Awhile back I made this recipe, but decided to alter it just a bit from the last version. I wanted a pronounced lemon flavor, and wanted the lamb to be utterly tender, so I marinated the meat for 24 hours, turning the bag a couple of times during that period. I used a larger leg of lamb (Australian boneless, from Costco), so have changed the recipe to accommodate that. If you have a smaller roast, just reduce the marinade quantities some. The recipe is very forgiving. The lemon juice, however, helps to tenderize the meat, so it needs contact with the protein for a longer period. Steven Raichlen’s recipe is a good one, and I merely enhanced it, I believe. It comes from his book, The Barbecue! Bible, a book I turn to over and over again for grilling ideas.

The result? The meat was utterly tender and very tasty with the oregano rub and the hint of lemon. The lemon did not overpower it at all. I used our Meyer lemons, since we have so many of them right now. You have lemons? Use this recipe for a lovely meal. If you don’t have a rotisserie, just grill the roast over heat until it’s brown, then away from the heat (indirect cooking method) until it’s cooked through to your liking. Rare? Take it out at 140. Medium? Remove at 160. Our roast was not an even thickness, so we removed it at 160 and the center was still nicely red/medium rare. Delicious. The leftovers will go into my favorite Shepherd’s Pie with Chipotle Sweet Potatoes. A real treat and one Dave and I always enjoy.

A year ago: Pork Ragu on Pasta
Two years ago: Triple Chocolate Torte with Raspberry Sauce

Likely there’s not a shepherd’s pie I’ve met that I haven’t liked. This one, using eggplant, is no exception. Our daughter-in-law Karen made this the other night and it’s really delicious. The recipe came from a recent issue of Bon Appétit (March ‘09), credited to Jeanne Thiel Kelley. I watched Karen make it – using well-trimmed lamb pieces, canned tomatoes, and a fairly healthy amount of cubed eggplant. It was simmered for an hour with a number of other items, until tender, then later she mounded it with the mashed potatoes and baked it. It’s a Greek-inspired version (hence the eggplant, oregano seasoning and kasseri cheese).

The recipe indicated it would serve 8-10, and it probably would if you had a nice salad on the side.  Shepherd’s Pie really doesn’t need much else to go with it since it’s got all the food groups covered. The flavors had fully melded in this, and Karen kindly let us have another serving to take home (photographed above, so not as beautiful as the original dish). Thanks, Karen!

A year ago: Chicken Salad Sandwiches with Almonds (for afternoon tea)

Can you really see the chop? Nicely charred on the outside. Tender and juicy on the inside. Perfectly grilled to 120 degrees F. Covered in a lovely mixture of herbs, garlic and olive oil.

The herbs, L-R: Italian parsley, rosemary, thyme, sage leaves underneath and some oregano.

There they are raw – with the herb mixture packed on. Ready for the grill. These were ever-so easy to make (took about 10 minutes to cut the herbs, chop and combine, another minute to slather them on the meat). My DH grilled them for 2 minutes per side over high heat, then put them off on a medium-low burner for about 8-9 minutes, until the meat thermometer registered 120. We left them tented with foil for 5 minutes and devoured them. The chops are available at our Costco – lovely 1 1/2 inch thick rib chops from New Zealand. Seven of them were about $16. We ate two apiece and there’s enough left for me to have one and my DH another two at another meal.

A year ago: Flank Steak with an Orange Marinade
Two years ago: Roasted Poblano Asiago Soup (a southwestern treat – one of my fav’s)

You like this one?

Or this one?

There’s a whole lot of picture-taking fun going on at my house these days. What with my new camera and all. We had friends over for dinner and I set the plate on the corner of our island with the evening sunshine glowing through the window. Perfect shot (the second one above). I still have to work on the focus – the front edge of the bread was not where I wanted the focus to be. I’ll get it eventually.

This recipe is so different. I had this at a charity cooking class a few weeks ago, but wasn’t able to get a photo of it because it was dark (we were outdoors) by the time they served it. But it was SO good. The dish is not all that hard to do – you marinate the meat overnight (olive oil, red wine, oodles of garlic, lots of lemon zest and juice, some fresh oregano and rosemary sprigs), buy some raw pizza dough (Trader Joe’s sells it that way if you don’t want to make your own), and make the cheese slather (Feta, mayo, yogurt, sour cream and a bunch of garlic).

