Category: Main Dishes

Roast Leg of Lamb in Red Wine

It was the last day of the State 4-H Fat Stock Show in Wichita, Kansas. Joyce Livingston, the popular host of “Women’s World” and “The Joyce Livingston Show” on Channel 12, was interviewing 4-H members whose market lambs were going to be sold. Lisa, one of Jerri’s nieces, was about to have a brief but memorable television interview with Joyce Livingston.

The show was limited to 4-H members, but not all of them lived on sheep farms. As Lisa explained, “A lot of kids that showed lambs at the fair didn’t raise sheep like we did. They would buy one or two lambs when they were really young, and would feed and raise them until it was time to show them at the fair. So for those kids, the lambs were more like pets, per se, than they were for us. Our lambs were just in with all of our other sheep on the farm, so we never really spent time with them like the other kids did, so we weren’t nearly as attached to them.”

There were about fifty lambs judged high enough to be in the auction that year, so the television interviews were short, basically the name of the 4-H member, where he or she was from and the name of the animal. If it was something like “Fluffy” or “Lambchop”, Joyce Livingston might comment or ask another question.

Lisa tells how her interview went: “She got to me; I think she asked my name and where I was from, and then she asked me what my lamb’s name was. I just looked at her, probably blankly, and said ‘It doesn’t have a name.’ I remember she looked a little surprised, but then I really don’t remember what she said after that.”

Having worked long ago in radio broadcasting, I’ll bet she didn’t say much more. When you find yourself starting to dig yourself into a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging. What could she say? “You heartless girl. Have you no love for an innocent lamb?” After all, it was a meat animal auction, and people in Kansas like lamb on the table almost as much as a good steak. As an experienced TV host, she probably said “Thank you” and moved on to the next lamb and its owner.

Lisa with lambHere is a photo of Lisa taken at that auction with her lamb. Like her sisters, Lisa helped raise hundreds of sheep, but this lamb was one she had picked to show. She had worked with it so it was accustomed to her and groomed it for the competition. When her lamb was judged good enough to sell at the Fat Stock Show, she earned some money to help pay her way through college. The girl in the picture is now a banker.

This is a recipe by Phyllis, Lisa’s mother, from The Krehbiel Family Cookbook. She and her husband, Theron, raised prize-winning lambs and helped guide their four daughters through 4-H projects showing lambs at county and state fairs. As you might expect, Phyllis knew how to turn some of those lambs into delicious dinners.

INGREDIENTS:

6 lb. leg of lamb
2–4 medium onions
2–4 medium carrots
2 1/4 cups red burgundy, divided
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 tsp. salt
6 whole black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
2 cloves garlic

PROCEDURE:

Scrape or peel the carrots and remove the outer skin of the onions along with the stem and root ends. Cut the vegetables into large pieces.

Wipe the leg of lamb with damp paper towels and trim excess fat from it. Set the meat in a 13 x 9 x 2” glass baking dish with the carrots and onions. In a four cup measure, combine two cups of wine with the vinegar, salt, black pepper and bay leaves to make the marinade. Pour it over the meat. Cover with foil or plastic wrap. Refrigerate twenty-four hours, turning the meat occasionally.

Preheat the oven to 400º. Take the lamb from the marinade and allow it to drain. Remove the vegetables with a slotted spoon and set them aside. Reserve the marinade.

Remove the paper from two cloves of garlic and cut them into slivers. With a sharp narrow-bladed knife make several slits on the lamb and insert the garlic slivers. Place the lamb fat side up in a shallow roasting pan.

Roast uncovered for twenty minutes, then baste the meat with three tablespoons of marinade. Place the carrots and onions around the meat. Continue to roast, basting every ten minutes for about an hour and forty minutes or until the meat registers 165º on an instant read thermometer for medium rare. Remove the meat to a heated serving platter and let it rest while you make the sauce.

Add a half cup of water and a quarter cup of burgundy to the drippings. Bring the liquid to a boil, scraping the drippings from from the bottom of the pan. Simmer for a few minutes to reduce the volume slightly. Strain the sauce into a small bowl or server. Let it stand for two or three minutes. Then serve it with the thinly sliced meat.

NOTES: Burgundy is the name reserved for wines made mainly from Pinot Noir grapes in Burgundy, a famous wine region in France. Some very good Pinot Noir wines are being made in California, Oregon and Chile and other places from Austria to Australia. If you have a Pinot Noir wine you enjoy drinking, use that to cook your leg of lamb.

Mint jelly is traditionally served with roast lamb, but cranberry sauce also goes well with it. Add a green salad, mashed potatoes and bread or dinner rolls , and you will be putting a gourmet dinner on your table.

