What's Cookin' - Easter Lamb

Never Published

By Kathryn van Roosendaal

Easter is the celebration of spring, new life and new beginnings. The snow is melting, the crocus and daffodils are blooming, the birds are singing and the rabbits are gleefully reproducing in the fields (there is a good reason the rabbit is the symbol of new life).

In pastoral Europe, Easter and the Spring Equinox – the official first day of spring – have always been greeted with joy and feasting. In the days before modern transportation, however, the choices of what to feast upon were limited. Mothers and grandmothers would poke through the pantries and root cellars hunting for a leftover smoked ham, a parsnip or two, maybe a few winter-dried apples in a dark corner. These would be roasted together with great ceremony and happily devoured by families eager to start the spring planting.

The only fresh meat available for such a feast was lamb. Sheep give birth in late winter – usually around Groundhog Day – so the lambs are a couple months old come Easter. The adult sheep were too valuable to kill for food, plus they were usually too scrawny from a winter of hard eating to be tasty. Ditto with the cattle and the pigs. But those young lambs were tender and sweet, and even the most frugal farmer could usually justify losing one lamb for the sake of celebration.

For a sheep farmer, it was one of the big money-making times of the year. The lambs were weaned and sorted and the extra males – a farmer only needed so many rams in his flock – were sold to neighboring farms and nearby towns for food.

Today we can have lamb any time of year we want, not just in the spring. If we don’t want lamb, we have our choice of any other meat – or meat substitute – we want. How about an Easter turkey? Anyone for grilled steak or shrimp kabobs? The sky is the limit.

But hey, why not stick with tradition and have a leg of lamb or lamb chops? Think about those days when the season of the year determined what you had to eat and the coming of spring was more than just a time to put the snow shovel away. Take a moment to remember why we celebrate.

Herb-Rubbed Leg of Lamb

The trick to lamb is to remove the fell, the thin layer on the outside of the meat, and as much of the fat as you can. If you leave it on, the meat will have a strong flavor that most of us raised on beef find distasteful.

1 5- to 7-pound leg of lamb

Lemon juice

2 garlic cloves, sliced thin

Herb Rub:

1 tablespoon dried mint, crushed

1 tablespoon dried parsley flakes OR 2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped

1 teaspoon dried basil, crushed

1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary, crushed

1/2 teaspoon onion salt

1/4 teaspoon ground pepper

Remove the fell and trim off as much fat as you can from the meat. Cut 1/2-inch pockets in the meat about 1 inch apart. Brush the meat with the lemon juice, making sure to get juice in all the pockets. Combine the ingredients for the herb rub. Rub over the meat and into the pockets. Place a garlic slice in each pocket. Place the leg, fat side up, on a rack in a shallow roasting pan. Roast at 325 degrees F for 2 to 4 hours or until a meat thermometer reads the desired doneness – 140 degrees F for rare, 160 degrees F for medium and 170 degrees F for well done. Remove the pan from the oven and let the meat rest for 15 minutes before carving. Serves 12 to 16.

Mint Sauce

This is a great tangy-cool sauce to go with any kind of lamb. You can substitute basil for the mint for a great sauce to go with chicken.

1 cup finely chopped fresh mint leaves

1 cup malt vinegar

1 pinch of salt

honey

Mix together the mint, vinegar and salt. Simmer for 10 minutes and then let stand covered for 30 minutes. Stir in honey to taste.