A Leg Of Lamb

Gigot d'agneau rôti à la Palladian

'Tis wond'rous strange, that I should be compelled to cook a leg of lamb, at this moment in my life. I lost a lot, a lot has gone wrong for me, with me, and through it all I have done my best to survive. In need of somewhere to sleep during the summer of 2013, I decided that it was only fair that I offer something, or some service, to sheltering friends in return for their kindness (and tolerance). So I decided to cook for my keep.

For these sheltering friends I have cooked meals great and small, familiar and revelatory. Often my cooking depends upon what I can find on offer at the supermarkets in small towns. Recently I decided to cook a special dinner, a feast of gratitude for my hosts, so I went to the local supermarket and searched for inspiration in the meat section. There were a lot of beasts and cuts of beasts available, but none seemed special enough to express my appreciation for my friends' hospitality. There were chickens, a bit too ordinary. Some frozen quail, but not enough. There were some thin, greying steaks with ridiculous prices, and some forlorn frozen turkeys with torn wrappings.

And then I saw, next to the overpriced organic beef and "Hundred Calorie" steaks (which looked to be rounds of beaten beef about the size of a large slice of pepperoni and half as appetizing), a leg of lamb. Lamb, in the small town where I was staying, is an unusual meat so stores usually carry little of it. I suspect that much of it reaches its "Sell By" date unsold. This was such a piece of lamb, its price reduced: 50% off. A very good buy, and not a bad leg at all, shrink-wrapped as it was, and from Australia. So I bought it. My feast of gratitude would feature lamb. A late-summer, shrink-wrapped, special-offer leg of lamb, from the other side of the earth to this rural American supermarket.

Food is sustenance but also a multiplicity, like a spectrum of colors split from the simple white light of hunger and necessity. Food, like pain, and sex, and God, and death, has been central to humans since we appeared on this Earth. Food compels us and transports us, either through the physical energy that it transfers to our bodies, or through our associations with it; satiation, community, family, pleasure, competition. Memory.

As I made my way back to my temporary home, I thought about things, made associations. The lamb of spring, the lamb of innocence and rebirth. The lamb of ancient sacrifices. The Paschal Lamb, and the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God. Sacrifice. Redemption.

"The Lamb", William Blake, 1794.
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Yale University

I thought of the lamb of Blake:

Little Lamb who made thee 

Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o'er the mead

... which reminded me of how important Blake was to me, and of some of the happiest times of my life: my graduate school days, in the reading room of the Beinecke Library looking at all the original William Blake material, such as their copy of Songs Of Innocence And Of Experience Shewing The Two Contrary States Of The Human Soul, which Blake not only wrote, but lettered, illustrated, etched, printed and hand-colored. I thought of the evenings then, after a day holding these precious books in my hands, turning the pages that Blake himself printed and painted and turned. I would walk back home from the library, past Grove Street Cemetery, to meet friends and go to Mamoun's and eat lamb shawarma.

And I thought of some of the undergraduates who I knew then, and of traditions that I did not understand. I thought of beautiful young men and secret societies, which seemed to be satires of the meaninglessness of privilege and human society and ritual, but weren't. I thought of the boys I knew who belonged to singing clubs like The Society of Orpheus and Bacchus and The Whiffenpoofs. I recalled "The Whiffenpoof Song", which took some of its lyrics from a poem by Rudyard Kipling, called "Gentlemen-Rankers":

Yalies, 1999.

We're poor little lambs who've lost our way,

    Baa! Baa! Baa!

We're little black sheep who've gone astray,

    Baa—aa—aa!

Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,

Damned from here to Eternity,

God ha' mercy on such as we,

    Baa! Yah! Bah!

All those times, all those people, everything I was, lost 15 years in the past.

And so my mind returned to the present, to the shrink-wrapped leg of lamb from Australia beside me. Australia, australis, Terra Australis Incognita, the unknown land of the south. It seemed meaningful, somehow, as I returned to my host's home and prepared to cook this piece of a tiny beast from unknown southern lands, faraway. A lion-like lamb, slain but standing. Miserere nobis.

Detail of a map published in P. Bertii tabularum geographicarum contractarum.
Amsterdam, 1616. Princeton University Library, Historic Maps Collection

I do have a recipe to convey. A good leg of lamb is one of those raw materials in cooking that a good cook doesn't really need to transform. The cook merely guides it through the ordeal of cooking, shepherds it through its trial by fire, to its ultimate and expected reward. Here's the map I made, and use, for this journey from shrink-wrapped, sale-priced, supermarket leg of lamb, to gustatory divinity:

Roast Leg of Lamb 

(Gigot d'agneau rôti à la Palladian)

Preparing & Marinating The Leg

You will need:

• 1 leg of lamb, with bones, about 5-6 pounds
• 3 or more cloves of garlic
• about 1/3 cup Dijon-type mustard

Marinade Ingredients:

• the juice of 1 lemon (save the juiced lemon halves)
• about 1/3 cup soy sauce
• about 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
• about 2 cups dry white French vermouth
• about 10 juniper berries, crushed
• a few sprigs of fresh aromatic herbs, such as rosemary or thyme, or about 1 tablespoon dried rosemary or thyme
• 2 or 3 "Turkish" bay leaves
• salt & freshly-ground black pepper

First, dry your leg of lamb with paper towels. Then, using a sharp slicing knife, remove as much surface fat and "silver skin" as you can from the leg of lamb, paying attention to both sides of the leg. Unlike most animal fats, lamb fat isn't really good for anything, so discard it.

