Lamb A La Plaxico
A new leg (of lamb) for Plaxico Burress!
Surprise, surprise, another NFC East matchup in prime time, this one involving the Giants and the Cowboys. The Giants, in particular, have been in the news, after Plaxico Burress recently shot himself in the leg. Various NYC based food types we harassed this week proved to be coy, but fortunately, there is a homegrown recipe that's perfect for your gametime feast C lamb.
What does lamb have to do with Giants, or Cowboys, or New York, or Dallas? Not much, usually, but this is lamb that's been shot in the leg! (The bullets are olives and garlic, and unlike the mercurial wideout, the lamb won't shoot itself, but the finished product is worth the effort.)
Lamb a la Plaxico: (Adapted from The Gurgling Cod)
1 leg of lamb
1 lb kalamata olives
Fresh rosemary
1) Squint hard at your grocer and make them mark down those semiboneless legs of lamb
2) Make sure you have plenty of real charcoal, (not Kingsford's for the love all all that is good) and a tinfoil lasagne pan.
3) Buy kalamatas, garlic, and rosemary
4) Cut, or have someone you trust not to eat them all, cut the kalamatas into slivers that look like slivered almonds, scatter them on a plate, and freeze them.
5) Cut garlic into similar shaped slivers.
6) Jab lamb with paring knife, about 3/4" deep -- use chopstick (steal a pair from the miserable sushi station at your supermarket) to work the olives, garlic, and rosemary leaves into the meat. Repeat until you have olive, garlic, rosemary worked in at 1/2" intervals over the whole lamb. You can have more than one person do this-- one in charge of garlic, the other olives--ideally young lovers who can avoid jabbing one another with paring knives, and casually brush their lamb-slicked hands, Tom Jones steez.
7) You can do this the night before, or not-- in either case, it is nice to work a whole plume of rosemary in along the bone.
8) Slather the leg with good olive oil, and cover with oregano.
9) Make a charcoal fire set up for indirect heat coals on either side, with lasagne pan under to catch drips.
10) Cook until it is done to your liking-- an instant read thermometer helps here, but lamb is much more forgiving than beef, and can use being cooked longer than you might think
11) Carve out of sight of guests (lamb is a pain to carve) and serve with couscous, and artichokes or whatever you got someone to cook while you were putatively "watching the lamb" but actually sitting around in the yard drinking PBRs.
