Baa Ram Ewe
Welcome back to another exciting episode of Cooking with Foodie. What is it about lamb that makes me not want to work with it? I think it's a combination of a few things. First of all, every time I've eaten lamb at a restaurant it's generally been rather fancy and, quite frankly, beyond my skill level. For example, this lamb shank I had at the restaurant at the top of the Guiness storehouse in Dublin:
I've also had rack of lamb at several nice places, and after watching 10,000 episodes of Hell's Kitchen I feel like once I ruined it, Gordon Ramsay would burst into my kitchen screaming, "it's raw!!" Also, every time I see lamb I think of that old cartoon, Lambert the Friendly Lion, and think of his poor mother. So, long story short, lamb and I have not been close. But I wanted to try something new and share the experience with you folks. I had planned on making it a complete disaster to show you that I, too, am only human. Sadly, it turned out amazing. So you lesser mortals will have to wait a little bit longer to see me fail. Tee hee. So here it is, folks: Foodie's Coconut Crusted Lamb.
Step one: buy breast of of lamb. At first, I was a bit confused. And yes, the thought that entered my mind was actually, "lambs have breasts?" I know how stupid that sounds. Of course they have breasts. They're a mammal. You don't have to be a damn cryptozoologist to figure that out. But honestly, as a cut of meat, I've never seen breast of lamb. At first, I thought it's just what they call it on this tiny little island. As it turns out, they just don't sell this cut where I'm from and it's actually quite common. So yes, buy your breast of lamb. It should look like this:
Step two: take the string off and unroll it. Don't cut the string unless you have more string. Which I do, but it took me a few years to learn to have string handy. I like using hemp, which has nothing to do with this recipe, I just think it's an underused product. Back to the recipe, my lamby lambs. Unrolled it will look more like this:
Step three: sticking with the fruit motif, I decided to fill the lamb with apple slices. So cut them up nice and small and arrange them in a nice line at one end of the lamb. Like so:
Step four: roll it back up and tie the string back on. On a side note, I had a nicely trimmed cut, but apparently these are sold with a lot more fat, which you should trim. Also the bit in the upper right corner of the photo I originally took out because I didn't think the string would fit back around with the apples, but I was wrong. So I actually just put the apples in that and rolled it back up. It gets rather annoying to wash your hands after every single step just so you don't get lamb juice all over your camera, so that's why I didn't take a picture of the way it ended up. Which was basically the same damn thing. I really do need an assistant to help with my work. Any takers? Anywho. Roll Lambert back up. Yes, I know Lambert is the name of the lion, and not the lamb, but it's a good lamb name so I'm gonna call it Lambert. Deal with it.
Step five: Take a plate and cover it with coconut flakes. Roll Lambert in the flakes until he's completely covered. Really grind him into them. He should look like this:
Step six: pop Lambert in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius (that's about 350 in real numbers (Fahrenheit)). Don't tell me you're not impressed by my double parentheses. Let Lambert roast for about 75 minutes.
Step seven: take him out and let him set for about 15 minutes. He should look freakin' fantastic. Like this:
I seriously thought this was going to be a miserable failure to add to my list of awesome kitchen experiments gone wrong. But the smell was amazing. While he was setting, I made myself some buttered noodles and sprinkled them with a blend of Spanish and Italian cheeses (Manchego, Grana Padano, and Parmesan).
Step eight: cut Lambert into slices, plate, and serve. Here was my dinner last night while the other bachelors were eating cereal and easy mac:
Ladies, please form a single file line. No shoving. Here's a close-up of the lamb:
Also, the apple bits in the center turned out to be a nice addition. The Spanish and Italian cheeses in the pasta were a great sharp compliment to the mellow coconut of the lamb. All in all, this is definitely going in the win column, and hopefully will inspire you to try new things. Honestly, things almost never go this well for me on a first attempt at something wonderfully strange and new. Let that be a life lesson. Try something you've been hesitant to do. Foodies never die. That is all.