the fat took bloody ages! Satisfying seeing it brown off in a very hot griddle pan before being stuck in the oven for an hour with an onion, a touch of stock and and oregano.

I thought I'd double experiment with the gnocchi - attempt them for first time, and also try and inject some earthy mushroom flavour into them. Did you know that 12 mushrooms, finely blitzed in a mini-food processor then gentle fried in olive oil disappear to almost nothing? The yield was about 2 tablespoons of fine mushroom paste.

I used Jamie Oliver's gnocchi recipe - classic potato (none of yer fancy Roman semolina brand here) - adding in the mushroom paste half way through.

While this was going on I continued to develop my mild addiction to oven-roasted tomatoes - I put 12 of them, quartered, into the oven for 90 minutes with salt, basil and olive oil. Also in an already full oven was half a butternut squash cut into a thin, long strips (for extra crispness keep them thin) drizzled with olive oil.

All that was left was to combine the shrunken, intense tomatoes into the lamb making a rustic lamb ragu of sorts - then serving over the gnocchi, a scattering of crispy butternut squash pieces and some grated parmesan.

Warming, autumnal, rustic and bloody hard work.