Thursday, December 21, 2006

Stuffed leg o' lamb

The apostrophe is part of the flavoring. Normally, I buy legs o' lambs and bone them myself, then make scotch broth out of the bones and trimming, but this was too good a buy ($3.99/lb.) to pass up. The disadvantage was that whatever machine did the deboning out in Australia* made a real butchery of it. Big flaps of meat flapping meatily everywhere. Nonetheless, decided to do it stuffed. We had a frozen tub of chard cooked with garlic and bacon left over from the last chard harvest. So in it went, after suitable squeezing. Some ingenious lamb bondage with clove hitches sealed the deal (mostly).
Popped it in the oven at 375º. And we finally played with my new toy! The remote sensing oven thermometer, a birthday present (Thanks, Dad!), worked a treat. I plugged it into the lamb, set the gizmo for 125º, and we sat down on the couch with a glass of wine and read companionably until the buzzer went off. Set the lamb on the sideboard to rest for 15 minutes. All right, 10. I just couldn’t wait and the house was filled with lamby smells. Perfectly cooked to nice pinky medium rare, and the salt in the chard filling had seasoned the lamb.
Lamby, how I love ya, how I love ya. My dear ol' lamby.

*Most prepositions at the end of a sentence: a young girl in her room on the second floor complains to her father about his choice of bedtime story: "What did you bring that book that I didn't want to be read to out of up for?" Now let us imagine that the book was about Australian cricket: "What did you bring that book that I didn't want to be read to out of about over after over out in Down Under up for?" Cheating? You betcha!

No comments: