THE LEG O' LAMB PROJECT

Perhaps the heat had something to do with it. Or maybe I’m just crazy. But recently, after reading an article in The New York Times on cold roasts, I decided to buy a 7-pound butterflied leg of lamb. Keep in mind my household consists of all of two people. But, being highly suggestible and not particularly rational, I just couldn’t help myself. To complicate matters, Brian and I hate leftovers. This has less to do with how food tastes on its second go-around than with the fact that, for us, the making of the meal—the chopping, the sizzle, the building aromas and, of course, the anticipation—is probably 75% of the pleasure. Eating something pulled straight from the fridge or the microwave is a huge letdown. Almost not worth eating at all.

But back to the lamb. After the initial meal, I wasn’t going to let this $60 prize hunk of meat go the way of so much of the other leftover food in our kitchen: that is, from the pot to the Tupperware to the fridge to, three weeks later, the garbage can. We were going to eat it. The whole thing. We were going to enjoy it, too. So my challenge was this: could I serve the lamb several nights in a row without both of us keeling over in boredom? And here’s what happened:

DAY 1:
Squeezed sausagelike into its packaging, the lamb looked encouragingly compact. But when I turned it out onto a sheet pan, it filled the whole damn thing, even threatening to hang over in spots. I blitzed some herbs, garlic, salt, and olive oil in a blender and spread the resulting mixture all over the meat. I roasted it and let it cool for a couple of hours. That night, we ate the lamb sliced, at room-temperature, sprinkled with a little fleur de sel and drizzled with olive oil. We accompanied it with cold asparagus. Verdict: tasty!

DAY 2:
Just as everything tastes better wrapped in bacon, I believe pita bread and tzatziki sauce can make any food shine. Okay, I’m exaggerating. But I do love these two things, and we all know lamb is a natural partner for them. So I decided to bake homemade pita bread, and I stirred grated cucumber, garlic, salt, and a little lemon juice into plain yogurt for an impromptu tzatziki sauce. I stuffed the warm pita with thinly sliced lamb, cucumber rounds, red onion, and drizzled the tzatziki over the top. Verdict: even tastier!

DAY 3:
I had on hand a few pita breads that hadn't properly formed their pockets. And they weren't quite large enough to do the wrap-around thing. Hmmm . . . pizza, anyone? We brushed the pitas with olive oil, topped them with finely chopped lamb, red onion, tomato, fresh oregano, and feta cheese. We then popped them under the broiler. Verdict: almost as tasty as the pitas!

DAY 4:
When I was growing up, my mom rarely made pot roast, but when she did, my favorite part of the experience was the hash she would make with the leftovers. So, hash seemed a natural conclusion to our leg o’ lamb experiment. I had planned to use regular potatoes, but Fresh Direct, our online grocery service, delivered sweet potatoes instead. Undaunted, we forged ahead and made a hash with sweet potatoes, lamb, onion, green pepper, and thyme, topped with poached eggs. Well, I’m not much of a sweet potato person to begin with, and this didn’t help their case. The lamb was a little too chewy, the potatoes a little to sweet. Verdict: edible, but definitely not a winner.


CONCLUSION:
At the end of day 4, there was still some lamb left, even though I had also been bringing it to work with me for lunch. I chucked the remainder into the freezer, probably, realistically, to suffer a drawn-out death by freezer burn. Will I be buying any more oversized roasts for the two of us? Probably not. But I did learn how to make a killer lamb pizza.