Roast | Sybaritica

For our recent Easter feast, I vacillated between duck, goose or leg of lamb, but the realities of northern living settled the issue for me as I could find none of the above and had to settle for a lamb shoulder instead. Thus far, I have only bought the shoulder so as to cut it up for use in curries or Chinese dishes involving bite size pieces, and I have to confess to never having cooked one whole. When I was bemoaning the fact that I could find neither lamb leg or even chops for our Easter meal, Stefan over at Stefan’s Gourmet Blog suggested that I do the shoulder sous-vide or braise it, but since the former is technically beyond my equipment-wise, and since my wife prefers roast lamb, I decided to go ahead and do it in the oven using a herb-spice combination known as a Gremolata.

A Gremolata is similar to another well-known preparation known as a Persillade, which, in its simplest form is just parsley minced with garlic. The essential difference between the two is that a Gremolata includes lemon zest but, like the persillade, there are many variations on the basic theme. Some versions include sage, thyme, rosemary or mint, and in Milan, I gather, anchovy paste is sometimes used. Oil, chiefly olive oil, may also be added depending on the intended use for the finished preparation. For today’s dish, I am keeping my Gremolata fairly simple… Read more

For our Labor day feast, I decided to roast a duck as it is one of my wife’s favorite meals. It is unfortunate that she will be going away on extended travel the day afterwards as she won’t get to help me with the leftovers but.. I guess I’ll just have to make do somehow. Anyway, rather than prepare the duck in one of  the Chinese methods I really like, I am just going to do a plain basic roast with a nice selection of ‘trimmings’… Read more

The other day, I came across a blog with a recipe for pork loin stuffed with garlic and mint that looked ideal for a small roast I was already in the process of thawing. Sadly, I forgot to bookmark the link, otherwise I would share it with you here but, as it happened, I was unable to find any fresh mint at either of our stores. I still had the roast needing to be cooked in some fashion, though, and, since I had some fresh sage leaves left from a recent use, I decided to those with the roast along with apple and a little grainy mustard… Read more

I love roasted vegetables. It is an easy way to cook as long as you observe a few simple principles and the results are always tasty and very nutritious (unlike boiling them, for example, where a lot of the goodness gets tossed out with the water). For Easter, this year, I was roasting a leg of Lamb and chose my vegetables and cooking times so as to be able to do them in the oven at the same time as the meat…  Read more

My wife and I both love roast lamb. We don’t have a whole leg very often as it is a lot of meat for one meal and lamb, unlike pork, or even beef for that matter, just doesn’t seem to heat up well a second time. The cooked meat does have some interesting uses, however, and as we wanted a nice lamb roast for Easter I decided to go ahead and get one with a view to using the leftovers for a couple of future experiments… Read more