At my mother's suggestion, I roasted the lamb following Julia Child's recipe for Gigot a la Moutarde (Herbal Mustard Coating for Roast Lamb) from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. This is a very simple and very delicious way to prepare a leg of lamb -- it got rave reviews from our guests and my boyfriend and I were both thrilled to have leftovers for the rest of the weekend. Give it a try the next time you are preparing leg of lamb. I promise you won't be disappointed.
Gigot a la Moutarde
Adapted from Mastering The Art of French Cooking (Volume 1)
1/2 cup Dijon mustard
2 Tb soy sauce
1 clove garlic mashed (I used 5!)
1 tsp ground rosemary (I used more)
1/4 tsp powdered ginger
2 Tb olive oil
1. Blend the mustard, soy sauce, garlic, herbs and ginger together in a bowl. Beat in the olive oil by droplets to make a mayonnaise-like cream.
2. Paint the lamb with the mixture and sit it on the rack of the roasting pan. The meat will pick up more flavor if it is coated several hours before roasting.
3. Roast in a 350 degree oven, 1 to 1 1/2 hours, for medium rare or 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours for well done.
Notes:
- I bathed the lamb in the sauce several hours before cooking it and then removed the lamb from the fridge two hours before putting it in the oven.
- I roasted my boneless leg in a roasting pan with no rack (I don't own one) following Alice Waters instructions: Heat oven to 375, roast 30 minutes on one side, flip the roast and roast 20 minutes on the other side. Turn again and finish cooking until the internal temperature reaches 128 degrees. Let rest for 20 minutes in a warm place.
3 comments:
How many lbs. should the leg of lamb be for this recipe
The size shouldn't matter (and they're all pretty close in size, in my experience). Look for an internal temperature of 128-degrees for medium-rare/
I did a variation of this recipe, although I've used this exact recipe for many years with good success. Unfortunately, a few years ago I lost my notes about how things turned out each time I made this excellent dish (almost always for Pascha/Easter), but I recently tried something different. I got a 5 lb. boneless leg of lamb that was already bound up and ready for the oven. I untied it and opened it up, carefully noting how it had been rolled up before being tied. I made a double recipe of the Moutarde sauce and coated the inside of the unrolled lamb leg with about half of it. I rolled the lamb leg back up with the Moutarde on the inside and tied it up again with cooking-grade string. At that point I transferred the lamb on to a makeshift rack in a fairly deep-sided roasting pan and coated the entire outside of the trussed up leg of lamb with the Moutarde sauce as per the usual recipe. After coating the entire lamb, I roasted it uncovered in the center of the preheated (350 degrees) oven for 1.5 hours then removed it. Checking the internal temperature in the thickest part of the meat, I found it to be about 135 to 140 degrees. I checked a few other meaty spots as well, and found a few that were slightly higher than that range, so I figured it was done enough. I let the leg of lamb rest about an hour while it sat in the roasting pan. After cutting and removing the strings, I removed some of the larger sections of the folded up lamb, being careful not to disturb the distribution of the nicely tanned Moutarde. I cut each section across the grain into slices that were about 3/8 inches thick. As I was slicing the meat, I noted that it was still quite juicy and the color was pinkish to pinkish-gray, but definitely not uniform gray throughout and not dry. We ate the lamb after church about 5 hours after removing it from the oven, and the taste, texture, and moistness were great!
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