Roast Leg of Lamb

I only made this dish twice in my life and thats like 4 years ago.

The first time I made this dish was for a friend’s birthday. Well, since its a cook out and there is an oven, I decided to try something new and something I always wanted to do. I went to buy a leg of lamb, I think it cost around AUD19 if I am not wrong. Just nice for 8 to 10 people.

I have no idea how to cook it so I went online to search out some recipes that I can improvised on. Most of the recipes required Worcester sauce which I didn’t want to buy since I have no use for it. I substituted with oyster sauce instead.

Now you would ask me why I use oyster sauce, the reason is simply coz I have it on hand. Years later, I was watching a Japanese anime about cooking. The chef in the show was trying to come up with a new taste, so he ponders the origin of freshness. The chinese word for freshness is 鱼羊. The word is made of 鱼(fish) and 羊 (goat, lamb, sheep). It turns out quite good actually.

Anyway, I just used a lot of garlic, black pepper, salt and rub all over the lamb. I tried to cut some small grooves into the leg and stuff it with garlic and black pepper. After roasting for 3 hours, the first bite was fantastic. It was really tender and you can taste the freshness of the leg, one thing you can’t taste was the funky smell that comes with some lamb. Overall, it was a good dish. After a few weeks, I cooked the same dish for my housemates. They cooked their own curry and rendang to add to the meal.

After I came back from Australia, one of them asked me how to cook the lamb since she wanted to prepare for her family. I told her what I said here, but I also asked her to rub coriander seed powder all over the lamb as well as inside the grooves. That spice will definitely bring out certain flavours to the meat. Don’t forget some rosemary herbs if you can find some.

Too bad I don’t have an oven at home, else I don’t mind trying to cook it again. However, the 3hrs roasting time tends to put some people off.

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