GIGOT D'AGNEAU

The recipe here is for a roast leg of lamb, a preparation that my brother, Marc, and I have made many dozens of times for dinner on Sundays.

Marc has lived overseas for a few decades now and many of those Sunday dinners took place in France. Hence we took to calling our recipe for roast leg of lamb the “gigot,” its French name. Marc and his family live now in England, but we still call the Sunday roast the “gigot.” (Pronounced “jee-goe,” full name “gigot d’agneau,” word-for-word in English “leg of lamb.”)

Sunday is a good day, Westernly speaking, to consider the nexus of food and religion. Food feeds many hungers, one of which is hunger for the sacred. In many religious traditions—certainly both the Christian and Jewish, but very much also that of Islam—many food rites make meaning, mark special occasions, and provide identity.

This recipe for the St. John gigot d’agneau, first learned from Marc, and then tinkered upon by me, is itself a quasi-religious event for us. We do not roast it merely to have lamb for dinner.

We roast it those many Sundays—Easter Sunday included and, I dare guess, quite a few Passover evenings unbeknownst to these two recovering Catholics—because the gigot becomes the place where we join our hearts in that shared meaning of what is truly important in life, how we can make holy or transcendent those everyday things such as cooking or eating or talking at table, of being together as two brothers (often with our families with us).

Whatever it is that we consume, it is more than just a gigot.

RECIPE: Gigot d’Agneau
Serves 6-10

Ingredients
1 bone-in leg of lamb, anywhere from 5-8 pounds
6 cloves of garlic, peeled and mashed with side of chef’s knife
3 long branches fresh rosemary, leaves stripped, wood discarded
2 teaspoons honey
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons flavorful extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Directions
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Rinse and dry the lamb. Slice away any egregious blobs of fat, but do not remove all visible fat (while roasting, a modicum of melting fat adds a lot of flavor). Make 6-10 slits into the meat of the leg, about an inch in both length and depth.

Make a paste of all the remaining ingredients and slather the leg all over, pushing bits of the paste deep into the slits.

Place the leg in a shallow roasting or baking pan (if you have a low rack for the pan, use it) and pour 1/2 cup water around the leg. Place in the oven and roast for 10 minutes, then lower the heat to 300 and continue roasting until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thick of the meat (do not tough bone) registers 125 degrees for medium-rare (about 15-20 minutes per pound depending on your oven and the temperature of the lamb when first put into the oven). Place the leg on a cutting board and let it rest; “carryover cooking” will increase the temperature to about 130 degrees or true medium-rare.

You may prefer the lamb cooked through and meltingly tender. In that case, lower the long roasting time temperature to 250 degrees and cook until the internal temperature registers 140 degrees (a half hour or more per pound), then let the lamb rest another 15 minutes on the cutting board.

In either case, the juices surrounding the leg serve as a sauce for the slices, or you may strain and then reduce them for a glaze.