Olive, pesto and mushroom stuffed rack of lamb

French trimmed racks of lamb are probably one of my favourites and usually I will oven roast them on the bone and am greedy (ravenous) enough to eat the whole rack chop by luscious chop on my own by the time it emerges from the oven with its crispy skin and moist lamb flesh. They happen to be on offer at Tesco so I treated myself to one yesterday in order to cook today. The recipe is my own and developed simply by what happened to be in my fridge and store cupboards.

Today I got a bit creative with my Sunday purchased small rack of lamb and some things I happened to have in the fridge and on my storage shelves. I knew that I wanted to stuff the rack with something so first of all I took off all of the bones. Then I part cut through the chop flesh twice to extend the length of the meat. This left me with a fattier end where the bones originally lay and the doubled length of lean skinless meat. I happen to like lamb fat so trimming that side of the small joint down would have been pointless, besides it kept the joint moist.

For a simple stuffing I used three small teaspoons of pesto from a jar of Tesco basil pesto, half a dozen chopped and stir fried mushrooms and an equal amount of pitted dry back olives with herbs from Crespo's Les Olive du Marche range. These olives come in little re-sealable packs and are my favourite olives to use when you don't need a vast amount. I spread the chopped up mixture across the flattened flesh and left a half inch gap either end to avoid unnecessary spillage as I tied up the joint with some butcher's string. See pictures below.

The joint cooked for an hour in a pre-heated oven at gas mark six. A few steamed vegetables and the gravy from the joint made for a lovely Autumnal lunch with a spoonful of red current jelly and a glass of robust red wine.

@TescoFood