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Roast of Lamb
(Arrosto d'agnello) Take a leg of lamb and season it with salt, pepper, oil and a drop of vinegar. Pierce it here and there with the point of a knife and leave it like this for several hours. Also lard it with bay leaf or rosemary to be removed when serving.
The leg of lamb can be baked or, as the Italians do, cooked at the spit. 124
A marinade and a spit, with no times or temperatures given — everything the original leaves out is a matter of weight and doneness.
- The hinge is the marinating time"Several hours" with the leg pierced all over is what makes the dish; the salt, oil and vinegar travel into the cuts. Marinate it refrigerated, several hours or overnight, and let it lose the worst of the chill before it goes near heat.
- "Lard it with bay leaf or rosemary"This does not mean pork fat. Push slivers of bay or short sprigs of rosemary into the knife slits, and pull out any woody stems before carving, as the text says. Slivers of garlic in the same holes are entirely in keeping.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A common approach is to start high, around 450F for 15 minutes to colour the outside, then drop to 350F for the remainder.
- Timing by thermometer, not by clockA bone-in leg runs roughly 15 minutes per pound at 350F after the initial blast, but the reliable measure is 130-135F at the thickest part away from the bone for pink lamb, 145F for medium. Rest it 15 to 20 minutes before carving.
- Size of the legLamb in Italy at this period was generally slaughtered younger and smaller than supermarket lamb today, so the leg the recipe assumes was probably lighter than the modern one. A 5-6 lb bone-in leg serves six to eight and will need proportionally longer.
- The spitA rotisserie attachment or a covered kettle grill with indirect heat reproduces the intended result better than an oven, since the constant turning bastes the meat in its own fat. Aim for the same internal temperatures.
- The vinegar"A drop" is deliberately small; a teaspoon or two of red wine vinegar in the oil is in keeping with the text.
Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) was written to introduce Italian home cooking to American kitchens, and this entry shows the seams: the leg is described in terms an American cook could follow, then the author notes almost as an aside that Italians would cook it on the spit. Roast lamb at the spit is a classic Easter dish in central and southern Italy, where abbacchio — young milk-fed lamb, particularly associated with Rome and Lazio — was slaughtered very small and cooked with rosemary, garlic and little else. The piercing-and-marinating method here suits a cut with little internal fat to baste it, and the recipe leaves the bay-or-rosemary choice open.