Butterflied Lamb with Pesto Mayo & Roasted Tomato Salad

Yes, I'm alive!  Sorry for the silence people - no excuses, but have just been a bit busy.  So, last weekend (the one before the one just gone) I made an absolutely delicious Sunday night dinner, if I say so myself. 

I had a lovely butterflied leg of lamb from Drover's Choice (beautiful meat), which I marinated in red wine, garlic, rosemary, parsley, bit of olive oil, cumin & chilli flakes.




This looked clearer on the camera

 While the lamb was marinating, I decided to roast the cherry tomatoes produced in my garden - yay!  Mainly because I'm not a big lover of cherry tomatoes.  Some might ask why I grew them ... because I wanted to see if I could, ok?  However, I am a big fan of semi-dried tomatoes, so I thought if I roasted them in the oven then let them cool down, they'd be lovely in a salad.  So I halved them & put them on an oven tray, drizzled with olive oil, sprinkle of salt & pepper & some thyme sprigs (also from the garden). 

Then into a hot oven.  They came out like this.

So, while all this was going on I realised I didn't have anything to serve on the side with the lamb ... some kind of sauce.  Of course not strictly necessary, but I still prefer something.  Normally when I do lamb like this I make up a tzatziki kind of thing, but I did not have any yohgurt.  Hmmm, what to do.  We did have mayonnaise though - proper whole egg mayo.  So, while I was pondering this, Jamie Oliver was on TV in the background & he started talking about making pesto.  This gave me a sudden flash of inspiration - Pesto Mayo it is!  I failed to take any photos of this, but rest assured we were both super-impressed with how well this went with the lamb.



Salad of mixed baby leaves, spanish onion, parmesan shavings & my oven-roasted cherry tomatoes

 So, I'm not going to tell you how long to cook the lamb on the BBQ as it totally depends on how big the piece of lamb is, your personal taste & your BBQ.  And also I can't remember now how long I cooked it for.  However, I did sear it for a few minutes on each side, then turned the heat right down (and turned the burners off directly underneath the meat) and closed the lid.  This creates a nice combination BBQ grill plate/oven effect.



Lot of juice-pooling going on while it rested!

 

Serve with a lovely bottle of red.  This was one of the wines from our wedding.  No, there's none left over (although we do still have some champagne!) - I saw it in the bottle shop & bought it to have with this lamb.

Mmmm, I just love lamb.  What's your favourite way of cooking lamb?