Making the perfect roast leg of lamb

Easter has been and gone, but roast leg of lamb is not just destined for that long weekend!  This roasted lamb leg was what I actually cooked for my Italian side of the family on Easter Sunday.  Now, it’s not because we actually celebrate any kind of religious holiday, but my husband’s parents and some of his cousins and his uncle happened to be over in France for the long weekend to go to the beach, so it was the perfect time to cook up a leg of lamb. We always try to take advantage of the fact that (nearly) everyone is in the same place at the same time, otherwise we’d end up seeing them just at Christmas time.

I already have one recipe for roasting lamb on my blog, but I figure that you can never have too many, right? This one is really easy to do.  If you’ve ever felt daunted by the though of cooking such a large piece of meat, this is the recipe for you, and if you’re perfectly comfortable with whipping up a roast, then it’s still a good one as the tomatoes help the lamb to become very juicy and tender.

When rosemary bushes go rogue

The rosemary jungle in the garden is getting out of hand again, so whenever I can I try to throw a few sprigs of the herb into things I’m cooking.  It’s a shame you can’t use more than a couple of sprigs at a time.  I need a recipe for rosemary jam, or rosemary liqueur where you use kilos of the stuff.  The problem is that they would taste really revolting……

I used a little bit of it to rub the lamb with, and when I snipped it off one of the bushes, the bush looked as if it was laughing at me…..I can see a horror movie plot in which rosemary bushes take over everything and destroy houses all around them.  It may be a slow-moving movie, as they don’t grow that fast, but eventually (when the audience is asleep), the plants would triumph and take over the world!

Travel photo of the week

This one is from New Zealand.  These are actually not trees, but are large ferns called punga.  They’re scattered all  through the forest(or “bush” as you call it in NZ) in Northland, which is the area I grew up in.  The punga is a very important plant for New Zealand as it is the symbol you see on the jerseys of the All-Blacks (do I need to explain who they are?), the logo for NZ butter, and possibly the symbol that it going to be on the new New Zealand flag , if they ever change it.

By Lisa Watson

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Roasted lamb leg with tomatoes

how to make an easy Rosemary Leg of Lamb with Baked Tomatoes

Course entree, Main Course

Cuisine New Zealand

Prep Time 40 minutes minutes

Cook Time 2 hours hours

Total Time 2 hours hours 40 minutes minutes

Servings 1 leg

Ingredients

• 1 Leg of Lamb
• 3 Cloves Garlic
• 3 - 4 sprigs Rosemary
• 1/4 cup Olive Oil
• 750 g Cherry Tomatoes 1 1/2 lbs
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Instructions

• Take the leg of lamb out of the fridge 30 minutes before you want to cook it.
• Heat the oven to 200ºC (400ºF).
• Peel and slice the garlic cloves. Wash the rosemary, dry it, then scrape a knife over it to crush the leaves a little.
• Put the garlic slices and rosemary in 1/4 of a cup of olive oil. Rub this mixture all over the lamb.
• Wash and dry the cherry tomatoes.
• Cover the bottom of the roasting pan with a thin layer of olive oil, then place the lamb leg in the pan.  Arrange the cherry tomatoes around the lamb.
• Roast for 30 minutes, then turn the oven down to 130ºC (260ºF). Baste the leg of lamb with the juices from the bottom of the pan every 20 minutes.  Cook it for another 1 1/2 - 2 hours depending on how done you like your lamb.
• Slice the lamb and serve it with the tomatoes and juice on top of it.

Time for a terrible confession

The flowers (and weeds) are popping up in the garden right before our very eyes, and hoards of German and Scandinavian tourists are arriving in the area, so that means it’s Spring!  We had my husband’s family over from Italy during the Easter weekend.  I decided to make them all a roasted leg of lamb, just like many french people do for their Easter lunch.  In fact when I went to the butcher (luckily for something else!) the day before Easter Sunday, the five people in front of me ordered lamb leg or shoulder for exactly that reason.  I have to admit I had bought a frozen leg of lamb a few days before, which (Shock! Horror! Close your eyes for this bit please any ecologically sensitive people out there) came from New Zealand. Well, it just tastes better, and I have to support my Dad, right?

