Slow Cooked Leg of Lamb Stuffed with Rosemary and Garlic

This is a triumph.
A masterpiece!
Basically this sh*t was awesome.

Here's' how I did it.

You will need

• Leg of lamb (shoulder?)
• Fresh Rosemary
• Fresh garlic 6-7 cloves
• Sea Salt
• Butter
• Cotton Cooking twine

 So you want to be a millionaire? Or maybe you just want to eat like one. Here's how.

Take your lamb, remove the bone, and do some butterflying with your knife, fat side down. You know long slits designed to expose more of the surface of the meat.

Anyway trim up some of the hangy bits and pieces but leave the layer of fat on the side.

Take your garlic and chop it up. Next add 1 tbsp salt and keep chopping till you have developed a paste. Rub it on. Rub it in. Wash hands... Um.. anyway strip the branches of the rosemary reserving any of those little pieces of wood for later and add the leaves to the meat as shown.

Throw in a couple of pieces of butter. (keeps the inside from drying out not to mention makes it buttery) Now you want to tie the sucker up.

Let's do that.

Notice how you can make individual loops if you go under the previous loop. That's the secret. Make sure you cut a 4 or 5 foot legnth to make sure you have enough.

Repeat and tie it tight. You don't want the butter to escape do you?

It should look like a masochist when you're done.

So now it's time to cook it. I did it on the Big Green Egg. You can do the same, but only if you have one. Stefanie was coming home late so I kept the thing between 200 and 300 for about 5 hours.

For your sake lets say 2 hours in the oven at 350 or until, according to Alton Brown) the internal temperature is equal to 135 degrees. From that same recipe I learned the rosemary branches, nay, the entire plant can be smoked. On the smoker. For more flavor.

So here it is. Fat side up over a pan so all the juicy drippings have to make their way over the meat and around before dropping off into the pan.

When it's done, cut off the cotton and get down to business.

Yum.

Bacon, Cheddar and Cream Cheese Stuffed Jalapenos

Hmmm. What are those? Well they used to look like this.

Yup. Let's take a trip down jalapeno lane.

Bacon, Cheddar and Cream Cheese Stuffed Jalapenos

You will need

• Jalapenos (let's start with 20)
• Cream cheese (1 block)
• Shredded Cheddar (2 cups)
• Apple wood smoked bacon (1 pound chopped and cooked till you have bacon bits)
• 1/4 cup bacon grease
• 6 eggs (beaten)
  
• breadcrumbs

So you start this one by putting on gloves. 

These things are spicy and if that spicy gets on your hands you could be signing up for some pain. Anyway all that aside cut all the jalapenos in 1/2 length wise and remove all the white stuff and seeds. (A spoon usually works best for that task)

Now we need the filling. Throw the cream cheese, cheddar cheese and the bacon grease (ouch, my arteries) and mix it up in a Cuisinart.
These things can run you from $30 to a couple hundred. Regradless, you need one.

Throw in the bacon at the very end so it retains it's bacony goodness. At this point you can probably just fold it in with a rubber spatula.

OK now the fun begins. Get a good friend and get to work.

You will need to take a spoon and put a dollop on each jalapeno half. Don't skimp. These are going to end up round like a jalapeno but only half of one is in there.

Then while one person is stuffing the other is shaping them and ||: putting them through egg wash, then the breadcrumbs. Then on a rack to dry. An oven rack works just fine. :||

So those of you who are musically inclined know what ||:    :|| are... Repeat signs!

Let the japs dry for 30 minutes and put them through the egg and crumbs again.

Do it again.

And FREEZE!

These after they are frozen are ready to be fried at 350 degrees.

For a dipping sauce you can do ranch OR you can take Hot Squeeze and add tons of orange zest. 

Yum.

There's no picture of the finished product because they didn't stay out long enough for me to snap one.  Oh well.

Habanero Garlic Roast Beef

Woah! That'sa onea spicy roast beef sandwich.

You will need

• 1 large piece of beef suitable for roasting (this is a sirloin roast)
• 4 or 5 Habaneros
• 5 or 6 large cloves or garlic
• Salt
• Pepper
• Cooking String 
• Baguette (toasty)

Yup that's it. Oh, and a really sharp knife.

So let's get this show on the road. First you'll need to trim some (not all) of the fat off the beef. This was my first attempt at a sirloin roast and you can see some of that really tough stuff running through it. So I just cut it out after it was done. Once I have a solution to that I'll let you know.

Anyway I cut along the fat patterns until the roast has pretty much unrolled. Then you can trim some of the fat and any gristle you see as long as you don't cut the roast into pieces.

Next go horizontally across the meat to basically butterfly it. Be careful that you don't go all the way through.

Now thinly slice the habaneros and be careful to wash your hands after handling them.

Also with a stout knife, smash the garlic flat. You can do this with the skin on and the peel will come right off.

From cute little peppers to devilishly hot diabolical green goodness.

Whack! Press scrape place.

So the inside of the beef should look nicely covered in all the stuff. Then you'll want to roll it all up. Like a so.

keep going.

Looking good.

Tie it together. I just used one string. One thing you can try and do to keep it all together better is tuck the edges while you are rolling.






Ok now that the hard part is over crush up some pepper. Grab some kosher salt and rub the outside of the meat. You gotta love a good crust.

just put it in an appropriate pan and bake for 2 hours at 325.

Or until internal temp reaches 245

After the timer beeps.

Take it out.

Wrap it up

When you unwrap there will be a bunch of jus.
DO NOT THROW AWAY.
Pour it over the beef right before you serve over crusty baguette bread.

Slice it thin.

Scarf it down.

Yum.