Last night, after returning from a conference in SoCal, I prepared two late winter specialties. Jean had had a hankering for leg of lamb and our local butcher shop happened to have one available, so that became Sunday night menu fodder. After removing the fell and trimming the fat, I rubbed the meat with a mixture of kosher salt, cracked pepper and (dried) rosemary, inserted a couple dozen slivers of garlic into incisions made in the meat and slathered EVOO all over. I roasted it in the convection oven, starting it off at high temp (450 F), then roasting at 325 F with convection. The result was a marvelous crusty exterior (enough to make this devoted rare meat lover eat some of the exterior). Using a digital meat thermometer, I removed it from the oven when the probe, inserted near to the bone deep into the leg, showed an internal temperature of 115 F, giving us rare meat near the bone and medium-rare (Jean's preference) nearer to the surface.With temperatures in these parts now reaching highs in the 50s (and lows in the high 20s), I deemed it high time that Andrew and I made our first attempt at making maple syrup from the two sugar maples growing outside our house. Following the advice of Univ of Vermont's ag outreach program (teh Interwebs is a great thing), I drilled a 1/2" hole 2" deep into the tree at a convenient height, inserted a tap into the hole and hung metal pails on the taps and covered the pails with aluminum foil to keep out rain, bugs and twigs. Sure enough a slow drip of colorless sap began from each tap. By evening time, one of the pails was full, so I took it inside (replacing a second pail under the tap) to reduce it down to syrup. Although the advice says to do this outside because of all the humidity released, on the scale that we were doing this, it presented no problem doing it in the kitchen (and, frankly, at this time of year we need all the humidity that we can get). Using my digital meat thermometer as a high precision candy thermometer, I inserted the probe into the liquid and began to boil it down. Accurate temperature readings are important as they are the only reliable means for judging when the proper concentration has been reached -- unless one has a hygrometer handy. The sap began to boil at 210 F (we're at elevation here), so boiling was continued until the temperature reached 217 F, the all important thing being the 7° rise in boiling temperature. As these things happen, the liquid boiled at 210 for nearly two hours, then rose to the final temperature within a 5 minute period, making extreme vigilance during those final moments extremely crucial. The syrup, not nearly as dark as the commercial stuff, was poured hot into a sterilized canning jar to the top, then sealed. Our yield from that first 3 gallon pail was 12 fl oz of syrup (which corrsponds to increasing the sugar level from an initial 3% w/v to a final 66% w/v). According to the literature, we can expect to get about a quart of maple syrup from each tree. The taste of this initial batch was not nearly as intense as the commercial stuff, reminding me more of corn syrup than maple syrup. We'll see if later batches are any different.
Mark Lipton
). No, I've never brined lamb, as usually I'm cooking rack of lamb -- this was the first intact leg I've cooked in a decade or longer. Usually, I'm grilling butterflied legs given a rub with a paste of herbs in EVOO. I do like brining as a technique and was sorely tempted recently to brine a goose before finally settling on an air drying of the skin instead. If I ever get a leg of lamb before the day of cooking, I'll probably give brining a shot.
