Leg of lamb

So I think I mentioned that we bought this leg of lamb from Heritage Farms. It clocked in at just over 3 pounds and research indicated that this might be a "short" leg of lamb, as in one without the sirloin. This also meant that it came without the handy carving handle, which I think is the shank bone.

In preparation for cooking the leg, I looked up leg of lamb in all my cookbooks. Okay, all the ones that I felt would have lamb recipes. Really, I was surprised at how few leg of lamb recipes I had, yet when I typed them up for Josh to choose one, it was a surprisingly long list. Julia Child, Jacques, Pepin, Thomas Keller, Michael Psilakis, James Peterson, Francis Mallman. Not a bad list of chefs. But in the end, we went with a simple recipe, one by Jacques Pepin.

It called for creating a garlic paste and then mixing that with minced rosemary and stuffing that into ~1 inch deep knife holes all over the lamb. The recipes all called for 6-10 lb legs, so I went with half the recipe. So I did that, wrapped it in saran wrap, and put it into the fridge to season overnight.

On Saturday, I took it out and into the oven. In my excitement, I did forget that I was supposed to salt and pepper it. Bad me.

Cooking it was a little adventure. Given that the lamb was about half the size of that in the recipe, I expected that it would take less time to cook, and worried it would be about half. In the end, I think it ended up being able the same time, over an hour.

Unfortunately, I broke my digital meat thermometer a couple months ago when I put it into the Egg. I tested all my meat thermometers and they are surprisingly all off, though one of the probe ones is right. So I used that, pulling out the meat to take the temp probably too many times. 145 is medium rare and that was what I wanted. The 20 minute rest is supposed to raise the temp roughly 5 degrees but I was expecting 10, so I took it out at 135. I put it on the board to rest for 20 min while I cooked some corn, filet beans, and smashed potatoes.

I also took the pan, added shallots and let those cook a little, then added in the remainder of a pint of my Zuni chicken stock that I made last week. Later, I added the juices that came out of the lamb after I sliced it. It turned out pretty well.

It was pretty hard to slice the lamb in terms of keeping it stable. In the end, it was a little messy, but it worked out. I am worried about all the juice that came out of it. You can see how much came out even as I was slicing it. But the flavor was really good. It was about this time that I realized I forgot to salt and pepper it. But it didn't kill the dish.

I plan to use leftovers to make some souvlaki. I bought all the makings of tzatziki and also some pita. However, I found a branzino at the DFM, so we got that for dinner instead of my original planned souvlaki.

Right now, I have some collards on the stove, simmering away.