Peel the cloves of garlic and, using a small, sharp knife, cut each clove into little "matchsticks". Using the same knife, make small cuts at intervals all over the leg, then insert a piece of the cut garlic into each hole. Be certain to push each piece of garlic firmly into the cuts you've made.

Once this is done, rub the leg all over with the Dijon-type mustard and then place it in a shallow container large enough to contain the whole leg.

Mix all the other marinade ingredients together and pour over the leg. Cover the leg in its container and refrigerate for at least one hour, up to 12 hours. If you can, flip the leg several times during the marination. Be sure to save the marinade for later use.

An intensely interested bystander

Cooking The Leg

You will need:

• the marinated leg of lamb
• a roasting pan at least as long as the meat
• a roasting rack of some sort, to hold the leg above the roasting pan
• a small dish of olive oil
• a basting brush
• a small sieve
• a glass measuring cup
• an instant-read meat thermometer (not the "leave-in" kind)

Pan Flavorings:

• 1 carrot, washed and roughly chopped
• 1 medium yellow onion, peeled and roughly chopped
• the marinade, including all the bits, pieces and chunks, such as the juiced lemon halves

First, set the sieve in the glass measuring cup, then pour the marinade into the sieve, separating the liquid from the solids. Dump the solids from the sieve into a dish and keep the liquid in the glass measure. You should have about 2.5 cups of liquid. If you're short, add some stock to top it up.

When I prepared the leg of lamb in the photographs, I was staying at a house that had a charcoal grill, so the cooking of the leg was done outdoors. You can just as successfully make this recipe in a gas grill, or an indoor oven.

Heating a charcoal grill

If you're using a charcoal grill, dispense a generous portion of charcoal into the grill and divide it into two piles, one on either width-wise side of the grill. The center of the grill should remain empty. The key to success in grilling is indirect heat. Try to use the best charcoal you can get, such as that "cowboy" wood charcoal, or Stubb's. You'll want charcoal that burns slow and retains heat and that doesn't smell like a naptha-cracking plant. Start the charcoal in the usual manner and allow it to burn for 10-15 minutes, until it is glowing red and starting to turn white at the edges.

If you're using a gas grill, get it nice and hot, about 400º F.

If you're using an indoor oven, preheat it to 450º F, with the oven rack at the lower middle level.

Whichever roasting appliance you're using, place the rack in, or on top of, the roasting pan. In my case, I used a baker's cooling rack and sat it over the top of the roasting pan.

If grilling outdoors, you may wish to place the leg right on top of the grill rack, for about 5 minutes per side to get the browning started, but this is optional.

Place the leg on the roasting rack and place the whole contraption into your grill or oven.

If you're using an outdoor grill, close the lid and let the leg begin to roast. Check the leg periodically, and flip it over every 15-20 minutes. You may wish to brush it lightly with the olive oil each time you flip it over. After 20 minutes, place the solids from the marinade into the roasting pan, along with the carrot and onion. Assuming that your grill is around 400º F, the leg should roast until the meat thermometer, stuck into the thickest part of the leg, reads 125º F (about 60-70 minutes).

If you're cooking the leg in the oven, roast it at 450º F for 15 minutes, then brush the leg with the olive oil. Place the pan flavorings (the solids from the marinade, the carrot and onion) into the roasting pan, turn the oven temperature down to 350º and roast for about 75 minutes, again until your meat thermometer reads 125º F.

The goal is to roast the leg until the outside of the meat is beautifully browned and lightly crusted and the meat nearest the bone is rare. If, for some reason, you hate rare, pink meat, cook something other than leg of lamb.

When the meat is done, place it on a serving platter. The leg must rest for about 15-20 minutes before you carve it. You can let it rest covered with foil, or hold it in an oven set at 120º F for up to 2 hours.

While the meat is resting, deglaze the roasting pan with the reserved marinade juices (set the pan over heat, pour in the liquid and, using a wooden or coated spatula, scrape all the good bits off the bottom of the pan). Dump the contents of the roasting pan through your sieve into a small saucepan and simmer while the leg rests for 20 minutes.

Serving The Leg:

Put parsley, lettuce leaves and a couple of halved tomatoes onto the platter surrounding the leg. Pour your jus from the saucepan into a warm serving bowl. Each diner can spoon a bit of it onto their share of the meat.

Potatoes, French bread and fresh vegetables are good companions for the leg, but my favorite accompaniment is haricots panachés, which is fresh green beans (preferably the thin haricot verts) cooked al dente and then tossed in butter, served beside cooked white beans (such as Cannellini or Great Northern beans) tossed in butter and fresh chopped parsley. A good red wine is also a necessity, such as a Pinot Noir from California or France, or indeed Australia.

The leg of lamb, served with haricots panachés

I prefer to use a long, serrated knife, the kind of knife used to slice big hams, or bread (provided the serrations are small and closely spaced), to carve leg of lamb. I just hold the exposed bone in one hand and make thin slices, parallel to the bone, along the length of the leg.

Serve this to, and eat this with, people who you love, and who love you in return. Your true friends, the ones who would sacrifice themselves for you; your loved ones, who would not abandon you as you walk through the darkest places in this life. Give thanks as you eat this beautiful, rare meat in this beautiful, rare world.

God ha' mercy on such as we,
Baa! Yah! Bah!