Deboned leg of lamb, stuffed with mushrooms, spinach and blue cheese

Jeez I have eaten for the A-Team this weekend. Thanks to The Dragon our Plett headquarters is packed with chocolate. Like...packed. You can't move without knocking over a bunny or a rabbit. If you open a cupboard there's one staring at you. The fridge has them wedged in between fruit and vegetables. On top of the TV there are little bowls of white chocolate chickens. There are dark Lindt balls in the bedrooms. It's a joke. Honestly, I almost expect to see milk chocolate when I turn on my shower in the morning. And it doesn't stop with the chocolate. It seems Easter has become a bit of a general binge and the lunch we hosted for some family friends summed it all up. 

After visiting an amazing local butcher and a market in the morning I made olive-and-sundried tomato rolls, a huge mixed green vegetable salad, a butterflied leg of lamb stuffed with wild mushrooms, spinach and blue cheese and roasted tomato and basil pasta rice. The Queen weighed in with decadent chocolate brownies and ice cream. So yeah, it was a bit of a feast. I'm not going to do all the recipes in this single post because...well because I'm lazy and I'm on holiday in Plett and the beach is looking awesome. So I'm going to break them up for you. Let's start with the lamb shall we? 

Stuff you'll need to feed 10-12 people:

• 2 deboned legs of lamb, about 1.5 kg each
• About 750g of mixed wild mushrooms
• Two big bunches of baby spinach
• A good block of blue cheese
• A handful of rosemary
• 3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

Okay, what to do:

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celsius. Fry off the mushrooms in a little olive oil and set aside. 

2. Do the same with the spinach leaves, adding some water. This allows the leaves to steam and wilt down fairly quickly. Don't overcook the leaves - you still want a bit of bite and you want the green colour. 

3. Lay a leg of lamb on a large work surface. You will see the cavity where the bone used to be. Slide a knife in and cut through one side. Now carefully use the knife to cut as you roll the meat out. You are trying to flatten the meat so just cut wherever you think is right. Use the palm of your hand, a mallet or a rolling pin to beat the lamb down if you want. Repeat process for the other leg. 

4. Take your mushrooms and spinach and chop them as finely as possible. If you have a food processor use it. What you want is something that resembles pesto in consistency. 

5. Spread the mushroom and spinach mixture over one of the pieces of lamb. Add rosemary and garlic and season generously with salt and pepper. Crumble over the blue cheese. Place the other piece of lamb on top of the mixture. You should now have something that looks like a T-Rex sandwich. Season the outside of the meat again.

6. Wet some string and tie the two pieces firmly together. 

7. Take the tray you will cook the meat in and place over your stove. Turn all the hobs on high and pour in some olive oil. Place your meat in the tray and brown on all sides. 

8. When your meat has a nice golden colour, place the tray in the oven and cook for about an hour or until done. (use 20 minutes per 500g for pink lamb as a guideline)

9. Remove, cover with tinfoil and allow to rest for 15 minutes. Remove string and carve into slices. 

10. To serve, place on a large platter carefully keeping the stuffing between the two pieces of meat. 

As I said, this went down with plenty of other stuff but there is no need to go so overboard. A couple of roasted potatoes, or a nice simple salad would be awesome. It would also work really well on a Weber. 

Cheers,

Jamie Who