This is a great dish for a holiday meal or the next time you have a couple of extra guests joining you for dinner. It's extremely easy and what I would call a "low-maintenance fancy" recipe. It only takes about 20 minutes to put it all together and bakes in less than 3 hours with very little work in between. This would also be delicious in sandwich form on fresh rolls if you have any on hand!
What You Need:
1 boneless leg of lamb (5-7 lbs)
2 small shallots
1.5-2 bulbs of garlic, depending on size
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
1/3 cup fresh mint leaves
1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes
1 cup crumbled feta cheese
1/4 cup fresh parsleyolive oil
baking twine
salt & pepper
red wine
1 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
Unwrap the lamb on a clean work surface and carefully trim any large sections of excess fat. Cut the lamb so that it can be spread flat on your work surface as pictured.
Peel the garlic and shallots, cutting the shallots in half. Set aside 2 large garlic cloves for later. Place garlic, shallots, leaves from 1 sprig of rosemary, mint and tomatoes in a food processor with 1 teaspoon olive oil. Pulse on puree setting until all ingredients are minced. Place the feta cheese in a medium mixing bowl and add the ingredients from the food processor. Combine all ingredients and set aside.
Place remaining rosemary leaves and reserved garlic cloves in the food processor with the parsley leaves and the juice of half the lemon. Pulse on puree setting until ingredients are finely minced. Remove from food processor, place in a small bowl and set aside.
Preheat oven to 250 degrees. While oven is heating, evenly spread the feta cheese mixture over the lamb, stopping about 1
inch from the edges. Begin at one of the narrow ends of the lamb and tightly roll everything up together (this should create a more narrow, thicker roll). Using 3-4 pieces of baking twine, securely tie up the rolled lamb from all sides. If any of the cheese-herb mixture falls out, just stuff it back in. Drizzle the outside of the stuffed lamb with a generous amount of olive oil (3-4 tbsp) and a bit of lemon juice. *If you have a lemon-infused olive oil, you can use that instead and skip the lemon juice! Sprinkle with salt and pepper, then rub the oil, salt and pepper onto the lamb to coat it. Pat the parsley-herb mixture onto the lamb, evenly coating the sides and top.
Place the stuffed lamb into a roasting pan, dutch oven, or other oven-safe pan. Pour roughly 1/2 cup of red wine into the pan around the lamb. Cover loosely with foil. Place covered pan in preheated oven and cook for 1 hour. After first hour, remove the foil and continue roasting for another hour. After the second hour, carefully spoon some of the drippings/wine from the pan onto the top of the roast several times. Return lamb to the oven and continue roasting for another 30-60 minutes, until meat thermometer inserted into the lamb registers 135-145 degrees. When lamb has reached your desired temperature, remove pan from the oven, place stuffed lamb on heat-proof cutting board and allow it to rest for 10 minutes before cutting.
While lamb is resting, make a gravy with the drippings/wine left in the pan. If you are using a dutch oven, or other stove top-safe pot, you can place that on the stove and make the gravy in that pot. If you cooked the lamb in a roasting pan, transfer the drippings to a stove top pot. Turn burner on to medium heat. To the dripping, whisk in a cup of chicken stock and 1/4 cup of flour. Whisk constantly until gravy is bubbly. Reduce heat to medium-low and continue whisking until mixture thickens (about 5 minutes). Add salt and pepper to taste and remove from heat.
Remove the cooking twine from the stuffed lamb and cut into slices. Serve lamb and stuffing topped with gravy and enjoy!