Now is where the story of this dish gets funny – do as I SAY, not as I DID. I forgot to re-read the recipe. Forgot to re-read the part that says you bake the lamb in the oven for 12 hours (yes, really, 12 hours) at 200. Covered in olive oil. So as it approached dinnertime, our friends had arrived, and I’ve removed the meat from the marinade and I’m thinking we’re grilling the meat. Then I glanced at the recipe. Oops. Wrong! Oh well, we’ll just have to grill it anyway. It took about 20 minutes to grill the meat to 125 internal temp and while it was allowed to rest on the cutting board, my DH put the pizza dough ovals on the grill. I’d rolled and pressed them out into about 8-inch long pieces, using my rolling pin. The ovals were spread with some olive oil on both sides, then onto the hot grill they went. Took about 2 minutes to be softly grilled, then they’re turned over and you spread on the Feta cheese slather on top. Cook another minute just so the cheese slather is heated through and you’re done. Remove to a piping hot plate. Meanwhile, slice thin pieces of the lamb leg and pile it onto the flatbread, garnish with some red chile flakes if you’d like (I used Italian parsley instead), maybe some salt and pepper, and it’s ready to serve.

 So that’s what I did the other night. But, a few days later, with the leftovers at hand, I decided to try to do the long baking of the meat, per the recipe. Since the meat was already cooked and pink in the middle, I figured half as much baking would do it. What was left fit into a Teflon-coated bread pan, and it was covered with olive oil as directed. So I ended up baking it at 200 for 6 hours. You pour off the olive oil after baking. The meat was so tender you could cut it with a fork. Not a bit of the oil had really penetrated the meat, but it insulated the meat from drying out during the long time in the oven, I suppose. I sliced the meat into thin pieces while Dave grilled some more of the pizza/flatbread on the barbecue. We were a bit more careful with how thick the dough was (a little thicker this time and obviously smaller – about 4 x 8 inches), added more of the Feta cheese slather than we did the first time, then sprinkled the meat all over it.

This time, though, I made a bit of a detour – I mixed up a small arugula salad (just an oil and vinegar dressing on it) and arranged it on top, sprinkled on some fresh diced tomatoes and a bit of fresh basil. And served it. Oh my goodness yes, it was delish. Definitely better than the first round. Since the marinade was still okay I stuck it in the freezer and can probably re-use it a second time. It was never left out at room temp, so it should be safe to do that. I probably could have saved the oil from the baking too (it took more than I’d thought) if I filtered it, but I tossed that out. The hardest thing about this dish was rolling out the pizza dough. Darned, but it can be resilient, not wanting to spread out. I certainly haven’t perfected tossing dough in the air.

Since we were invited to our son’s home for Easter, I didn’t have to cook much. We went to an 8 am worship service, then helped setup, serve and cleanup for a brunch to our church’s 120-voice choir. We had a few minutes of respite before going to our son’s home for dinner. I provided a 10-pound bone-in ham, from the 4-H pig we bought last summer. It was fabulous. Everyone there who ate ham ( a few people didn’t like ham) raved about it. I also made the delicious Mustard Sauce I prepared last year when we bought a Kurobuta ham from David Rosengarten from Idaho. The sauce was outstanding (a David Rosengarten recipe; actually from his wife’s grandmother, I believe it was) and very easy to make. I will mention that I took the photo with the chilled sauce (just making it look pretty for all of you), so it was thicker than it is once warmed. So don’t be dismayed if the warmed sauce doesn’t look like the above.

Karen (our daughter-in-law) also made a huge stuffed leg of lamb. She’d made it before, she said, and had marked it as a keeper. Indeed it was. It’s stuffed with Italian sausage, fresh spinach, Pecorino cheese and pine nuts. The recipe came from a Today show episode with the Scotto family. The image at left came from the Food Network, but it looks very similar to the roast Karen made. I forgot to take along my camera, otherwise I’d have a good photo of it. Karen’s mother took some photos, though, so eventually I’ll upload a picture of the actual roast or the slices. The lamb was scrumptious. I’ll make it myself – next time we want lamb.

