Leg of Lamb, and other Easter Treats

  Today is Easter Sunday.  When it comes to dinner around our house Easter has always meant lamb.  This year was no exception.  One of the guys at work told me that Publix had leg of lamb on sale for $5 a pound, so I headed on over.  It was gone in lamb, but no worries we'll just cone it and make a beautiful lamb stock to use later.

So we boned the lamb, and went ahead and cut it in half since we were only feeding 4 people. Then I trussed the little guys up (they were still plenty of food to feed at least 6 people a piece), and made a simple marinade for them:  Dead sea salt, fresh ground black pepper, garlic, shallot, rosemary, oregano, a splash of red wine vinegar and olive oil. They sat like this for two days and got tastier by the moment before we put them in our little rotisserie.  Started them out at 400 because I was too lazy to actually sear them, but them knocked them down to 300 and let them cook for another hour.  (for those of you who are wondering, you can just do this in your regular oven, the rotisserie is just a bit of fun)

 Unfortunately while all of this was going on we were starving, so we had to make some little Easter snackies.  First was a ham and carrot wrap with herb cream cheese (pulled our herbs fresh from the garden).  And of course, it's not Easter without eggs, so we made a bit of egg salad and served it on crackers.

Now don't worry, we didn't let our lamb stock go to waste, oh no.  We made a delicious lamb and mushroom risotto.  If you've never had risotto before it is like creamy pearls of rice that have been cooked slowly so that the starch is released (in this case into my delicious lamb stock) and finished with cheese and butter.  This particular recipe starts with shallot, garlic and a mix of chopped mushrooms sweat down in butter. Then we add arborio rice and make sure it's coated with the butter before deglazing with white wine.  Now the stirring begins: we stir, and we slowly add hot stock and stir some more, and more stock, slowly, ever so slowly until the rice is cooked and it has become creamy.  It can be finished with just butter and Parmesan cheese, but I happened to find Marscapone so I added a bit of this wonderful Italian cream cheese to make the risotto extra rich and creamy.  

Last, but not least some glazed carrots, a green salad and a loaf of fresh baked bread -- not to mention some wonderful company, finished this rather delightful meal.  Any so ends my first ever post.  If you are worried that this one didn't have any real recipes I'll be getting some to you soon.  Hope y'all enjoyed and be sure to eat some tasty food!