Moroccan Lamb

Whenever I cook lamb, I remember that fabulous scene from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", where Toula tries to explain to her aunt that her boyfriend Ian, in addition to not being a "nice Greek boy", is also a vegetarian, to which the aunt replies: "Oh, don't worry. I'll make lamb!". The reality is of course that even acknowledged carnivorous don't necessarily like lamb and I always check with my guests before serving it at dinner parties.

This particular recipe is a veritable explosion of flavors. The lamb is stuffed with dried fruit, coriander, lime, ginger, and chilies and slowly roasted in the oven for 4-5 hours. Perfect for guests!

Ingredients (for 4): 

1kg leg of lamb (ask your butcher to take out the bone, the weight here is without the bone)
1 large red onion
150gr raisins
150gr dried apricots
150gr dried plums
Juice and zest of one lime
80gr fresh ginger
1 bunch of fresh coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 cloves of garlic
1 red Chili
Salt & pepper

Preparation:

1. First you need to prepare the meat. This means that you have to cut the meat to produce a relatively flat and even surface (see pictures below). You can either do this yourself or ask your butcher to "butterfly" the lamb, he will know what to do. When the meat is prepared, rub generously with salt and pepper and place on the work surface. 

2. Now you have to prepare the filling. This is pretty simple: you only need to roughly chop up the dried fruit, the onion, garlic, ginger, and the chili and mix it all up in a dish. Add the lime zest and juice, a few tablespoons of olive oil, coarse sea salt, pepper, cumin and cinnamon, and the chopped  up coriander. The smell is going to be unbelievable!

3. Next you fill your lamb, for which you need to use roughly 2/3 of your mixture. Simply spread over the meat, press down and roll-up. The result is going to be a pretty large and somewhat unwieldy lump of meat, but not to worry, the result is going to be great! Tie the meat up firmly using some string and brown the meat from all sides in a frying pan.

4. Once that's done, remove the excess oil from the pan, add the remainder of the filling and place the whole thing in the oven at 120°C. The cooking time will be roughly 4 1/2 hours, but to be on the safe side you should allow for 5 hours. I highly recommend using a meat thermometer for this recipe. Once the core temperature has reached 75°C you can either take the meat out directly, let it rest for about 15mins (very important!) and then slice it for serving. Alternatively, you can also just turn the temperature down to 50°C and leave it in the oven for a bit longer (in case your guests aren't ready for the main course yet).

To serve, you remove the string and slice the lamb. This is inevitably a bit of a messy procedure, but simply place the meat and the filling in a large dish and place it directly on the table. I serve this with glazed carrots and garlic mashed potatoes.