We also enjoyed some great appetizers, dips, veggies, including several pounds of asparagus, and chocolate cupcakes with a coconut, almond & brown sugar broiled topping, and a sensational white sponge layer cake with glazed fresh fruit on top, provided by Karen’s sister Janice.

A year ago: Cauliflower Puree (it’s really good)

It isn’t often that you can create a marinade and use that same marinade as a sauce. It could be done more, I suppose, except that often the ingredients in a marinade contain things that you wouldn’t want in a finishing sauce (things that tenderize meat, like a brine, or beer, vinegar, other acidic citrus juices, etc.). In this case, once the boneless leg of lamb was marinated in the cherry and Merlot marinade, that same marinade was simmered (to make sure the raw-meat bacteria were boiled), pureed and used as a delicious sauce.

This is another recipe from the cooking class I attended last week at Great News in San Diego, and taught by Phillis Carey. It’s for recipes like this one that my friend Cherrie and I keep going back to Phillis’ classes, since she comes up with the most interesting food combinations. I’d never have thought to use frozen cherries as the basis for a marinade. I’m glad she did!

So, you combine the marinade (cherries, Merlot, shallot, garlic, brown sugar, red wine vinegar, oil, marjoram, basil and soy sauce) and marinate for 4-12 hours. If you’re fortunate enough to have a Costco near you, pick up one of their boneless legs of lamb. Such a bargain! After removing the lamb from its covering you spread it out – stretch it out, if you will – and fix the thick parts. By its very nature, the boneless lamb has a couple of thick knobby parts, and if you were to grill it as-is, those knobs would be raw inside and the thinner parts would dried up if you continued to cook it. Answer? You make some moderately deep slits (not clear through) across the knobby parts to kind of flatten them. Allows the thicker parts to cook more evenly. You’ll still have some parts of the lamb that will be more medium to medium-well cooked, but the thicker parts will be perfectly (to me, anyway) grilled to medium-rare.

If you use a meat thermometer (recommended), roast the meat to 130, remove and tent the meat while you finish up the dinner, then cut thinner slices and drizzle with the cherry-Merlot sauce that you’ve boiled down. Phillis actually served this lamb with a dried cherry-pecan relish (creme de cassis, water, sugar, dried tart cherries, pecans and orange zest) but the cherry-Merlot sauce was all I wanted on my portion. If you’re interested in the relish, go to the bottom of the recipe and you’ll find it.

Have any of you begun watching the TV show with Steve Raichlen, the grill expert and author of any number of grill cookbooks? He has a program on PBS called “Primal Grill.” His show is filmed somewhere in Arizona, apparently his ranch, cows grazing close by, an ancient pickup truck in the background, and several different kinds of grills behind him. I can’t say that he’s all that natural behind a camera, but I like his recipes. I own a couple of his cookbooks and haven’t ever been disappointed in anything I’ve made. The recipes for all his shows are available on his website, Primal Grill . This particular segment was about cooking lamb, and as I watched him sink a knife and fork into this burger and saw the goat cheese oozing out of it, I knew I had to make this.

Ground lamb isn’t available in my markets, so had to go to a butcher to get it – and all they had was frozen in one pound chunks. So, the burgers I made with two pounds made slightly larger burgers than indicated. And I used less goat cheese – the recipe indicated 8 ounces of goat cheese, but there was no way I could have enclosed 2 ounces of goat cheese into my burgers. I’ve altered the recipe to that effect. I ended up making 8 thin patties, putting the goat cheese between two of them and sealing up the edges. Our burgers were done in 8 minutes per side (instead of 7, but remember we used a bit more meat), and were absolutely delicious! My DH adores Greek salad, so the yogurt cucumber sauce dolloped on top of the burger, that oozed down onto the “salad” and each morsel combining a piece of meat (with goat cheese) and some lettuce, tomato, onion and cucumber was sublime. We didn’t have the pita bread, just the “salad” underneath, so you can do that as well. If you like lamb, this one’s a winner.

