Leg of Lamb Cooked Over New Potatoes with Spicy Mint-Rum Sauce
Cookbook author and scholar Jessica B. Harris serves this roast leg of lamb cooked over a bed of new potatoes as the centerpiece of her Bastille Day dinner party, which she has traditionally hosted to open up her summers on Martha's Vineyard. Dried lavender and fresh thyme lend floral, woodsy flavor to fresh garlic cloves in a simple paste created on the cutting board. The paste seasons the lamb before cooking and helps the dried spice crust stick to the meat. The mint sauce — what Harris calls a "jazzed-up mint jelly" made by cooking mint jelly in a skillet with a splash of rum and jalapeño — will appear very thin when hot but thickens to a glaze as it cools. If you like, serve the leg of lamb and potatoes as Harris does, alongside string beans and a salad of fresh island lettuces mixed with avocado chunks and blueberries, followed by lemon chess pie for dessert.
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Recipe Summary
Ingredients
Directions
Make Ahead
Leftover spicy mint-rum sauce can be stored in an airtight container up to 2 days. Reheat over warm before serving.
Note
The shank-end lamb leg is not a standard cut; it refers to a lamb leg with the butt of the leg removed. It cooks faster than a larger whole leg and still offers a beautiful bone-in presentation. A grocery store butcher counter can prepare this precise cut upon request, or you can substitute a 3- to 4-pound whole leg of lamb or bone-in shoulder. Different brands' herbes de Provence blends will have different ratios of herbs and levels of coarseness, so we recommend Simply Organic for this recipe.
Suggested Pairing
Peppery, dark-fruited Sonoma Zinfandel: Valravn Sonoma County