sunday snapshot: {the leg of lamb}

As I mentioned in the last post, we received lamb as a gift when some people from Andy's office came to our house to eat a holiday meal.

Ok, technically we received 2 huge lamb legs.

Before going any further, I feel I should give a disclaimer. If you are squeamish and don't like the sight of raw meat, this may not be the post for you. Consider yourself warned.

Mr. Dai (pronounced dye) gave us the lamb. Fittingly enough he is the purchasing manager. I think Andy looks a little stunned. Or maybe perplexed. I know I was shocked and not just a little daunted to cook this.

He gave them to us in just a regular bag. I kept thinking, how in the world am I going to cook this?

Before storing them in the fridge, Andy wanted a picture of me with the lamb. I think probably because I was making a big deal about not wanting to touch them. Don't I just look thrilled? And I told you, the legs are huge!

Pondering how to get it to fit. My face says it all.

But I was determined. And victorious in the end. I was not to be bested by the lamb.

Huge. They are huge. Yet again thinking, how am I going to cook this?

But here is confession time. I didn't cut it up. While I routinely cut up whole chickens (head, feet, and all), this was a bit beyond me. So I called in the reinforcements (my ayi, yet another reason I am thankful for Xiao Lu).

 Though she had never cut lamp before either so it was a bit of the blind leading the blind.

This a serious amount of meat. We divided the meat -- by that of course I am meaning Xiao Lu cut it up, and I put it in the bags. She cut the leg down to about what you might buy in the States so that it would actually fit in the oven. I had pushed and prodded to get it in the fridge, somehow I didn't think that was going to work so well in the oven.

One of the legs marinating. Still a little nervous because I had never cooked lamb like this before. But being me, even though it was a new recipe and I was nervous, I invited some friends over to eat it with us.

And the verdict?

It was SO good. I have the other in the freezer for Christmas eve.

Hope that you have a wonderful Christmas week!

Click for more Sunday snapshots