leg of lamb stuffed with olives, bread, pinenuts and herbs (cosciotto d'agnello ripieno di olive, pane, pinoli e erbe aromatiche)

method

Roasting a leg of lamb is still one of the most nostalgic times for me. A thousand pictures go through my head just thinking about my old man slicing lamb on a Sunday. This brilliant roast lamb dish uses Italian staples to make a delicious stuffing – it’s nice to get all the herbs in the ingredients list, but if you can only get hold of a couple, don’t worry.

Try to buy the lamb from your own butcher or a supermarket with a qualified butcher’s section. Tell them you want a nice leg of lamb, preferably organic, with the H-bone and thighbone tunnel-boned and removed. This sounds complicated but it’s just butchers’ jargon. It means the top half of the leg has the bone removed, leaving just the ankle bone, allowing you to stuff it. For the veg, turnips, Jerusalem artichokes, celeriac, fennel, and parsnips are all good.

Peel a couple of garlic cloves and pop them into a food processor – as it’s whizzing, add your mixed herbs. Add the pancetta and anchovies and whiz again. Scrape the mixture into a bowl and add the bread to the processor. Whiz to coarse breadcrumbs, and add to the bowl with the pinenuts and olives. Add salt and pepper and scrunch everything together with your hands. If it looks too dry, add a drop of boiling water. Push the stuffing into the cavity in the lamb. You can roast it stuffed like this, or you can tie it up with string, pushing some rosemary underneath. Pat it with olive oil on the outside and season with salt and pepper.

Toss the potatoes and remaining garlic with the bay leaves, the rest of the rosemary, some olive oil, and salt and pepper and put them into a roasting pan with the lamb in the middle. It’s unusual to see rare or pink roasted meats in Italy, so we’re going to cook our lamb like they do. Roast it for about an hour and a half at 400°F. Trust me – it will be juicy and delicious! After half an hour, the Italian way is to start basting the lamb with a swig of wine over the meat and veg every 15 minutes or so until the meat is cooked. Remove the potatoes to a dish when cooked, to keep them warm.

When the lamb is cooked, let it rest for 15 minutes. It’s nice served with some simply cooked greens. The Italians prefer that the goodness from the meat juices be cooked into the
vegetables in the pan rather than make gravy.

serves:

ingredients

• 1 whole bulb of garlic, broken into
cloves, unpeeled
• 3 good handfuls of mixed fresh herbs (mint, parsley, oregano, thyme),
leaves picked
• 6 slices of pancetta
• 3 anchovy fillets
• 3 1/2–4 oz• rustic bread, torn into
1-inch pieces (don’t use prepackaged
sliced bread)
• a large handful of pinenuts
• a handful of green olives, pits removed
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 4 1/2-lb• leg of lamb, prepped as above
• a large bunch of fresh rosemary
• olive oil
• 4 1/2 lb• good roasting spuds, peeled and halved
• a sprig of bay leaves
• a bottle of red wine