Lamb legs are the new lamb shanks

I know I've been banging on incessantly about how cheap cuts are no longer cheap but here's a perfect illustration. Incited by my recent observations that men aren't as frugal as women when it comes to food shopping, my husband picked up a half price leg of lamb for £8.99 in Somerfield the other day.

I never really fancy a full English roast in this sort of weather so decided to make an old recipe I haven't made for years from Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery which you can find (the recipe, not the book) online here

There was a time when I would have conscientiously trotted down to the shops and bought every ingredient in the recipe but apart from picking up a large pot of yoghurt made do with what I had from an admittedly well-stocked spice cupboard. I scaled down the spicing slightly reducing the garlic from 8 cloves to 4 and replacing the recommended 4 green chillies with 1 red one and also omitted the blanched almonds which was perhaps a mistake as the marinade split making the dish initially look as if it was covered in cat sick - as my husband somewhat tactlessly pointed out.

In the end I poured off the marinade, skimmed off the fat (a good move) and strained it then whizzed the solids in a food processor and added enough of the liquid back to make a thin - and delicious - sauce.

We had it with friends on Friday with a dry cauliflower and potato curry and some green beans with tomato and garam masala and have been scoffing the leftovers over the weekend. With seconds at I reckon we got 10 servings out of it which comes to less than £1 a head. Which is more than you can say for lamb shanks these days.