Leg of Lamb (1/10/09) - The Goose is Loose

Meet Oma. She’s my grandmother, and she is effing awesome. My Dad calls her “Goose.” Every year, she gets on a plane in her native Germany and flies across the ocean to spend a couple of weeks at my folks’ place. Not all that remarkable until you are informed that she has been around since 1907. That, for all you who like me specifically avoided math in school, makes her 102 years old. But now, every year, she’s just lounging at the ol’ homestead, getting some much deserved rest and indulging in American Chinese food. “I love zee zrimps!”

Oma remembers the day when she was forced to leave Germany to escape the rise of the Nazis. She and my grandfather (Opa) fled to South Africa, one of the only countries accepting German Jews, where they had to create a whole new life. She and Opa eeked out a life any way they could while raising my Dad and his younger brother in a totally foreign land. Despite the tragic reason for their emigration, Oma has very fond memories of life in South Africa. “It had a very nice climate,” she told me yesterday..

They left South Africa in 1966 to return to Germany, but she retained her love of the food to which they had grown accustomed; in particular, the leg of lamb which, based solely on her description, I am imagining was delivered twice daily to every family in the neighborhood. Ok, that’s an exaggeration, but she said that they had leg of lamb all the time, and she loved it. One of the secrets to her longevity, in fact, is a diet heavy in fatty meat, along with a lot of bread, cheese and chocolate. Nothing green, because, as she is prone to remind anyone serving her such garbage, “I am not a cow.” Lamb, however, fits nicely on the centigenarian plan.

Last year around this time, when Oma was residing State-side on her annual visit, J and I wanted to make a meal that would put Oma over the moon, so we roasted our first leg of lamb. Not really knowing what to expect, we stopped by Giant and picked up what was unmistakably a leg. Hip bone, knew cap, shin, the whole damn thing, right there in neatly sealed plastic wrap. Gross. But we studded the thing with garlic, roasted it low and slow for a few hours and put the whole leg on a plate. It may have been a first attempt, but Oma loved it and as been talking about it ever since. In reality, when not answering direct questions, Oma has only a few default lines of conversation. Give her a break; she’s 102. That the lamb made it in there could very well have been a fluke, but J and I decided to repeat the performance with an improved recipe – Leg of Lamb 2.0!!!

I saw this Tyler Florence thing on Food Network where he crusted lamb with porcini powder and roasted it directly on the oven rack over a pan of potatoes and fennel (allowing the drippings to flavor the vegetables as they roasted). It appealed to me in large part because the leg was de-boned before cooking, each half of the leg being tied into a separate roast. That would make it a lot easier to handle and to carve at the end, which proved problematic last time. So J and I decided to go with that approach. I called the Whole Foods butcher and asked for the special order, requesting that he reserve the bones for me. (see gravy below)

When we got it home, J used her expertise to masterfully tie two hunks of meat into beautiful roasts. We stuffed them with thyme, studded them with garlic, dusted them in porcini, and set them to roast at 375. (You can see the whole recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/roasted-leg-of-lamb-recipe/index.html) When we took them out of the oven after about 2 hours (internal temp of 170), they looked perfect. I carved them up, plated them and brought them out for Oma who, upon seeing the plate, simply said “thank you” – indicating that the serving plate was her portion and the rest of us could eat something else. She sat there, not saying much of anything, just savoring each piece. When she finished, she looked up and said in her thick German accent, “Dahn-ee-el. Zee lamb vas schmect goot. Mmmmmm.
Vundebar. Just like in Sous Afrika.” And she was excited when I told her that she could have all the leftovers – “I vill eat it tomorrow, zen.”

That’s all I wanted. Both J and I felt very fortunate for the opportunity to make my Oma so happy. She is truly a remarkable woman. Speaking with her at my folks’ place the next day, we talked about life in Germany at the turn of the last century. She related stories of the times surrounding the war, and she was able to recall the most specific details about things that had happened decades ago. She has seen more than most people on the planet, and somehow she remembers it all. I love my Oma and will be very sad when she boards her plane back to Germany in a few days. But, as I tell her every time she leaves, she’ll be back again next year. And the lamb will be waiting.


PEACH AND RASPBERRY COBBLER

In addition to the lamb, the evening yielded a few other promising dishes. Most notably was the peach and raspberry cobbler that J put together. We had forgotten to plan for dessert before I hit the grocery store, so I picked up some frozen fruit and figured we’d find something to do with it. J spent some time doing some quick research and decided to make individual cobblers with the simplest, most delicious recipe ever. In all honesty, I’m pretty sure that this was Oma’s favorite dish. She commented all night about it and reminded J the whole next day about how good it was. J gets all the credit. I don’t remember where she got the recipe from, but here are the highlights:

Ingredients:
1 package frozen peaches
1 package frozen strawberries
Juice of one lemon
1 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup melted margarine
1 egg

Directions:
- Thaw the peaches and raspberries, mixing them with the lemon juice, and spoon into baking ramekins
- Sift the flour, salt and sugar together, add the egg and crumble with fingers
- Distribute the flour mixture on top of the fruit, and drizzle with the melted margarine
- bake at 375 for 35-40 minutes, top with ice cream and serve.


LAMB STOCK GRAVY

I wanted to use the bones from the lamb to make my own stock for a gravy. Don’t ask me why. As you can probably tell, I like to do things the hard way. “Why use beef stock from a can if you can make your own stock? All you need is about $10 worth of ingredients and 4 hours of your day?” Yeah, upon repeating it, it doesn’t sound worth it to me either, but the result was actually fantastic. Here’s what I did:

For the Stock: I roasted the leg bones at 450F with some carrots, celery and garlic. Once the bones were brown, I pulled it all out of the oven and tossed it into a pot filled with 1 ½ liters of water, rosemary, leeks, bay leaves, more garlic, salt and pepper. I let the thing simmer for about 4 hours, until it had reduced to about 2 cups of liquid, and then ran the whole thing through my strainer. There you go. Lamb stock.

For the Gravy: I started by reducing about two cups of wine by ½ over medium heat, adding in a handful of chopped shallots and about as much garlic. When it was reduced to about 1 cup of liquid, I added 1 cup of the stock and simmered for a few minutes. I removed the gravy from the heat, strained it and let it rest. In a separate sauce pot, I made a quick roux (melted 2 tbs of butter with as much flour) and slowly poured the liquid gravy into the roux pot. This thickened the gravy to a nice consistency and added a bit of nuttiness. Done and done.


ROASTED GARLIC

There cannot be a simpler recipe that yields such amazing results than roasted garlic. You don’t even need a terra cotta garlic roaster, though, yeah, I got one of doze. Ain’t I special? You just chop the tops off a few heads of garlic, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle on some salt, some pepper and add whatever other spices/herbs you desire. Wrap it in some tin foil (or place under your roaster) and throw it in the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes. It will come out brown, buttery, mild and delicious.. You can’t screw up roasted garlic and people love it.