Last year Easter Sunday came around too fast for me. I felt unprepared for it at the end of March and I didn’t have time to enjoy the spring unfold whilst contemplating our Easter Sunday feast, says Tim Dover, chef patron of The Roost restaurant in Bridge of Earn.
This year Easter Sunday is quite late and falls on the April 16. In Greece, Easter is by far the biggest feast day of the year, and apparently every Greek farming family roasts a milk-fed lamb on a spit or souvla on Easter Sunday. They use roasting pits in their gardens, filled with charcoal often made from pine wood which flavours the meat a little as it cooks. The lambs are prepared the day before by removing the innards and then rubbing lots of lemons and salt both inside and outside of the lamb.
Spit roasting a small lamb is not a simple job, in fact there is much precision in the tending of the fire, turning of the meat and basting it with butter and thyme that makes it a wonderful tradition for Greek men to patiently prepare the souvla and then turn the lamb carefully until perfectly cooked. Just thinking about this makes me drool, and the smell of such cooking must be wonderful in the spring air.
This year I plan to have a Greek inspired roast lamb at home. I have an old Greek cook book with a recipe for cooking souvla indoors. The Greeks say that Easter lamb must be a milk-lamb which, if killed before it is put out to pasture, has flesh as white as delicate as a Spring chicken and will melt in the mouth. I don’t plan to source a milk-lamb, but I do find that lamb at this time of year can lack a bit of flavour so this Greek recipe is perfect for it.
I will use a leg of Scotch lamb – first wipe it clean and make small incisions to insert wild garlic leaves all over, then rub it thoroughly with lots of salt, pepper and lemon juice, heat about 30 grams of butter with a tablespoon of olive oil in a roasting tin on the stove, then add the meat and roast in the oven for an hour at about gas mark 4. After an hour add about 200ml of hot water and continue to roast the meat until tender and cooked.
This year I plan to serve it with some simply cooked potatoes and a big Greek salad. This will be a nice change for me and my family from the traditional British roast lamb dinner, and although we won’t be cooking it outdoors, I may set a dinner table in the garden as a nod to the Greek hills.
Chef’s Tip
If you try my Greek roast lamb recipe you might like to add some small baby potatoes with their skins on to the roasting tin when there is about 45 minutes of cooking time left. They will cook in the delicious gravy, and although they won’t be crispy they will hold their shape and be fantastic alongside the lamb.