Goat Cheese-Stuffed Lamb Burgers with Yogurt Cucumber Sauce
Recipe: From Steve Raichlen, the primalgrill.org
Servings: 4
BURGERS:
1 1/2 pounds ground lamb
1 small onion — finely chopped
1 clove garlic — minced
3 tablespoons fresh mint — or 2 teaspoons dried mint
3 tablespoons Italian parsley — finely minced
1 teaspoon dried oregano — preferably Greek
1 teaspoon coarse salt — (kosher or sea) or more to taste
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
5 ounces goat cheese — Chevre, soft log
SERVING:
4 whole pita bread rounds
4 romaine lettuce leaves — rinsed
1/2 whole red onion — paper-thin slices
1 medium cucumber — peeled and thinly sliced
1 medium tomato — thinly sliced
YOGURT SAUCE: (makes 1 1/2 cups)
1 medium cucumber — minced
1 clove garlic — minced
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt — or
Kosher salt or sea salt
1 cup yogurt — Greek, thick
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon fresh mint — chopped
Freshly ground black pepper
1. Place the ground lamb, chopped onion, garlic, mint, parsley, oregano, salt, and pepper in a mixing bowl and stir with a wooden spoon to mix. Wet your hands with cold water and divide the mixture into 4 equal portions. Working quickly and with a light touch, pat each portion into a thick patty with a quarter of the goat cheese in the center. (Make sure cheese is completely covered with meat.) Place the patties on a plate lined with plastic wrap and refrigerate, covered, until ready to grill.
2. Set up the grill for direct grilling and preheat to high.
3. Grill the lamb burgers until cooked through, about 7 minutes per side (about 170 degrees on an instant-read meat thermometer). Remove the burgers and cover to keep warm.
4. Place the pita breads on the grill, and lowering the temperature and working in batches, if necessary, grill until toasted, about 1 minute per side.
5. Cut a slit in each pita. Place a lettuce leaf inside, followed by a burger, an onion slice, if using, some cucumber and tomato slices, and a generous dollop of yogurt sauce. Serve at once.
6. Cucumber-Yogurt Sauce: Peel the cucumber and cut it in half lengthwise. Scrape out the seeds with a melon baller or spoon. Coarsely grate the cucumber. Place the garlic and salt in a mixing bowl and mash to a paste with the back of a spoon. Stir in the grated cucumber, yogurt, olive oil, and mint. Taste for seasoning, adding more salt, if necessary, and pepper to taste. The sauce should be highly seasoned.
NOTES: I don’t use the pita breads for this – I prefer to chop up the “salad” – the lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and red onion and put that on the plate, then place the burger on top, sizzling from the grill. But if you don’t mind the carbs, you can either make this as a sandwich or as a tower with the pita on the bottom, the layers of salad, then the burgers on top.
Per Serving: 956 Calories; 62g Fat (59.0% calories from fat); 49g Protein; 49g Carbohydrate; 5g Dietary Fiber; 169mg Cholesterol; 1290mg Sodium.
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Oh, sorry for the fuzzy picture here. I only took one photo . . .

If you’re even the least faint of heart with a long recipe, you might want to glance right on by this one. But it’s delicious. Your guests will say wonderful things, but there is a bit of prep to this one. The kind of recipe you definitely would not do for a quick weeknight dinner! This is certainly a special occasion kind of dinner entrée. Nothing about it is hard; trust me. But, time, yes, it does take a bit. You’ll be rewarded, though, with a recipe that is eye appealing and delicious.

Carissa Giacalone, the Food Network Star finalist, prepared this at the class last week. She made a full meal, from appetizer through dessert. This was the entree. She explained that she just hates mint jelly and mint sauce, so she came up with a method of giving lamb the mint it needs but without making it part of a sweet relish or side dish. I liked her idea, although I do like mint sauce (not jelly) when it’s made with fresh mint. So, there’s this mint and basil dry pesto that gets pressed onto the lamb after it’s been browned, then it’s topped with some Panko crumbs that provide some crunch. And once the lamb is baked and sliced, you pour some red wine and port reduction sauce around the plate. The reduction takes awhile – maybe about 30 minutes altogether, but is well worth the effort.

