Where “Shred, Head, Butter and Bread” uses green cabbage, “Home of the Braise” provides a use for red cabbage.  I knew I’d have to find somewhere else to make this recipe – my mother can’t eat it, since she’s allergic to the compounds that makes red cabbage red.  On the same line, I’d have to find another location to make the next recipe – grilled leg of lamb, entirely because of the cooking medium.  Alton wants you to cook the lamb over charcoal rather than gas.  Understandable – you get a smokiness with charcoal that gas just can’t provide.  However, the problem I was running into is that virtually all of my friends had moved from the relative difficulty of using charcoal to the ease of gas.  This one was on hold until I could figure out a place to cook both together, since I felt the pairing of braised red cabbage and grilled lamb would be excellent together.

Sometimes, though, life provides solutions.  A married couple that normally hosts a game night at their place had to relocate the weekly sessions to somewhere else for a time due to construction in their building, so we ended up heading to a mutual friend’s place.  As it turns out, she’s also a huge Good Eats fan, and owns a charcoal grill.  When I mentioned my blog, we started talking about the possibility of using her grill to cook the lamb – not only was she up for it, she also jumped at the chance to make the next recipe in the book.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

To steal a page from Ron Burgundy, I love lamb.  It’s delicious.  Years ago, the Mongolian grill near my place offered lamb as an option to the more pedestrian chicken or beef.  I could never figure out why anyone would choose those options, when lamb cost exactly the same amount.  I made sure to fill up on lamb whenever I could when I went there, since it wasn’t something I had all the time.  I only found two places in town that sold leg of lamb year round, and the place nearest to my home was actually cheaper, which worked out.  It was also cheaper than I expected it would be – I was expecting something in the $10/lb. range.  It ended up costing me $8/lb.  I’ve bought steaks that cost more than that!

With the lamb boned, I brought all of the equipment over to my friend’s place.  Together we made the paste which would flavor the lamb – garlic, mint, brown sugar, salt, black pepper, Dijon mustard and coconut oil were all blended together in a food processor until smooth and flavorful.  The paste was spread where the bone used to be on the leg, and then began the most difficult part of the process – trussing.  At first, we tried the professional way of tying – creating loops and tightening around the meat.  That didn’t work, so we went with the tried and true method of laying out strands of butcher’s twine and tying it together.  A single strand wrapped around the meat lengthwise kept everything snug.  The lamb is placed on the grill, and some rosemary and sage were added to the coals for smoking purposes.

Once the meat was on the fire, I got to work processing things for the braised red cabbage.  This was a far simpler dish – a Granny Smith apple is peeled, cored and diced, and this is browned in coconut oil over medium heat.  Once it got some color, apple cider, caraway, salt, pepper and red cabbage were added.  It was lidded and the whole thing was braised for twenty minutes.  Meanwhile, another friend was working on a roasted potato dish, which won’t be included here – it’s not an AB recipe.  Still, it was really good – roasted potatoes with onions, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar.

I used more cabbage than Alton suggested, so I had to cook it longer.  As the cabbage was cooking, we brought in the lamb, which immediately set salivary glands on overload from the wonderful scent of grilled meat.  By the time the cabbage was ready, we’d already sliced up the lamb, which was absolutely delicious!  The paste only added to the flavor, but the lamb was the real star of the plate.  I liked the red cabbage far more than the green as well – the cider lended sweetness, which added a great dimension to the dish.  There were plenty of leftovers from all of the dish.  My only complaints were that the lamb was a bit chewy, and a bit on the rare side, probably because we pulled the meat a bit early.  This will be made again.  There can be no doubt of this.

This concludes Season 3 of Good Eats.  Season 4 brings some of the most ambitious recipes to date, including the first equipment hack of the blog.  We’ll be discovering that smoking isn’t as bad for you as they say, that vampires really are afraid of relatives of the onion, and that a plant’s evolutionary defense system can be utilized with great success in the kitchen, among many others.  Stick around – the project is only just beginning…

Recipes:

Home of the Braise

Silence of the Leg o’ Lamb