Spit Roasting a Lamb for Greek Easter

This post is a couple of months late, but I wanted to post it anyway.

Greek Easter (Orthodox Easter) has always been one of my favorite times of the year. Not because I'm religious in any particular way, but just because it's a very laid-back occasion with a lot of really good food.

It's the only time of the year when having a spit roasted lamb (or occasionally goat) is guaranteed. And this year, because I've helped out a few friends with their spit roasted meats in the past, I really wanted to help my dad out with the lamb.

On the Saturday morning, dad picked up the lamb from the butcher. He seasoned the inside of the lamb with salt, pepper, oregano and rosemary and he then threaded some garlic cloves and two halves of a lemon onto a string and attached it to the inside of the lamb, so that it wouldn't fall out while the lamb rotated. He sewed up the lamb to keep everything inside and he let the lamb rest overnight on a table in the living room so that it was at room temperature for the next day's cooking.

Early on Sunday morning, I was at my mum and dad's house, and the weather wasn't looking good, so because we didn't want to put the spit up on the deck - taking up precious seating space for the 30 or so people who were coming for lunch - we took the spit out back and rigged up a tarp to keep the lamb sheltered from the rain.

Even with the cold weather, it didn't take long to get a few heat beads going, which we were using as a starter for the charcoal. As soon as it was hot enough, the lamb went on. The heat is concentrated more so on the shoulders and the legs, since there's more meat there and less on the loin.

The next step was getting the basting mix going. It's a very simple recipe: olive oil, lemon, salt, pepper and oregano. I'm pretty sure you could season any meat with that combo and it wouldn't be a wrong decision. The important part though, is that the basting brush must be made from a few branches of rosemary tied onto a stick with some wire. This is key!

Things that must be done throughout the day while the lamb cooks:

• The lamb must be basted constantly, especially if it doesn't need it.
• Loose bits of meat and skin must be picked off and eaten as they peel away from the bone.
• Ouzo, retsina and/or Greek beer are the only drinks allowed around the lamb.
• A couple of photos must be taken while basting the lamb.

The lamb takes a few hours to cook, and sitting around watching meat cook slowly for several hours is hard work, so dad got out some spicy pork sausages he'd bought from a Greek butcher, sandwiched them in a grill basket and cooked them over the charcoal.

After a few more drinks, and a little more meze, once the lamb finished cooking, it was time to bring it in and carve it up for lunch.

And then it was time to eat! Although the meat was the champion of the day, there was still a ton of food that had been prepared by everyone, including seafood, rice, pasta, vegetables, salads, breads, dips and much more. The sense of community is always alive.

Spit roasting meat is as much about the journey as it is about the destination. The way the meat is prepared, seasoned and basted is unique in each circle, which results in different tastes, and in the same way that watching a campfire burn is incredibly mesmerising, so is watching a lamb cook.

The spectacle of the thing is a great way to get people together, and there's rarely a person who doesn't want to come outside to see the meat cook. The spit also doubles as a heat source when winter has decided to rear its head early ;)

Baked Chicken Drumsticks

Last weekend, I was trying to use up the last of the food in the fridge before it had to be thrown out, and I found a pack of chicken drumsticks that we'd bought super cheap earlier in the week. I wanted something warm and toasty since the weather has been getting cold again.

I put the chicken in a baking dish, seasoned it with salt and smoked paprika, roughly chopped up an onion and threw it in there with a can of diced tomatoes and some olive oil. It went in the oven at 180C and let it cook for an hour and a half.

When I pulled it out of the oven, I knew I'd done good. When I checked how done the drumsticks were, I picked one up with some tongs and the bone fell out.

Cherie was home a few minutes later, so we heated up some brown rice and lunch was ready! I love that kind of simple cooking!

Handy Skills: Basic Butchery

Although it makes a lot of sense now that I think about it, I never thought I'd find butchery all that interesting, but, a little over a year ago, after watching a video about a chef in Scotland who hunts and gathers his own food for his restaurant, I watched a ton of videos on butchery and it turns out a little bit of butchery is a handy skill to have and it's awesome.

Why is a little basic butchery a handy skill to have?

1. Cutting up a couple of whole chickens is cheaper than buying the breasts and thighs separately, and the entire carcass can be used for a variety of things
2. Ever go fishing and not know how to scale, gut and prepare the fish you just caught?
3. It's good to know where the various cuts of meat come from
4. It's a little bit therapeutic
5. You develop an appreciation for the entire animal

So here's some videos:

• Jointing a whole chicken. Something everyone can probably figure out, but here for completeness. Actually, all of Scott Rea's YouTube channel is full of gold.
• Butchering a whole lamb. Mesmerising to watch. Something I'd like to do one day.
• How to butcher a whole loin of pork. Something else I'd like to do one day.
• How to Fillet a Rainbow Trout
• Four Men and a Pig: A Lesson in Italian Butchery. A fun watch including where some classic cured meats come from. Part 2 is also a good watch.

Leftover Chili and Eggs

This was a meal I ate post-workout last Saturday afternoon. I had some leftover chili in the fridge, which I wasn't sure what to do with, and I was getting sick of eating it with bowls of rice. So, taking a little inspiration from a shakshouka recipe I wanted to try a long time ago (but never did), I threw a few big spoonfuls of chili in a pan on a medium heat, let it reduce until most of the excess liquid was gone, dug a few holes in what was left, cracked a few eggs into the gaps, and let it all cook on a low-ish heat.

