This post is an ode to James Beard. No wonder they named the restaurant award after you - you were amazing!
Seriously, James rocks. He painstakingly describes good technique, he pontificates on the why as well as the how - and he is responsible for a good majority of my favorite recipes. On the other hand, he can be quite presumptuous, thinking that I have nothing better to do than spend a LOT of time following his instructions - if it weren't SO good... well, I wouldn't be such a fan.
This recipe for lamb, is FABULOUS....it just also takes a long time - but not a lot of effort. It comes to us from his last cookbook (circa 1985) and it is a classic.
Just make sure to use good quality lamb. Mutton-ish lamb will be fine the first day, actually it will be delicious the first day, but on the second day - it will be amazingly vile as my sister and I discovered.
Spoon Lamb:
(This lamb is cooked for hours in a 200F oven. The result is lamb so meltingly tender you can eat it with a spoon, hence the name...I like the way he thinks.)
5-lb leg of lamb, boned and tied (ask for the bones, and have them sawed into 1 inch pieces) - this also works with a bone-in leg of lamb, as I found.
3 medium onions, each stuck with 2 cloves (this sounded weird to me, but trust James!)
6 cloves
3 baby carrots (not those fake baby deals – the real ones, with the greens on top)
6 cloves garlic
1/2 cup olive oil (seriously Rachel Ray, it isn’t hard to say….. knock it off with the e.v.o.o. – you are driving me nuts)
1 t dried thyme
1 bay leaf
4 roma tomatoes, seeded and coarsely chopped
1 cup red wine
chopped parsley (to garnish)
salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F, rub lamb with salt and pepper and place on a rack in a roasting pan. Surround the lamb with the bones, onions, carrots and garlic cloves. Pour olive oil over the bones and vegetables. Roast at 400F for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, reduce heat to 350 add the tomatoes, thyme and bay leaf and roast for another 30 minutes.
Then reduce heat to 200 and transfer the lamb to a casserole dish. Add 1 t salt and 1t pepper, tomatoes, garlic, bones and vegetables from the roasting pan. Rinse the roasting pan with red wine and pour over the lamb. Cover tightly with aluminum foil and roast at 200F for 6 hours.
When finished (check to be sure with a meat thermometer, you want the internal temperature of the meat to be 160F), transfer the lamb to the serving platter and remove the strings. Discard the bones and bay leaf (I lost mine in the veggies and pureed it and I'm still alive.)
Remove the cloves from the onions and puree all the vegetables, combining them with the pan juices.
Eat and praise James!