Lamb and Roald Dahl

Cooking a leg of lamb always brings to mind that excellent short story written by Roald Dahl called “Lamb to the Slaughter”, in which a man gets murdered.  when the police get there, they talk to the distraught wife for a while.  They’re there so long, she ends up offering them the leg of lamb that is cooking in the oven, which they all, of course, eat. (Spoiler alert! Skip to the the next paragraph if you don’t want to know what happens!).  In the end, it’s the wife who did it but she never gets caught, as the police eat the leg of lamb that was used as the murder weapon.  Clever, huh?!

Use the anchovies!

This recipe calls for rubbing a marinade on the lamb before cooking it.  You can do it the night before, or up to 30 minutes before (it tastes the same).  I know this works, as I had to prepare everything in a hurry since we ended up having Easter Sunday lunch on Saturday instead of Sunday, thanks to the rainy weather forecast.  There are anchovies in the marinade, but for all you anchovy haters out there, please believe me that you cannot taste them at all.  I am the president and treasurer of the anchovy-hating club, and I really like this.  That comes from someone that will spit out a piece of pizza if there’s even a touch of OIL from an anchovy on it!

A hint for cooking lamb

Roasting a leg of lamb is a fabulous way to wow your guests.  You don’t need to do that much and it turns out great every time.  The only thing you have to watch out for is not to over-cook it.  It should be pink, if not slightly bloody in the middle, otherwise it’ll be as tough as old boots.

I’ve adapted this marinade for the roasted leg of lamb from one of my favourite blogs, Chocolate and Zucchini.  Clothilde has a bunch of wonderful recipes there, plus her cookbook is great.  I’ve used mine so much that it’s got stuck-together pages, and is falling apart.  If you’re worried about the anchovy bit (which you shouldn’t be, try this recipe here instead for roast leg of lamb.)

By Lisa Watson

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Marinated and roasted leg of lamb

Marinated and roasted leg of lamb will wow your guests.  this one has a secret ingredient!

Course Main Course

Cuisine Mediterranean

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 2 hours hours

Resting time 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 2 hours hours 10 minutes minutes

Servings 8 - 10 people

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg Leg of lamb
• 4 tsp Coriander seeds
• 2 sprigs of fresh Rosemary
• 12 Anchovies in oil
• 1/2 Tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
• from 1 lemon Lemon zest
• 2 cloves Garlic
• 4 -5 Tbsp Olive oil
• 1/2 tsp Black pepper
• 1 tsp Salt

Instructions

For the Marinade:

• Put all the ingredients (except for the lamb obviously!) in a blender and whizz them together, or use a mortar and pestle to grind them up. If you have neither of those things in your kitchen, just chop everything as small as you can.
• Rub the marinade over the lamb.  Wrap it in plastic wrap and leave it at room temperature for 30 minutes, or overnight in the fridge. Bring it out of the fridge at at least 30 minutes (and up to an hour) before putting it in the oven.

To Roast the Lamb Leg

• Heat the oven to  220ºC (425ºF). Take the plastic wrap off the lamb and put it in a roasting dish.
• Place the lamb in the oven and cook it for 30 minutes, then lower the temperature of the oven to 130ºC (260ºF).
• Roast the lamb leg for another 2 to 2 1/2 hours, depending how cooked you want the lamb.  Baste the leg with the juices about every 20 - 30 minutes. If you have a cooking thermometer, push it into the thickest part of the lamb and wait until the temperature gets to 65ºC (150ºF).
• Let the leg rest outside the oven for 5 - 10 minutes before carving it.

Notes

If you like, you can put tomatoes all around the underside of the lamb before it goes into the oven.

Leftover lamb is great on sandwiches with chutney, or can be minced up and used to make meatballs.  The bone can be used to make stock, so in the the end it becomes a very economical cut of meat to buy (even if it comes all the way from New Zealand!)