Mint Pesto Crusted Rack of Lamb with Pomegranate Reduction
Recipe: Carissa Giacalone, from a cooking class
Servings: 4
LAMB MARINADE:
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 whole garlic cloves — minced
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary — minced
1 tablespoon fresh mint — minced
1 teaspoon fresh thyme — removed from the stem, minced
2 pounds rack of lamb — 8-9 ribs, frenched & trimmed
LAMB PREP:
2 tablespoons olive oil — for browning the meat
1/2 cup red wine — to deglaze the pan
1/2 cup Panko
MINT PESTO CRUST:
1 1/2 cups fresh mint — lightly packed
3/4 cup fresh basil — lightly packed
1/2 cup walnuts — toasted
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 whole garlic cloves
3/4 teaspoon Kosher salt — plus more for seasoning
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese — freshly grated
POMEGRANATE REDUCTION:
2 cups red wine
1/2 cup red wine
1 cup Port wine — Ruby style
3 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cold butter — cut into pieces Kosher salt and pepper to taste
1. MARINADE: Mix the oil, garlic, mint, thyme and half the rosemary to a bowl. Add the lamb and coat well. Wrap in plastic wrap and marinate overnight.
2. POMEGRANATE REDUCTION: Place the 2 cups of wine and cup of port in a medium saucepan and boil until it’s reduced to one cup. Whisk in the pomegranate molasses and sugar. Taste for sweetness, adjusting if necessary. Whisk in cold butter just before serving and season with salt and pepper to taste.
3. Bring lamb to room temperature (about 45 minutes) before cooking. Remove lamb from marinade and scrape off as many of the herbs as possible.
4. MINT PESTO: In a food processor combine the mint, basil, nuts, lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper until the herbs are finely chopped, but NOT soft and mushy (they won’t stick to the lamb if they’re like soft mush). If pesto is very dry, add another tablespoon of oil to the mixture (to help it hold together).
5. Preheat oven to 450 F.
6. Heat a large skillet (don’t use nonstick) over medium-high heat until the pan is almost smoking. Add 2 T. of olive oil. Season the lamb with a little salt and pepper and sear, fat side down, until it’s golden brown, about 5 minutes. Remove from pan (but reserve the pan).
7. Spread the mint pesto over the fat side of the lamb. Press to help it adhere, then sprinkle top with the Panko crumbs, pressing lightly to adhere.
8. Roast the lamb in the middle of the oven for approximately 10-15 minutes, or until a meat thermometer registers 120-125 degrees F (rare/medium rare). You want to serve it at 125 for rare, and 130 for medium-rare after it’s rested. Remove from oven and rest for 10 minutes tented lightly with foil.
9. In the lamb skillet blot out the excess oil and deglaze the pan with the 1/2 cup red wine. Boil and reduce to about 2 tablespoons. Add that reduction to the pomegranate sauce by gently whisking it into the sauce.
10. Carefully cut the lamb between the ribs into individual or double chops, taking care not to loosen the mint pesto crust from the meat. Drizzle pomegranate reduction in a zigzag pattern on the plates, fanning out decoratively. Serve immediately garnished with mint sprigs.
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So, last week I had about a pound of leftover leg of lamb. Cooked leg of lamb. My imagination failed me – I couldn’t come up with anything very innovative, nor did I really come up with anything ELSE to do with this except Shepherd’s Pie. Now, I love the stuff, but as I sat there in my kitchen typing up this post, although the A/C was set at 75, I was sweating because I’d been working in front of the oven, and stirring over the hot stove. Not a happy camper did this make. But, it had to be done. A quick dip in the pool was in order that evening. Our outside temp is in the mid 80’s most days. Somehow, Shepherd’s Pie just didn’t fit the mold for a summer dinner on the patio. But oh well. That’s what I had! And that’s what I made.

I have a fantastic Shepherd’s Pie with Latin Twist that I posted – oh, probably last year – that has a southwest flair to it and uses mashed sweet potatoes and regular potatoes on the top. It’s a spicy hot mixture. But the leg of lamb leftovers didn’t suit me for that recipe, so I went online and found one at Epicurious. Other testers had made some comments, so I took those into consideration as I chopped and minced, stirred, and thickened the mixture. My version is a very loose adaptation of that recipe.

