Roasted Lamb Dinner

Happy Easter, blog readers!
If you're confused and think that Easter was LAST week, you are both right and wrong! Today is the Greek Orthodox Easter (Καλό πάσχα, Χριστός ανέστη! (Happy Easter, Christ is risen!)). To celebrate, we made traditional Easter lamb... And I can't tell ewe how how great it turned out!

I'm not pulling the wool over your eyes folks! But to be sure, you'll have to try it yourself!


Ingredients:

• Boneless butterflied leg of lamb (Ours was about 4 pounds. If you eat like us, this will MAYBE feed 3 people :) But for normies, this will probably be enough for your whole family.)
• Red wine (Everyone on Food Network says to cook with a wine that you would also drink. Little do they know, I'm willing to drink boxed wine. We used whatever we had, which turned out to be a good red!)
• 4 lemons juiced (plus extra lemon wedges served with the meal)
• Olive oil (an amount roughly equal to the lemon juice)
• Garlic (4-5 cloves minced, and an additional 2 cloves cut into thin slices)
• 1/2 teaspoonful freshly ground black pepper
• 1 to 2 heaping tablespoons of oregano
• 1 small to medium onion, grated (whatever you have is probably okay)
• Potatoes (as many as you want, whatever type you want!)
• Carrots
• More onions for roasting

Directions:
IMPORTANT: Make the marinade the night beforehand. The longer this baaa-d boy marinates the better it is!
Prepare the marinade: 
Whisk together the olive oil and lemon juice before adding anything else.
Add the minced garlic, oregano, pepper, and grated onion.
Add a splash of red wine. Whisk until properly mixed.
(If this look familiar at all, reexamine the Chicken Souvlaki post from last summer!)

Prepare the lamb:
We like to trim excess fat off of the lamb. While some fat is okay and tastes good, too much can be hard to chew.
Pierce the lamb randomly all over with a pointy knife, and insert the very thin sliced garlic into the piercings. Marinate the meat overnight!


Dinnertime Preparation:
When it is time to start cooking, preheat the oven to 360 oF. 
Slice the potatoes and carrots into chunks, and boil for about 7 minutes. Slice onions into wedges.

Using a skillet, at high heat, sear the lamb for a few minutes on each side until caramelized.

Put the carrots, potatoes, and onions in the bottom of a roasting pan and drizzle with olive oil. You can go ahead and add some extra salt, pepper, and oregano if you want!
Lay the lamb on top of the vegetables, and sprinkle with salt. (use a roasting rack if you have one!)

Roast uncovered for about an hour and a half. We used the American Lamb Doneness Chart to determine how long to cook it. Cook less if you want it more on the medium-rare side!

After you take it out, squeeze fresh lemon juice over it, let sit for about 10 minutes before you cut into it. 

I literally can't express how good our kitchen smelled, and how impatient I was during those 10 minutes.  WORTH THE WAIT! We also served it with imported Greek feta cheese and olives!

Anyways, that's our lamb dinner! If you celebrate Easter, then I hope you had a wonderful holiday and were lucky enough to spend it with people who you care about.
If you don't celebrate Easter, this is a good recipe anyways to have anytime you have time to make it! 

And as always, enjoy!

Delightful Slow Cooker Beef

Happy winter, blog readers! To help you make it through these cold days, I thought I would provide you with a good, stick to your ribs, slow cooker beef dinner!

Yes, it IS as tasty as it looks!

This was a SUPER easy dinner - and the beauty of the slow cooker meal is that it was almost all ready for me to eat when I got home from work today!
Well,
almost. :)


If you are looking for an easy way to eat hearty and stay warm this winter, this is the meal for you!


(Adapted from the Zesty Cook)
Ingredients:

• 1 beef roast (~4 pounds)
• 3-4 cloves garlic
• 1/2 cup red wine (Food network always says to cook with a wine that you would also drink! We used a cabernet)
• White mushrooms (if you want a specific amount, we used 15 and quartered them. But listen to your heart :) And my heart loves mushrooms!)
• Cherry tomatoes (again, for specifics, we used about 10)
• 1/4 cup chicken broth
• Thyme (The recipe I found didn't specify an amount, so I pulled the leaves off of about 3 sprigs of fresh thyme)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Cornstarch

Directions:

PART I: IN THE MORNING:

In a large pan with olive oil, on medium high heat, sear all sides of the meat until caramelized.

Place meat in the slow cooker.

Add the mushrooms, tomatoes and garlic. 

Then add the salt and pepper, wine and chicken broth, and then the thyme.

Cover and set on low. Cook for at LEAST 8 hours.

THEN GO DO WHATEVER YOU WANT! 

If I had it my way, I would have spent the 8 hours necessary to properly cook this doing something awesome, like Geocaching... or going to see a movie.

Or napping.

But instead I had to go to work...

After working up an appetite counting pills, it was time to come home to my dinner.

PART 2: AT DINNER TIME:,  

Take out the meat and vegetables and put the sauce in a pan. Bring to a boil and reduce.

Add 2 tablespoons cornstarch to 3 tablespoons of water, mix well, and add to the sauce.

Allow the sauce to thicken and create a (delicious!) gravy.

We served our beef with corn and a baked potato. And of course crusty bread. If you're questioning our use of crusty bread, just keep reading other posts. It goes with EVERYTHING. But really, just do whatever makes you feel good :)

And as always... enjoy!