The Turk’s Shish Kebab

If you happened to be driving U.S. Highway 63 from Rochester, Minnesota, to Ashland, Wisconsin, on April 21, 1957, you might have wondered why there were so many cars parked on the shoulder of the highway north of Hayward. Some sort of celebration, you would have concluded as you passed the full parking lot at The Turk’s Inn. After all, it was Easter Sunday, and people were probably celebrating the holiday.

One of your passengers might have glimpsed a short man with a fez on his head in front of a large brick barbecue just south of the building. If the wind was from the east, you might even have smelled the wonderful aroma of meat and vegetables cooking over an open fire. George the Turk was cooking shish kebab!

Hundreds of people used to reserve a table for Easter Sunday shish kebab a year in advance. Served with bread, salad, and pilaf, George’s shish kebab was an Easter Sunday favorite with people from all of northwest Wisconsin. I have often wished that I had George’s recipe.

Now, thanks to my sister Barbara, I do. Barb likes to play golf and lives in Hayward, Wisconsin. When I found a little cookbook, Vol. II Treasured Recipes–from the Kitchens of Members and Friends of the Hayward Women’s Golf Club, at the Goodwill store in Stillwater, Minnesota, I thought that she might enjoy it. The book was published in 1977 and includes recipes by many prominent Hayward ladies. In what became one of her Christmas presents she found George the Turk’s recipe for shish kebab.

The book credits the recipe to Marge, the daughter of George and “Ma” Gogian, from the Turk’s Inn at Hayward, Wisconsin. Here it is.

INGREDIENTS:

1 leg of lamb (2 lbs. meat cut in cubes)
3/4 cup sherry (Amontillado or dry sherry)
1 tsp. lemon juice
1/2 tsp. garlic salt or 1/2 tsp. salt and 1/8 tsp. garlic powder
1 T oregano
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
2 medium onions (about 3 inch diameter)
2 medium green bell peppers
12 small tomatoes (about 1 inch diameter)
6 skewers

PROCEDURE:

Trim the fat and gristle from the lamb. Remove the bone and cut the meat into one inch cubes. Clean and finely chop one of the onions. Put the meat with the chopped onion, wine, lemon juice and seasonings into a resealable plastic bag. Marinate overnight in the refrigerator, turning the bag a few times to make sure all the meat is coated with marinade.

When you are ready to start cooking the shish kebab, fire up your grill or light the charcoal to make a hot fire.

Clean and quarter the second onion and separate the pieces into layers. Wash the peppers and remove the stem, seeds and white membrane. Cut the peppers into two inch pieces. Wash the tomatoes.

Drain the marinade from the bag into a small saucepan and bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer the marinade for a few minutes to make the basting sauce. If there is not enough liquid, add a little more sherry. Remove the sauce from the heat.

Load the skewers as follows: Start with a lamb cube, then pieces of onion and green pepper, another cube of lamb, then a tomato followed by another cube of lamb, pieces of onion and green pepper and another cube of lamb. Continue alternating the meat and vegetables until you have one-sixth of the meat on each skewer.

Broil over a hot grill, turning and basting the meat and vegetables often. Cook until the meat is nicely browned and sizzling. Serve with rice pilaf.

NOTES: Marge advised “If lamb is tough, sprinkle with lemon juice.” but since I do not know how to determine if the meat is tough without cooking and eating it, I always add a little lemon juice. Lamb is seldom tough, but the lemon juice is insurance and adds a little extra zip to the flavor.

Since the Turk’s Inn was cooking for hundreds of guests, Marge’s recipe for a family dinner is, as my sister Barb says, “a little vague” about exact quantities and how the skewers were loaded. Barb remembered that two skewers were plated with the pilaf for an order, so each diner would get three tomatoes. I have adjusted the quantities to make four generous servings.

Barb also noted, “Marge would get upset often when the tomato would drop off the skewers, typical of grilling them with the meat as it took longer for the meat to grill than the veggies.” Many grilling recipes suggest grilling tomatoes on a separate skewer, so they can be cooked for a shorter time than the meat. If you fear tomatoes on the floor, you might want to try this. Firm tomatoes cut into one-inch pieces work for this recipe too, though they don’t look so nice on the skewers.

George always grilled shish kebab over charcoal, but a gas grill would probably work just as well.

I had shish kebab at the Turk’s Inn only a couple of times, and both times it was served with the, which is made with bulgar or coarsely cracked wheat. However, George and Ma both knew I really liked that pilaf, so they may have substituted it for rice pilaf.