Lamb roast on a bed of leek and potatoes

Ahh, Easter. The perfect time of the year to kill some innocent young sheep, shove them into the oven and have their succulent flesh melt on your tongue - to remind us of our benevolent god, of course. Also, zombie-jesus.

But I digress. Having acquired a piece of dead lamb, a bit less than a kilo of leg to be precise, I proceeded to season it thusly:

Crush some rosemary and thyme (a handful if fresh), two cloves of garlic and pepper and salt in a mortar. Add a glug of olive oil, and pound to a paste. Then, take a knife and poke a couple of holes into the meat. Widen them with your finger, and stuff some of the paste in. Rub the rest on the roast.

Cut some potatoes in slices, and a stalk of leek into slices. Season with woody herbs (I just used some herbes de la provence), salt and pepper and toss in olive oil. Put the bed down in a receptacle and place the lamb upon it. It'll look like this:

Sweet innocent lamb/ how lively thou grazed/ now hacked apart/ about to be glazed

Shove the whole thing into the preheated oven at 250 Celsius. Maniacal cackling is optional. Now comes the math. Yes, lamb roast requires math. It'll need to stay in the oven for 20 minutes, plus 13 minutes for every half kilo of lamb. At least, that is the formula for some medium rare lamb. Use 10 minutes per half kilogram if you like your mutton still bleating (<-see what I did here?), or 16 minute if you are one of those philistines who likes it 'well done' (a misnomer if there ever was one!).

Turn the roast every half hour, but at least once. When done, take it out and LEAVE IT ALONE. On the outside, you may cover it with a bit of aluminium foil. Only after the roast has rested for ten minutes may you carve it, yea, and not before, for it displeaseth the lord and also lets the juices leak out, which displeaseth the palate.

Nothing says resurrection more than some carved up meat

Bon appetit!