Lamb chops

At our house traditions don't change easily, yet one year my husband announced that a he ordered a leg of lamb for Easter. I was appalled. Everyone knows we have ham and scalloped potatoes and coconut cake made with a fresh coconut, and candy for Easter. I let him take over when the huge bloody thing arrived. Actually it turned my stomach a little. The man he'd ordered it from had butchered it himself and supplied a recipe. I got a little more interested when I saw the list of herbs for the herb rub. And the cream and red wine for the sauce.

So we entered uncharted territory and altered our tradition. We roasted that lamb. We searched for and discarded the fat pocket located above and to the outer area of it's knee. This fat we were told, was what caused the gamey flavor. We bought red potatoes, asparagus, yellow pepper and spring onions. I made a Key Lime Pie.

It was delicious. And we've come to look very forward to it.

This year we changed our lamb cut slightly. The last couple of years we allowed our dog to eat at the leftover lamb leg and it made him feel kind of sick, so this year, so we won't feel compelled to share, I bought two boneless leg roasts.

Here's our recipe (which I'll alter because now we have boneless lamb:

8 pound leg of lamb
2 tablespoons of olive oil

Put the lamb in the largest roaster you have. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Score the fat in diamond shapes. Peel a bunch of garlic and make little stabs all over the lamb and sick the garlic down into the slits. Then cover the lamb with the olive oil. Use your hands, this is the fun part.

Mix in a bowl:
1 tsp of each
thyme, basil, rosemary, tarragon, marjoram, oregano, 4 tsp of parsley and 1/2 tsp of black pepper.

Pat the herbs all over the lamb. Put it in the oven uncovered for 10 minutes then reduce the oven to 350 degrees and roast it for 90 minutes. Then arrange red potatoes, spring onions, and a yellow pepper cut into strips. Roast it for another hour or until the lamb is 160 degrees.

Move all the meat and vegetables out of the roaster and in that pan use 2 tablespoons of fat, 1/2 cup dry red wine, and cook til reduced by half. Add one cup beef broth and cook til reduced by half. Add 1/2 cup of half and half or cream and cook until it coats the back of a spoon. This is your gourmet sauce. (This year we tripled this recipe because the sauce is so good!)

We serve this with asparagus and coleslaw or a salad. It's fun to open a bottle of champagne at some point during the cooking, to help celebrate the beginning of spring.