Wednesday and Thursday my wife was gone and I can’t spell “wife was gone” without the letters “L-A-M-B”, despite, technically speaking, none of the latter 4 being present in the former.
I got a cryovac of a whole lamb leg with a bunch of the sirloin flap attached and broke it down into a roast, the shank, a small sirloin, a sirloin cap (in beef called a bunch of names like top sirloin cap/rump cap/rump cover, coulotte, picahna), the femur from the roast, and about 180 grams of hard fat to use in sausage later.
I made the roast Wednesday night on the grill with mixed apple/hickory smoke, having butterflied and salted at 1.2% and rubbed with 10 cloves of grated garlic and a bunch of fresh rosemary, about 6 hours before beginning to smoke it.
I smoked the big bone and any meaty scraps too small to deal with at the same time, then tossed those in the instant pot with some leftover roasted chicken bones to make a Frankenbroth.
Here’s the roast, partially sliced. I’ve got a bit left that I need to get eating, and my son and daughter both stole some to take back home with them.
I had the 2 sirloin pieces Thursday night. Here they are ready to cook, and as-cooked, pan-seared on my grill’s side burner in a ripping hot (as the “foodies” say) CS skillet.
I treated the picanha-like piece like I would if I were skillet searing a beef picanha including cross-hatched scoring of the fat cap to get salt down to the meat on that side. A lot of recipes tell you not to cut through to the meat, but under that tasty (once crispy) fat cap is a pretty heavy sheet of silverskin, and I didn’t want it pulling up into a football shape. The I goofed and took the as-cooked photo with all that crispy niceness hidden underneath.
The smaller piece seemed like the membrane sheets were light enough not to matter, but I was wrong - it pulled up into a gnarly-looking ball. I should have sliced it into fairly thick coins instead. But both were very tasty and nice medium rare, and I decided I didn’t need any side dishes that night.
Still have to do something with the shank. I wish more of the kids were home because braising one shank seems dumb, but I’m not sure I want to go buy a bunch more to braise together if I’m the only one eating them.
), and half on the couch catching up with a dear friend in BA via google meet – we’d last connected just before she and her partner spent 4 months in Greece last year while working remotely, then talked to my sister for another hour. I think I’m all talked out for the rest of this week 
