Day 16 of PCA II – Roasting

For me this was a very interesting night because it answered a question I always had about roasts in general. We did a flayed leg of lamb roast. Now I’m not a big fan of lamb but this tasted very good. But on to what I learned. No one is allowed to comment, text, email or post to me the following “You didn’t know that?!”

So I used to always buy a rolled roast- beef. I would season it very well, and cook it up nicely but to me the only flavorful part was the outside edges. My mother-in-law used to make small slits in her roasts and stuff garlic down inside, which I started doing. It helped a bit, but again only that meat what was near the garlic had any flavor.

Outcomes this leg of lamb, boneless, wrapped in twine like my beef roasts come. Well darn if the Chef didn’t take all that twine off, open that puppy up and butterfly it out to make it even. He then scored it inside and smeared the seasoning mixture all over it. Then tucked the sides in and rolled it back into shape, trussed it up and then roasted it. Talk about day and night in flavor! All I could think about was this weekend getting a roast and playing around with some seasonings and having fun with it.

We also did a roast chicken with stuffing and roasted vegetables. These there done separately and I must say the parsnips were really good. It included carrots, parsnips, onions, sweet potatoes and a beet that was roasted in foil to avoid turning everything wine color. Ok as for the beet. I’m trying to Google search farms near nuclear power plants. Every beet I have ever seen has been the size of about 2 golf balls. These suckers were the size over stuff softballs – not baseballs but softballs. They were flippin huge! Let’s put it another way. One half of one of these freak vegetables would have fed a family of 4 and gave them leftovers! The chicken came very well. I love a good roasted chicken.

Our roasted lamb came out a bit overcooked. But it sure looked better than some of the others that were still bleeding. I was really pleased with the flavor. We served salt roasted fingerling potatoes along side of it. I felt the dish was missing something. Can’t quite put my finger on it, other than ‘greens’. The star of the show was the roasted lamb, but I don’t think the potatoes were an enhancement. Since I have so little experience with lamb I really can’t input an idea or thought here. The rub we put on it was a mixture of Dijon mustard, garlic, onion, olive oil.

Tomorrow is prep day. The ONLY nice thing about this is no dishes to present, just a lot of work to do. Gotta bring the energy tomorrow! I’m hoping to change their minds about a few of the recipes. The hush puppies have GOT to go. I would love to see dishes with big bold flavors. Had I know we had the option of changing it I would have been thinking about an entire menu. But I didn’t know of it till Friday and my brain was fried by then. They needed the ideas because in case they have to order anything special they’d have time. But we’ll see what happens.

Until Tomorrow!...