Leg of Lamb, Swedish Style

Enough with the Passover food, time for Easter.

Well, okay, Easter was last week, but I did cook! It was Easter at Ikea. Or Easterkea? I-Easter? I dunno. We actually just called the whole weekend Eastover.

I had a beautiful leg of lamb in my freezer from a 1/2 lamb we got in October. I really wanted ham, but lamb rhymes with ham and is just as good, if not better.

Usually when I make leg of lamb I use Marcus Samuelsson's recipe from the Aquavit cookbook. However, it was Easter Sunday, and I hadn't really planned it out, so I had to modify the recipe a bit and use what we had in the house.

1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup mustard. I used the Ikea Swedish style mustard you're supposed to serve with Gravlax. It has dill in it, and I thought that couldn't hurt. Grey Poupon is what I usually use, or any Dijon style mustard.
Juice from 1 lemon
Chives, chopped (or whatever fresh herbs you have lying around)
Garlic, chopped
1 tbsp of Greek seasoning. I used this. Cavender's would work nicely, too. Make sure you use the kind with salt.

Mix all of these ingredients together to make a really pretty sauce and spread it all over your leg of lamb. Use all of it. You want to put your leg of lamb in a 275 degree oven and let it cook for 4-5 hours, depending on how done you want it. My leg of lamb was still a bit frozen and so I did 5 hours. A meat thermometer will come in handy here. Make sure the inside is at least 165 degrees. Mine was 180, whoops, but it was totally fine.

Marcus Samuelsson suggests either basting it frequently, or just letting it go and building a nice crust. I like basting mine, but do whatever, I'm not going to tell you how to live your life.

When the lamb is thoroughly cooked, crank the oven to 425 and let it crisp up for about 20 more minutes. Then take it out and tent it for 20 more minutes. This 40 minute interval was used to prep the rest of Easter dinner and cook it, because there's not much you can cook in your oven at 275 degrees so seize the opportunity.

Don't skip the tenting time, because it really lets the juices spread within the entire cut of meat. You'll appreciate that when you're eating it, trust me. I like to cut the whole thing up and put all of the meat back in the pan so it can soak up the cooked sauce that's mixed with the juices from the meat.

A truly random and Swedish/Ikea/Samuelsson inspired Easter dinner. Leg of lamb, asparagus, Hachapuri (okay, so Russian), gravlax on Matzah (okay, what ELSE can one really do with leftover Matzah?), and potatoes au gratin. Delish!