Popped in to see my parents yesterday afternoon. You might remember my father as having previously given me the truffle salt along with the extremely specific and pedantic instructions on what to do with it!
Well - yesterday he was cooking up a storm in his "egg". This is a huge, green, egg-shaped, hooded and temperature-gauged smoking/bbq contraption, which he bought at Barbeques Galore many years ago, and uses frequently with great success, I must say.
The piece de resistance inside the egg was a roast of lamb. BUT - not just any old lamb! This had been very generously given to him by his best friend and cooking companion, JL. Plain old roast lamb from the egg, beautifully smoked, is the most gorgeous tasting meal you'll ever have. But add the overnight marinade and secret ingredients JL had 'treated' the lamb with, and the results were absolutely to die for.
I quizzed Dad but he hadn't got the 'drum' from JL. I extracted a promise from him that he'd call JL today and phone me straight back - which he duly did, and I am now going to spoil you and share this with you! Don't say I never give you anything!
When I sampled the meat yesterday, as well as the smokey flavour, it had this very distinct but undefinable flavour to it. It was something I knew I had tasted before but I really couldn't identify it.
It turned out to be roasted cardamom! What John had done was mix the following, then marinate the lamb overnight. He'd also got his butcher to butterfly the lamb previously.
olive oil
roasted cardamom
cumin
black papper
garlic
Any amount of the above ingredients, depending on your whim, mix together then marinate your lamb. I'll experiment with it myself, but I have to say it was indeed gorgeous.
Why don't you give it a try next time you're doing the old leg of lamb? You never know...!
Sunday, 25 November 2007
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5 comments:
Was the roasted cardamom the result of roasting pods and then grinding?
My own father has one of these & in the early days everything we ate came from this friggin' smoker!
Chops, snags, chicken you name it, went in, nothing was safe from his obsession with smoking. One day our mangy old cat died & I half expected Dad to smoke the bloddy thing before he buried it!
Nellie - I didn't get that finer detail but I'd presume so, and would do it that way myself. Apparently he roasted them till they popped.
Gobbler - you've hit the proverbial nail on the head there. When he first got it, yes, like your dad, he cooked every damned thing in there - smoked cornflakes is a novelty!
Smoked cornflakes?????
Just joking Zelda! You know us exaggerating Aries people!
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