There are definitely a few things sadder in life than great friends leaving you, but nonetheless I write this post with a heavy heart but a very full tummy! After what seemed like an eternity of knowing each other, Heather, Kalyna and I had our dear friends Billi and Richard over for one last Sunday roast in Singapore.
Dear readers, you need to know that the Foord family is about as close as family to all of us (especially when your real family lives 10,000 miles away.) It was through the funniest times like watching Richard get attacked by a squid to the roughest times when they had me over at their place for routine and often lonely Sunday dinners. The Foords were always there for me. It was in fact Richard that was ultimately responsible for Heather and I meeting, a debt of gratitude that I am quite sure that I can never repay. Heather and I of course took care of the falling in love, moving in together, having a baby but you get my drift, Richard was the catalyst to a new life for us. Anyway, I digress from the mush!
Here’s wishing you both (and the two wonderful lads that grew from a few inches tall to “holy sh*t” height, weight and girth) nothing but health, laughter and fond memories of our time together in Singapore!
OK, now the lamb…sniff…sniff!
Prep a 2.5 kg leg of lamb (or mutton in our case) by getting the bone broken into three. Simply breaking the bone makes it easier to marinade and ultimately smoke on the Big Green Asian Egg! The night before I covered the leg in quality olive oil and the following herb mixture:
150 ml of quality olive oil
2 tbsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp each of dried thyme, rosemary and marjoram leaves
3 tbsp chilli powder
5 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
Rub the leg with the oil and coat it evenly with the herb mixture. Cross hatch the top of your leg of lamb with a very sharp knife and place a few slivers of garlic into each of the squares that you make. Take a sharp paring knife and make some deep incisions across the top of the leg. Now wrap that lamb up in some cling film and pop it in the fridge.
On grilling day, set up your grill for indirect heat and stabilise the temperature at 225F. That’s the magic temperature for a low and slow roast. Add two handfuls of hickory chips and let the smoke start to billow. Now prep your lamb by putting in on a vertical rack, into a drip pan and fill the pan with beef broth. Make sure you insert your temperature probe, at least an inch away from any bone.
Now place the lamb onto the grid in it’s drip pan and rack, close the dome and let the internal temperature of the lamb slowly rise to 140F. This took about 2.5 hours at 225F. No need to sear the lamb, the crust formed by the oil and herbs was absolutely magic!
Once you’ve hit your ideal temperature, take the probe out, tent the lamb in foil and let it rest for about 10 minutes. With the lamb w e served roasted vegetables and an authentic mint sauce. Richard made some crazy Greek-style salad with about 7 kgs of anchovies. It was delicious after a few glasses of wine.
Now the true winner of the Sunday roast was once again, my darling bride Heather. She made an upside-down banana-rum-toffee cake that was un-bloody-believable! She can write her own blog entry for that one! It scored huge but the lamb also came in at a hearty 10/10!
Richard/Billi – see you on your island….now get off ours! Love you both!
Roman/Heather/Kalyna/Alex
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Overall Heather Rating (for the lamb): 10/10
Overall Everyone Else Rating for the cake?…. I won’t post that!