The house was smelling amazing, it was cold, and I was starving, so I ate the whole thing straight out of the pan with a few slices of heavy, doughy bread.

The chili wasn't from any specific recipe; just a bunch of red beans, onion, garlic, cheap beef, crushed tomatoes, cumin, Mexican chilli powder, cayenne pepper, paprika and salt thrown in the slow cooker for 12-16 hours.

I Love Food

I love food. Shocking, I know!

I've briefly blogged about food before. I often reblog pictures of food on my tumblr. I occasionally mention food on twitter. I frequently post photos of food I'm eating on instagram.

I come from Italian and Greek family where we've bonded around plates of pasta and spit-roasted lamb since forever.

Some of my favorite memories of Christmas Eve involve sitting outside with my cousins with plastic cutlery, no table and paper plates filled with warm pasta al forno (made by one of the nonna's), next to a few slices of honey ham, a few spoonfuls of extra cheesy scalloped potatoes, a few morsels of roasted vegetables and a ton of conversation about whatever's going on in our lives at that moment. My cousin, Matthew, and I both agree that tonight will be the night where we finally succeed in leaving no leftovers by the end of the night, although the result always suggests otherwise. Dessert is always creme caramel - a traditional favorite provided by my great aunty Mary at almost every family occasion for as long as I can remember - and Norma's Christmas speciality; pudding with some warm cream poured over the top and a spoonful of ice cream.

When I remember being sick as a child, I don't remember how long it took me to get to sleep with a blocked nose, or how many days off I had to take, or what medication I was prescribed by my doctor. I remember my nonna giving me a mug of warm milk with a spoonful of honey to help soothe my sore throat. I remember having slices of toast with ricotta cheese on top and a coffee for breakfast. I remember my mum making tons of rizogalo for me to eat throughout the day. And I still, as a 28 year old, crave these things as soon as I need to take a day off work for being sick.

My first thoughts when Orthodox Easter comes around are about eating magiritsa after midnight mass on the Saturday night/Sunday morning, cracking red-colored hard-boiled eggs at the church with my Greek family while standing outside in the cold because the church is tiny and there are hundreds of Greek's trying to get in, eating spit-roast lamb with rice and vegetables on the Sunday afternoon to the point of nearly exploding, and spending the next week or two eating a couple of slices of tsoureki with every coffee (and sometimes just having a coffee, so I can eat more tsoureki).

When it's time for the Christian/Catholic Easter, I think about eating fish and lentil soup with my mum and nonna on Good Friday.

Before he passed away, one of my nonno's favorite places to eat out at was the buffet at the Templestowe Hotel. The year after he passed away, on what would have been his 78th birthday, my nonna, my parents, my brother and my uncles and aunties and their children, and myself of course, all enjoyed a buffet dinner at his favorite place in his memory.

Nonna's riso al forno. My girlfriend's lamb stew (the first thing she ever cooked for me) and shepherd's pie. Mum's lamb chops with okra. Dad's soutzoukakia and seafood platter of calamari, scallops and mussels. Whenever I get the chance to request a meal, these are what come to mind first.

My girlfriend and I have had countless conversations about food; what to cook for ourselves, what to cook for our friends and family on XYZ occasion, what our favorite restaurants are, what our favorite childhood meals were, why I hate green peas and corn kernels (but not corn on the cob) so much.

I'm not sure what the entire point of this blog post is, other than to just talk about food. Maybe there isn't one. I was just thinking about how food is firmly ingrained into my life and memories. I may not remember the conversations, but I remember where I was, who I was with and what we ate. It's not just the food that I love, but also the memories that accompany the food.

Sandwiches; The Ultimate Manly Food

There's something special about meat and vegetables and cheese wrapped in some kind of bread. I think it's because you hold in you bare hands while you tear it apart with your mouth. By that logic, I guess ribs and wings fall into that camp too. It's just downright manly.

A few years ago, when I first started lifting weights, I used to train on Sunday mornings with a couple of mates for anywhere from from 2-4 hours, doing everything from lifting weights to sprinting and all kinds of cross-training at a nearby school.

And every Sunday afternoon, while totally exhausted and dying from hunger, I would fill one piece of lebanese flat bread with anything I could find in the fridge; ham, chicken, avocado, tomato, lettuce, greek yogurt, olives, cheese... anything! And I would eat it, right there in the kitchen. I wouldn't even go and sit down. I still don't.

Sometimes, we'd all eat together and buy a vienna loaf and fill it with bacon and eggs while we chatted about how painful our legs felt after doing walking lunges up and down a basketball court for half an hour.

It was a favorite post-workout meal in the beginning, and it's a favorite meal today. After strongman events training, there's not much more satisfying than a burger with a couple of beef patties, bacon, cheese and ton of lettuce stuffed into it.

That's about all I have to say. On Saturday morning I fly over to the US, the land of sandwiches, for a holiday with my girlfriend, and I've been hanging around in /r/eatsandwiches a little too much lately, so I have sandwiches on my mind.