I grew up eating Leg of Lamb every Easter Sunday. I thought this was normal behavior until last year when we spent Easter with my best friends family and they served Ham. I asked them why they didn’t serve lamb and they looked at me like I had 2 heads.
My husband and I carried on this Unorthodox, Lamby tradition when we lived alone in Wrightsville Beach with our cock-a-poo, Maggie. She was an adorable little puppy; fluffy, blond fur and sweet as an angel. She was our pre-baby baby and we adored her so, (still do). I brought home my first lamb leg purchase a few months after we got her and set out to make it just like mommy did. I cut slits in the meat and inserted garlic cloves, I rubbed it down with fresh rosemary, salt and olive oil. And roasted it in our tiny, might-as-well-be-Easy-Bake-oven until my thermometer said it was done. I pulled it out, inhaling its luscious fumes and allowed it to rest before dinner. We carved that beautiful piece of meat and enjoyed it with our roasted potatoes and asparagus and both patted me on the back for having done such a good job.
We ventured into the kitchen, wine glasses in hand, to clean up the mess and saw how much rendered fat was in the roasting pan. There was like, a small lake of grease in that pan. We were smart enough to know that we shouldn’t pour it down the drain and figured we could dump it outside in the pine straw by the bushes. Frankly, all we cared about what getting it out of the house and this seemed like the obvious and extremely smart decision. The next morning we awoke with still-full bellies and brewed our coffee, talked again about how great and smart we were the night before. We looked around,
But that was like, 30 minutes ago!
What is she doing out there?!
Since that day, whenever we cook lamb, we make sure Maggie is inside a locked room and nowhere to be seen. Because Lamb-Face is not something we ever want to wake up to again.
*Easy Marinade for Grilled Leg of Lamb
Equal parts whole grain mustard and brown sugar with half that amount of an equal combo of garlic powder and ground cumin. Place in a gallon sized zip bag and smush it all up until well mixed. Place your de-boned, butterflied leg of lamb in the bag and smush it all up again (*note-you can certainly leave the bone in yours, this is just what we did tonight). Refrigerate for 5-8 hours and allow to come to room temperature before salting and grilling.
We ate ours with the Curried Cauliflower and Brown Rice Salad I posted the other day…https://myeverydaychampagne.com/2010/05/curried-cauliflower-and-brown-rice.html/
2 Comments
You're lucky you could get her away from that fat! Truffle is generally a good dog, but I'm not sure she'd let me drag her away from something like that.
By the way, I, too, grew up with lamb on Easter–and I think it's a way of HONORING the Lamb of God. So there, gracious hosts. But ham is good, too.
Aww.. Truffle? That's adorable!
Well, its good to hear I'm not the only one eating lamb on easter!