My understanding is that Shepherd’s Pie was one of those things British home cooks did with the leftover Sunday roast and the leftover Sunday mashers. And likely the leftover gravy as well. At least that’s the way I’ve made it many times in the past. But I didn’t have anything except the leftover lamb, so needed to improvise with all the other ingredients. I don’t like turnips. I didn’t have leeks. So, I used what I had on hand (onions, carrots, celery, the lamb and potatoes). I totally forgot to add the frozen peas. But then, I’m not all that crazy about overcooked peas; and that’s why sometimes I sprinkle the just refreshed frozen peas to the TOP of the dish after it’s come out of the oven. That way you still have bright green peas. They’re kind of a mandatory ingredient in my book.

This made enough for one deep dish pie plate and two single crocks full of it for the freezer. If you have he-men eating, maybe this won’t serve 8, but if you round out a meal with a salad perhaps, this would certainly serve that many normal servings. Verdict: really, really good. The sauce was finger-lickin’ good with the use of red wine and some of the chicken broth concentrate (the paste stuff I buy at Penzey’s).

At Costco the other day I purchased a small boneless Australian leg of lamb. I don’t buy them very often because even the small ones are simply too much meat for us to use. And I like to prepare them whole – not cut it in half with freezing part of it (because I think the frozen pieces never are as good as the freshly prepared ones). So I have to be creative in using the leftovers. And we generally invite somebody over for dinner when we fix it. Our son, his wife, and our young year-old grandson joined us this time. I wasn’t motivated enough to make a salsa or sauce this time, but opted to serve it simply, as is. But I did serve it with the watermelon tomato salad, the BBQ macaroni (pasta) salad, and some grilled pineapple (see below).

First I brined it. The experts say red meat (beef and lamb) doesn’t require brining, but I thought it would be a good thing to help retain moisture. I used a spicy herb brine mix that I buy from Whole Foods. As a side note, I use a whole lot less of the salt mixture than the jar indicates (if I used their proportions I’d use up the mixture in about 3 brinings. And if you’re not sure how salty to make it, add some salt to whatever quantity of water you think you need to cover the meat, then TASTE IT. If it’s mildly salty, that’s perfect. Very salty – add more water. You want it to be pleasantly salty. If you can’t really taste the salt, add a bit more.) I’m very sensitive to salt, so I prefer a mildly salt brine, but it’s completely up to your palate.

I let it marinate (turning it several times) for about 4-5 hours, drained it, then Dave threaded it onto the rotisserie probe. The roast was covered in one of those elastic mesh thingies – that held firm all through the grilling process. Because the brine was already spiced, I opted not to use the lemon marinade from the recipe (below) I referred to (Rotisseried Leg of Lamb with Lemon and Butter, from Steven Raichlen’s book, The Barbecue Bible). The recipe includes, though, a basting mixture of oil, lemon juice, white wine (I used just lemon juice), garlic, oregano and pepper, which Dave slathered on the meat every 15 minutes of its grilling. The recipe indicates to grill until the meat reaches 170 F. That’s way too long if you like red-hued meat. We took it off the grill at 140 F, and let it sit. It was still blood rare, so I might opt to cook it just a tad longer (like 145 F). We let it sit loosely covered with foil for 5 minutes (should have been 10) before carving and serving. It was delicious.

As with most legs of lamb, some parts of the meat are more tender than others, but it was cooked very nicely, and I liked the flavor. The combination of the lamb with grilled pineapple was really great.

THE GRILLED PINEAPPLE: We sliced the peeled pineapple in full rounds about ¾ inch thick and grilled just long enough on each side to get lovely grill marks and be hot throughout. If you’ve never had grilled pineapple, may I nicely tell you – NOW – get yourself to a market with good-quality, ripe pineapples and buy one. It’s one of the simplest sides (or dessert with vanilla ice cream if you’re so inclined) that you’ll ever make. I mean – you cut off the skins, remove most of the eyes, slice and grill. If you do it for dessert, maybe put a tiny amount of brown sugar on one side. Either way, the pineapple gets this unctuous caramelized appearance AND caramel flavor. Not to be missed.

As for the lamb: Now we’ll see what I can concoct for the leftovers. Any of you have favorites? My first go-to would be shepherd’s pie, but it’s awfully hot weather for that. So, we’ll see what I can invent this time.