Roasted Boneless Lamb with Red Wine Pan Sauce

May has opened like a book — slowly, with the promise of something significant on the next page. The library is deep into summer reading program preparations, and I have spent the week in meetings that would bore anyone who is not a librarian and fascinate anyone who is. We are debating whether to include graphic novels in the reading challenge, a conversation that has recurred annually for the past decade and will recur annually for the next decade, because librarians are nothing if not thorough in their disagreements.

Robert had a case settle this week — a property boundary dispute that had been dragging on for eight months. He came home with a bottle of champagne and the particular quiet satisfaction that Robert wears when he has done his job well. We drank the champagne on the piazza after the children went upstairs, sitting in the rocking chairs that Robert's mother left us, and for twenty minutes we were just two people in a beautiful city on a warm evening, and that was all we needed to be.

I've been thinking about the concept of home this week — what makes a place one. This house has been in Robert's family for three generations. I moved into it as a bride in 1997, and for years it felt like his house that I was permitted to inhabit. My books changed that. Slowly, shelf by shelf, I made the house mine by filling it with the things that made me who I am. Now every room has books in it — the hallway, the bedrooms, the bathroom, even the kitchen, where a shelf above the window holds my collection of Southern cookbooks, spines cracked from use. Robert's family owned the walls. I own the words inside them.

Carrie's field trip to St. Helena Island was this week. She came home vibrating with enthusiasm, which for Carrie means talking rapidly about three subjects simultaneously while pacing the kitchen. She learned about sweetgrass basket weaving, about rice cultivation, about the Gullah language and its connections to Sierra Leone. "Mom," she said, "do you know that the word gumbo comes from a Bantu word for okra?" I did know this. I have known this since I was younger than she is. But I let her tell me as if it were new, because the gift of learning is in the telling, and I would not take that from her.

I made red rice for dinner — the Charleston Lowcountry version that uses tomato paste and bacon and is cooked slowly until each grain is separate and stained crimson. Mama's red rice was a Sunday staple, served alongside whatever protein the week's budget allowed. Mine is a weeknight comfort, made because my daughter came home full of the Lowcountry's history and I wanted to put that history on her plate. Carrie ate it thoughtfully, which is different from how she usually eats, which is quickly and while reading. "This is Gullah food," she said. "This is our food," I said. "It's the same thing," she said, and she was more right than she knew.

That evening, watching Carrie eat with the rare slowness of someone actually tasting what’s in front of her, I felt the particular satisfaction of a meal that did more than feed—it connected. Red rice has always been the dish I reach for when I need to feel held by something larger than myself, and that night it did exactly what I needed it to do. But the next weekend, I wanted to mark the moment with something grander—the kind of meal Mama would have made if the budget had been generous and the occasion had called for ceremony. I chose a roasted leg of lamb, rubbed with herbs from the garden and finished with a pan sauce dark as mahogany, because when your child tells you something true about who you are, that deserves more than a weeknight supper.

Prep Time: 30 min | Cook Time: 1 hr 30 min | Total Time: 2 hrs | Servings: 10

Ingredients

For the Roasted Lamb

5-6 pound boneless, tied leg of lamb
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Zest from 2 lemons
5 garlic cloves minced (2 1/2 tablespoons)
1/4 cup chopped mixed fresh herbs (equal amounts of Italian parsley, rosemary and thyme)
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided
Juice from one lemon
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary

For the Red Wine Pan Sauce

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup minced shallots
1 cup red wine
1 quart chicken or beef stock (or half of each)
2 fresh rosemary sprigs, about 4-6 inches in length
8 fresh thyme sprigs
3 Tablespoons butter
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

To Prepare the Roasted Lamb

Preheat the oven. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
Prep the lamb. Remove netting from roast and discard. Open up lamb, cut side up on your cutting board and sprinkle generously with salt and pepper.
Season the cavity. In a small bowl, mix together zest, garlic, herbs and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Using your hands, spread all over inside cavity of lamb.
Tie the roast. Fold lamb back into a roast and place on board fat side up. Using good butcher’s twine, wrap and tie four or five side wraps down the length of the roast and two more end to end.
Position in the pan. Place fat side up in a baking dish.
Apply the mustard coating. In a small bowl, mix lemon juice, mustard, rosemary and remaining olive oil. Mix to combine and spread all over the top of the roast.
Insert thermometer. Place probe thermometer into the thickest part of the roast and set temperature to alarm at 125 degrees F. Place roast in center rack of oven.
Roast low and slow. Roast at 325 degrees F for about two hours or until internal temperature reaches 125 degrees F.
Char the exterior. Increase oven temperature to 450 degrees F and roast for about 15 additional minutes or until internal temperature reaches 135 degrees F and outside of roast is slightly charred.
Rest the lamb. Remove from oven, place the roast on a platter and loosely cover with foil. However, leave probe thermometer in so that juices don’t leak out. Let the roast rest at least 20 minutes before removing probe and slicing.
Make the sauce. Make pan sauce while roast is resting.
Slice and serve. Remove twine and slice. Serve with pan sauce, see below.

To Prepare the Red Wine Pan Sauce

Cook the shallots. In a small sauce pan over medium heat, sauté shallots in olive oil 2-3 minutes or until tender. Set aside.
Deglaze with wine. In the pan that was used to roast the lamb, drain off and discard all lamb fat leaving brown bits on bottom and place over a medium burner. Add red wine and cooked shallots and scrape any bits from the bottom of the pan. Reduce wine mixture until almost all wine has evaporated.
Build the sauce. Add in stock and fresh herbs and any juice that has accumulated on platter. Reduce by at least half or more.
Finish and strain. Off heat, add in butter and stir into sauce. Season with additional salt and pepper if needed. Strain sauce through a fine mesh strainer and into a gravy boat and discard solids. The sauce is not thick like gravy but just slightly thick. If the sauce is too intense, simply dilute with a little water.

Nutrition (per serving)

Roasted Boneless Lamb with Red Wine Pan Sauce — A Sunday Kind of Meal for a Weeknight Revelation