Camera Cleanup #10: Souvlaki Leg of Lamb

Hey! Look, I'm posting food! It's even on a holiday, although as a bachelor with no prospects for lovin' I'm rather gleefully ignoring this particular one. I'm planning on spending the whole day on the couch not worrying about what anybody other than the real Bob and I want. And his needs are pretty simple, especially compared to the women I've dated. So, anyway I am posting food albeit no recipe. Plus it's lamb and I know that's not the most popular of meats. But I have pictures of it, it was awesome and they're going up. Dammit.

So what this is is a butterflied leg of lamb that I "stuffed" with souvlaki marinade. I also rubbed it with it, since really, can you have enough souvlaki flavor? I need to write down my recipe for it someday, it's pretty much finalized. That aside, after the rubbins I then tied it up and browned it in a oven safe pan. Then, obviously, I roasted it. Cut off pieces and ate them. It was fantastic. Oh, this was also the lamb that I made that lamb pilaf with. Almost forgot about that. This is a multipurpose roast, don't you love it? Maybe it will be my valentine. Except that it's long gone... ah well.

And to finish off this post, here is my niece Lucy encouraging you all to Rock!

Lamb Pilaf

Just a quickie today kids, I'm not even telling you about the butterflied leg of lamb I got the meat (and fat) for this from. Saving that for next week. But this was good. Really, really good. What I did was took the fat cap off the cooked leg of lamb, chopped it up, rendered it up and poured off the fat and cracklins (mmmm, cracklins). I got some good fond, deglazed that with some weak chicken broth, poured that off, added some of the fat back in and sauteed onions and garlic in it.

Then I cooked the rice like you would for any other pilaf (would have added orzo, but I couldn't find it, stupid unorganized kitchen), plus some salt, pepper and a little oregano, added the chopped up cooked lamb at the end and... well, that's it. Except I added the cracklins back in. Because I'm a madman. It was as unctuous as a dictator's sycophant, with little bursts of rich lamby goodness from the cracklins. I just love saying that, say it with me, "cracklins". Good times. If you like lamb, send me an email and I can try to make up a recipe for it.

Lamb Souvlaki Pizza

Yep, that's what it is.

There is a story behind this slightly odd bite of pizza. See, as I've mentioned before, my brother makes some kick ass souvlaki. But, he doesn't have anything as convenient as a recipe. So when I called him the other day looking for one the conversation went something like this:

Me: "Hey, I want to make souvlaki, what's your recipe?"

Him: "Oh, I don't know. Something like equal parts lemon juice and olive oil, some oregano, garlic, soy sauce... you know, souvlaki."

Me: "Hm. Ok. So..."

Him: "Nope. No recipe. I just whip it up."

Me: "Fine. Of course you know this won't spoil my plans."

Him: "Ah, but I have the last piece of the device! Your scheme won't come to fruition without it!"

Me: "But I have the artifact from R'lyeh!"

Him: "Ha! A forgery!"

Me: "You bastard!"

...

Ok, that never happened. Well, part of it did. I'll leave it to you to figure out which.

So, the lack of a recipe meant I needed to experiment (cue lightning and maniacal laughter). Which I did (cue lightning again). And I came up with something pretty good based on my brothers vague instructions. It does however need some tweaking, so I'm not posting it just yet.

As you see though, I did make a pizza with the leftovers. It's another white one, since I love white pizza. The original plan had been to make a tiny batch of the marinade to spread under the cheese, but I got lazy. So I just used some olive oil, garlic and oregano. I added some peppers and onions, since they go so well with souvlaki. All in all a great use of leftovers.

But.Next time what I'm going to do is essentially the same thing, but squirt some lemon juice on it after it comes out of the oven. I think that would lend a really nice, fresh flavor to it. I'm also going to use at least some kasseri (that's a Greek/Turkish sheep cheese, melts well) instead of mozzarella, probably half and half. And that would be awesome, I think. Also, instead of using leftover lamb I'm going to marinate it, chop it up small and put it on top raw before the pizza goes into the oven. That way the lamb will be closer to the proper level of done. But even slightly well done like it was this time was wicked good.

Experiment: Merlot-Pomegranate Braised Lamb Shanks

2 lamb shanks
1 cup Merlot
1 cup pomegranate juice
3 cloves of garlic, diced
1 shallot, diced
oregano
rosemary
salt and pepper

Rinse and dry the shanks. Rub them with plenty of oregano, rosemary, salt and pepper. Heat some olive oil in a dutch oven and brown them well. Remove them from the pot and add the shallots and garlic. Saute them till soft then add the wine, scrap up the fond, reduce the heat and let it simmer till it doesn't smell boozy. Add a pinch of salt, the juice and the lamb. Cover it and let it cook for 2-3 hours, till the lamb is very tender. Remove the meat, turn up the heat and let the liquid reduce for a bit. Serve with the sauce.

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I love lamb. I sometimes suggest to my girlfriend that we have it. This leads to fights. Often quite gruesome ones, involving flashing blades, furious gun play and mad nunchuck skills. The inevitable conclusion is my girlfriend with a knife to my throat, a pistol to my temple or a chair leg poised to deliver the finishing blow. I croak out something like "All right, chicken!" and then she allows me to cook dinner.

Ok, so that never happens. But she really doesn't like lamb and I rarely do serious cooking for just myself. I get it at any Greek festival I happen to go to and order it at restaurants, but I hadn't actually made it before this. Then my girlfriend comes home with a package of shanks. Isn't she sweet? I pop them into the freezer and await an appropriate moment. And that moment was yesterday when she was going out to dinner with people from work. So I pull out the lamb to thaw and consult my sources (the internet, one of my brothers and my mom. The sister I called wasn't home and apparently doesn't eat lamb anyway.) Then I made this.

The first thing I decided was to keep it simple, I find that makes it harder to screw up. Shanks are best braised and I had some pomegranate juice, so I decided to use that. Wine is always good for braising, so I grabbed some Merlot. Garlic, oregano and rosemary are classic lamb seasonings so those were in. And I had a shallot that wanted using, so that finished it off. I took the lamb and dried it off. I really should have rinsed it first, but I didn't. Anyway, I rubbed it with a goodly amount of salt, pepper, rosemary and oregano. Next time I'm going to use a little more, I think. This is also a recipe that you want to use dried herbs for, they are best for slow cooking. I browned up the shanks, removed them from the pot and added the shallot and garlic. I didn't cut the garlic too small since it was going to break down over the several hours of cooking. I sauteed them till they were soft and then added the wine and juice. This was a mistake, I should have added just the wine and let it reduce a bit first to get rid of the alcohol flavor/smell, then added the juice. Then back in went the lamb and I realized I needed more liquid, so when I added the wine wouldn't have mattered anyway. Then the cover went on and it simmered for about three hours. You could do this in the oven, but I prefer to do things on the stove. Plus my dutch oven barely fits in my tiny real oven. I removed the lamb and reduced the liquid a bit to use as a sauce. I had it with some brown rice that I put a little garlic and onion in. They aren't really that pretty, but they were very tasty. So that's it, Merlot pomegranate braised lamb shanks. It was quite good, the tart/sweet juice and the strong flavors of the wine and lamb went really well together. The shanks were falling apart and very moist. It would be good with beef too, maybe brisket. Next time I make it I'm going to use more herbs, like I had mentioned, but other than the amounts I don't think I'd change anything else.