By Greg B. It feels good to be getting out and running again.  This week I’m going to focus on more running, and by next weekend phase in some swimming.  And with this increased activity comes an increased appetite… and right now I’m gonna feed that appetite!  For the last 30hrs I’ve had half a butterflied leg of lamb in my fridge, marinading in a rub of spices I cobbled together with every nook and cranny of this leg of lamb covered in marinade and stuffed with apricots.  And right now, my house smells of cooking bacon, as I crisp it up for the kale recipe, tonight I will feast!   And below is the recipe, so you can recreate this feast in your own house.

Since I’ve got two separate recipes going together tonight, I’ll have two separate recipe lists, so in case you just want to make the kale part of this dinner, you can!

Roasted Leg of Lamb Ingredients:

• 1 leg of lamb, butterflied (~4lbs)
• 1 yellow onion
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 1 grapefruit (for the juice)
• zest of 1 lemon
• 2 tablespoons of ground all-spice
• 2 tablespoons of turmeric
• 2 tablespoons of ground coriander
• 1 tablespoon of ground mace
• 1 teaspoon rosemary
• 1 teaspoon of Sumac
• Enough salt to lightly season the meat
• dash of crushed black pepper
• 2 medium apricots, sliced

Kale with Bacon and Garlic:

• 1 large bunch of Kale, washed and sliced (I like to just rip off bite sized pieces from the center stalk, which is tough.  Discard that)
• 3 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 1lb bacon, crisped and fat rendered
• 1/4 cup of bacon fat added back to the pot to cook the kale and garlic
• 2.5 cups of chicken stock
• pinch of red pepper flakes

The morning before you want to cook the lamb, gather all your ingredients together, clear some space in the fridge (if the lamb is frozen, thaw it beforehand!) and grab whatever marinading container you like to use.  I have that classic red and clear plastic container, with the ridged sides that I like to use.  Because I’m kind of lazy, I grabbed my food processor and added the ingredients inside, pulsed it a few times until the garlic and onion were small bits, then added the grapefruit juice and let it sit for a few minutes.  Take those apricots, and slice them nice and fine.  Place your lamb leg into the marinading dish, and stuff every possible opening with apricots.  Then take the paste you’ve made from the spices and juice and cover every bit of this lamb with it.  Simply place this inside your fridge, and let it sit until the following evening, when you’re going to cook it.

About an hour and a half before you plan to eat, begin to render the bacon fat and crisp the bacon.  I brought out my cast iron braising pot, since I was going to need a large space to cook the kale anyway.  I like to cut my slices of bacon into about 2″ long slices, I think the increased surface area helps it cook faster, plus it’s already in the size I want to add to the kale when it’s done cooking anyway.  Cook the bacon and set aside to add to the kale later.  Add sliced garlic to the bacon fat and let it cook for a few minutes, just enough to lightly brown the sides.  Then, take your washed and shredded/ripped kale, add this to the bacon fat, followed immediately by the chicken stock.  Drop the temperature to a medium low, cover the crock pot and let this simmer a good 30 minutes.  Around this time, start heating your oven to 425F to cook the lamb.  Once the oven signals it’s ready to receive the the lamb, add some salt, pepper and the red pepper flakes to the kale, give it a good mix then let it continue to simmer.  Add the lamb inside a pan, and set a timer for 35 minutes, you’ll want to cook the lamb to about 130F, so when your meat thermometer reads above 120F, get ready to take that lamb out and wrap her up to set.  After you close the oven door, give your kale a taste test.  It should have cooked from a dark green to a very bright green, followed by simmering into a deep forest green color.  Taste it, see if you like the seasonings and adjust as you see fit.  Then let simmer for the remainder of the cooking time.

I added some carrots to this meal to really round it out.  So far I’ve got almost everything, delicious greens, bacon, a well spiced hunk of meat stuffed with fruit, so I figured I’d add some simple buttered carrots to the mix.  The ingredients are simple, slice the carrot on the bias, add to a pan with 3 tablespoons of butter, and let simmer in a pan until time to serve or tender.  When everything is cooked, cooled, set and ready, plate up and serve with (gasp!) a nice red wine.  I saved half a bottle of the Marques de Caceres from the night prior for this lamb, and I think it’ll be a good match.  The juicy red fruit will go nicely with rare lamb, and the more perfumey aromas and flavors of the wine will go well with the exotic spices I have covering the lamb.  It may falter when meeting the bacon and the kale, but for the rest of this dish, it’ll be a great pairing (I hope!).

So the dish is plated and it looks fantastic.  As I was cutting through the lamb my mouth started watering, you know that feeling when it is inevitable that you’re about to take a bite of a juicy piece of meat?  It was increasingly difficult to finish slicing the lamb and plate it before tasting… so I took a piece and ate it.  God damn, this is good!  The lamb was cooked exactly to temperature that I wanted, right around 130F, the meat retained it’s juice and flavor and the combo of the spices with the apricots proved to be a nice balance of sweet, tart and savory.  The carrots I cooked up were of course delicious… carrots and butter sauteed cannot be bad, but the surprise of the dish was the kale.  I don’t know how I’ve gone this long in my life without eating kale, but I can assure you it will be in my future diet in larger quantities.  The kale has a very pungent, earthy and hearty flavor and texture to it which is nicely tempered by the bacon.  The red pepper really helps balance the dish as well, keeping it from being too fatty but giving it that little spicy kick, just enough to let you know the spice is there, but not enough to last much longer than a single bite.  This was a great meal, very flavorful in many aspects, and I loved it.  I loved it so much that I decided I needed a dessert, so below I present for you the ingredients for a remake of my stuffed pear recipe!

Walnut stuffed pear recipe:

• 2 tablespoons of black walnuts
• 1 tablespoon slices almonds
• 1 teaspoon dried blueberries
• 3 tablespoons of light brown sugar
• 1 red pear, fully ripe
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• dash of real maple syrup

This is brutally simple, but equally brutally delicious.  Preheat the oven to 450F, with a middle rack.  Slice a pear in half and remove the middle seed area to make room for the ‘filling’.  In a separate bowl, combine all the other ingredients except the maple syrup.  Make sure they’re well incorporated together, then fill the pears.  If you have extra (which you surely will), just pile it on top of the pears.  Make sure these pears are sitting on a sheet of aluminum foil, as this will get very sticky and very messy very quickly.  Once stuffed, drizzle maple syrup over each pear half, once the oven hits 450F, place inside and bake for 30 minutes.  Monitor the time, once the pear is fork tender you’re ready to go.  Prepare a plate, perhaps with a scoop of ice cream, and plate with the pear.  It’s delicious, it’s sweet, but it was the perfect finish to this complete and delicious meal.