Leg of Lamb Simmered in our Mother Sauce

This recipe combines two. The first is Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's wonderful recipe for Soy Sauce Chicken (See Yau Gai), on pages 58-59 of The Chinese Chicken Cookbook, which is the basis for our lo soi ("old water" or mother sauce). The second consists of the section on "master sauce" on page 739 in Gloria Bey Miller's classic Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook, which contains this very recipe in a bare bones style.

You will need a heavy braising pot that the leg of lamb will fit comfortably into.

1. Bring about 6 cups of your lo soi to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes.
2. Sear a leg of lamb on al sides in hot oil.
3. Add the leg of lamb to the lo soi and bring to a low simmer. The lo soi should come far up the sides of the leg of lamb, but not over the top of it.
4. Cover and simmer until the lamb is very, very tender. The total time will depend on how big the leg of lamb is, but 2-3 hours should be about average. Turn the leg of lamb in the sauce at least once an hour.
5. Serve hot, warm or cold, with steamed rice and put a little (hot) sauce on both the lamb and the rice (but keep most of the sauce to use again).
6. After the meal, strain the sauce and freeze.

-- Note: I strongly suspect that you can braise the seared lamb leg and lo soi in a 180C/300F oven to good effect. I think it would take longer to cook, but I don't know how long.


Making Lo Soi

First you need to have made lo soi. This simmering sauce gets better and better the longer you keep it and use it.

Soy Sauce Chicken (makes a great dinner and your original lo soi base)
Very slightly modified from: The Chinese Chicken Cookbook (Eileen Yin-Fei Lo)

6 cups chicken stock
3 cinnamon sticks
4 whole star anise
1 slice ginger, 2 inches long, lightly smashed
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup mushroom soy sauce
1 cup dry sherry (or Shao-Hsing wine)
1 whole chicken (about 1.5 to 2 k.)

1. Put chicken stock, cinnamon, star anise, ginger and sugar in a large pot and bring to a boil over high heat. Add the mushroom soy and return to a boil. Lower the heat and allow the sauce to simmer for 20 minutes. Return the heat to high, add the sherry or wine and return to a boil.

2. Carefully put the chicken, breast side up, into the sauce and return to a boil. Lower the heat, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes.

3. Turn the chicken over, bring to a boil, lower the heat, cover and simmer for another 20 minutes.

4. Turn off the heat and allow the chicken to rest in the liquid, covered, for an hour.

5. Transfer the chicken to a cutting board, cut in pieces, and serve with steamed rice and a little sauce.

-- In her Chinese Kitchen, Eileen Yin-Fei Lo has another recipe for lo soi which has 3/4 teaspoon of Sichuan peppecorns, 2 teaspoons of fennel seeds, a whole nutmeg, 8 pieces of licorice root, 4 pieces of galangal all wrapped in a cheesecloth packet as additional spicing. I haven't tried this one yet, but it comes from Chef Lui Sum Hon of Hong Kong, whose lo soi is over fifty years old, so it ought to be very good.


Keeping and Caring For Lo Soi:

1. After each use, strain the sauce into freezing containers and freeze.
2. When you are going to use it again, thaw the sauce in the containers and then skim the solid and congealed fat from the top of each container of sauce.
3. Bring the sauce to a boil and simmer briefly before using it again.
4. From time to time add mushroom soy and sherry or wine (1/4 cup of each at a minimum) to top it up and refresh the taste - and, at longer intervals, ginger and spices.
5. Re-using, however, is what makes this sauce so good and finally makes it your own. You can cook chicken, duck, pork and beef as well as leg of lamb in the sauce. The flavour deepens and mellows with each use.