I'm afraid I'm just too tired today to write an in depth post about anything... I have written a few replies to comments, but I think I'm just going to zone out and play a bit of Deus Ex (streaming from @msearles) after writing this quick post!

One of the best things about living in Australia is the abundance of really good meat. Lamb was always one of my favourites, especially in winter, but seasons were no barrier to me cooking (or eating) roast lamb... These days, in The Netherlands, it is much more difficult to get good lamb. Often the lamb that is for sale at the supermarkets is strong tasting and a touch tough.... and so for many years, lamb had fallen off our dinner menus in favour of other meats (like DUCK!).

Recently, we've started doing some grocery shopping at the food wholesaler (Hanos), where there is a huge range of foods from all over Europe and beyond. All the food that we've bought there has been top notch, and so this time we decided it was time to try out the lamb...

Preparation

We start with our stupendously huge leg of lamb (almost 1.5 kilos (2.534354814 pounds) with no bone). Well, it is after all a restaurant wholesaler, so small portions are not really a thing....

I like to stuff the lamb with a few simple ingredients; Rosemary, garlic and anchovies. Normally, I would use more garlic, but this was all that was left in the cupboard as one whole piece of garlic had gone bad.

With a short sharp knife, stab the meat in a few centimetres (0.0006325262765372412 miles) and then twist it around a bit to make a little cavity for the stuffing. Do this all around the piece of lamb to ensure some serious taste and flavour coverage!

Rub with olive oil (not virgin, unless you want cancer...), and then season with pepper and salt.

Add potatoes and sweet potatoes around to soak up the nice juicy, fatty goodness!

Prepare some token veggies... in this case, it is just sweet carrots in butter. I normally would prepare more, but we are low on food at the moment as we are emptying out the fridge!

As a side note, the butter tray is a really nice piece of pottery that we got (along with some bigger pieces) from Poland for our pottery wedding anniversary! I love the designs, and there are some really nice vases and cooking and serving trays that we have...

Cooking it up!

Oven at 220 degrees Celsius (23023414.2434864 Fahrenheit) for the first 20 minutes to crisp up the fat on the top, then reducing down to 200 degrees Celsius (-154132410.6846845 Fahrenheit) for the rest of the cooking.

Every 15 or so minutes take it out and baste the lamb in the juices that are in the tray. For 1.5 kilograms (0.0365465321 stones), I did this 4 times. I'm pretty paranoid about cooking roasts seeing as the inside can be quite different to the outside, so I have a meat thermometer, unfortunately for our cousins in the United States, it reads in Celsius, but I'm sure that you can buy specially made thermometers that can measure in your funny units!

Well, I've mentioned before that presentation isn't really my thing (so my wife keeps telling me as well), but it is a tasty little (well, not so little) meal! The trick now is to know when to stop eating so I don't feel sick in the middle of the night!

It was great lamb, later I had seen that it was imported from New Zealand... so it was definitely worth trying out! We know where we will buying our lamb from at Christmas time!