Sundried Tomato and Danish Feta Roast Lamb

A great celebration dish or even a good get-together meal with some fines mates could call for a superb roast lamb. This one is is top notch with such simple flavours. The garlic permeates the lambs while the sundried tomato just tenderizes it some more. Hey the Danish feta is just thrown in there for good measure but it works oh so well and once you carve the end product you’re gonna love it!

Ingredients

• approx. 2.5kg leg of lamb
• 250g pack of sun-dried tomatoes in vinaigrette
• 10 or so big cloves of whole garlic (depending on how many you’re keen to peel!)
• 1 tsp rock salt
• 1 tsp ground coriander spice
• half a tsp of cumin
• 1 tsp wholegrain mustard
• 4 tsp chopped mint leaves
• 150g Danish Feta
• 5 sprigs of fresh rosemary
• splash of olive oil

Give it a Whirl

First things first: get your spice mixture ground up in pestle and mortar (yes that must surely be your friend!). Take 5 of the garlic cloves, the rock salt, coriander, cumin, mustard and mint leaves and place in the pestle and mortar and mix completely to make a paste. Add the sun-dried tomatoes with the vinaigrette (if you’re are sold packaged with a vinaigrette then add extra olive oil) and mix further but just with a spoon this time as you just want to get the paste to mix in with the spice paste. Lastly add your Danish feta and mix again to make sure the feta is fully coated by the spice paste.

Place your lamb leg in a roasting pan and take a sharp carving knife and following the line of the bone cut into the meaty section creating a cavity nearly, but not all the way the end of the way to the meat section. Take your mixture and stuff it inside your lamb cavity making sure that you don’t over fill – it shouldn’t ooze out of the meaty portion initially. Take a some olive oil and splash over the top of your lamb

Then take your knife and score the top of the lamb in long slits across the top (about 1cm deep) where you’re gonna insert your fresh sprigs of rosemary and the extra garlic. If you like that garlic flavour in your lamb then take you knife and poke a deep hole into the flesh and bury the clove of garlic into there where the whole flavour will permeate your lamb roast. If you have any spice and tomato mixture left in your mixing bowl then coat the lamb with the extras (in fact I’d recommend leaving a bit in bowl for this purpose – trust me it’s worth it!)

Place in the oven at 160º C for 2hrs then turn up the heat to grill for a further 15 minutes to get the ‘crispy bits’. If you’re doing this in a gas braai with a lid or a Weber than I’d recommend 2.5hrs – you may turn it over for the last 15 minutes or so to get the underside a little more crispy too.

Take out the oven, or off the fire, carve as thin as possilbe and serve with roast potatoes and Mediterranean vegetables.

The roast prepared just prior to going into the oven or onto the braai