Today we were having family & friends over to celebrate my sons birthday. I was preparing a lamb on a spit and with Greek Easter (and Aussie one as well) just around the corner I got a bit nostalgic and found this photograph taken in the last 1970′s.
Taken in the backyard of our home, there’s a number of items of interest in this photo. It would have been taken Easter Sunday, a day Greeks celebrate by cooking a lamb on a spit. The spit itself consisted of a souvla, and everything else was made from items scrounged around the yard. The fire was enclosed in concrete bricks, the souvla itself was held up by two iron bars tied together with wire, the old “hoover” bottom right used to blow air onto the coals to speed up the heating process. A couple bags of coal (bottom left) in readiness to keep the fire burning. Most importantly, even at a young age I knew how vital it was to keep hydrated when cooking, the amber ale even back then was my choice of beverages.
Lamb Spit is one of my favourite foods, actually any bit of meat cooked on an open flame makes me act like Pavlov’s dogs, but lets not go there now. Moving forward 30 years to today, I’ve decided to document & photograph the entire process, I’ll call it my Greek Easter Lamb on a Spit recipe.
Firstly, get yourself a lamb (stating the blatantly obvious), however there is a few things to look out for. You don’t want one that is too fatty, however you do want it to have good thighs & shoulders, with plenty of meat on them which of course comes with a bit of fat, so there is a bit of a balancing act between meaty & fat. I proudly support our state farmers from New South Wales. My butcher can actually order lambs from Mexico Victoria (south of the border) if we wanted to.
From here on, I will refer to “the lamb” as Terry. Actually, every lamb on a spit I cook is called Terry in reference to a great league player that had his prime in the 80′s.
First thing I do is clean a whole head of garlic (you read that right, a whole head, not just a clove) and slice them into thin wedges. Soak them in olive oil, salt, cracked pepper, and to give it a Greek / Australian flavour, both oregano & rosemary.
Rehydrate – Crown Lager
Terry comes in at just over 14 kilograms, lay him out to prepare. Ideally you do this the night before to let the marinade soak in. Lay Terry out on a table, and make sure all you hardware is washed & dried.
Mount the fork into the shoulders, then tie the front legs into the frame.
Force the U bolt into the middle of the back, then tie it off with the wing nuts. Notice at this stage I have also thrown about 3-4 handfuls of rock salt into Terry’s cavity.
Mount the rear legs onto the frame.
Now throw a few whole lemons and onions inside the cavity and get ready to stitch Terry up. Before you do however, grab a handful of the garlic mix you created and massage it into the inside walls of the cavity, leave the garlic bits inside.
Many people use wire to stitch Terry up and tie him to the frame, in my opinion I think there are health risks with having food in contact with bits of wire you buy at a hardware store and exposing it to heat for 4-5 hours. I use a quality cooking twine and the hardware is all stainless steel.
It’s pretty obvious why I’ll never be a surgeon.
Rehydrate – James Boag
Now comes the fun bit. Using a sharp knife, cut into Terry at an acute angle just below the skin, and shove in a piece of garlic. Use your fingers and stick it in as far as it goes, doesn’t matter if you crush the garlic, all the better.
Do this on all the meaty parts, shoulders, thighs, neck and on both sides of the spine. If you run out of garlic before you run out of places to stab Terry then you’re doing great.
Once you have finished with the garlic, you should have a bowl of olive oil with the herbs left. Pour this onto your hands and massage Terry’s entire body.
Your needle may not be stainless, if that is the case, after washing it wrap it in a napkin soaked in olive oil & you won’t have a problem with it next time you need to use it.
Rehydrate – Cascade Premium
Get Terry out of the fridge at least a few hours before you start to cook him, ideally he should be at room temperature when you put him on the coals.
The first hour is the most critical, have Terry up high and keep an eye on him. If too many juices are flowing out then the heat is too much and you need to back it down. Ideally, you will have drops of juices falling off for the entire cooking process, around 4-5 hours.
The secret to a great lamb spit is to C O O K I T S L O W L Y , ensuring the juices are still in there until the end so that it doesn’t dry up.
In about an hour, you need to get the blessing ready. In a bowl, mix 50/50 freshly squeezed lemon juice with olive oil, and smother it with salt, cracked pepper, oregano and rosemary. Use a stalk of oregano (or basil) as a basting brush.
Rehydrate – Hann Premium
Now every 20 minutes or so, bless Terry making sure you get plenty of blessing on the meaty parts of his body.
Something I should have mentioned earlier, however it’s more noticeable in this photo. Terry is pretty lean around the ribs and stomach. For this reason the coals are mainly placed at the two ends of the spit where the meaty parts are, the heat generated from the ends is enough to cook the lean parts in the middle.
Rehydrate – what was I up to?
Terry with a beautiful tan, and the meat starting to come off the bone, mostly noticeable around the shoulder blades, shoulders and thighs, he’s just about ready.
My watermark hides the coals, but I do use real charcoal for cooking, not those artificial petrochemical ones created in a factory. If Terry makes the ultimate sacrifice for my culinary delights, the least I can do for him is to sacrifice a tree or two to get real charcoal to cook him.
Get Terry off the fire and start hacking into the carcass. Ideally your guests will have grabbed plates with salads and fillers and will be grabbing bits of lamb as it’s being cut, it’s best when served hot & fresh.
That t-shirt reminds me, it’s time to re-hydrate (my face wasn’t red because of the heat).
One of the disadvantages of being bi-lingual is not being able to find a single word in English to match a word in Greek, the expression for what you see in this image (and what it tasted like) is LOUKOUMI. If you don’t know what that means, suggest you grab a Greek mate and ask.
Huge thanks to my beautiful wife who as usual looked after EVERYTHING else while I only looked after the meat, her efforts are fantastic.
Now since this is the first recipe I’ve ever posted, I would love to hear some feedback. Use the comments / leave a reply on this post. Link to this page (http://blog.johnkapaniris.com/2008/03/01/lamb-spit-greek-easter/) if you have a website or your writing something in a forum. If enough interest is shown, I will start to post some more of my recipe’s. The next one I have in mind is a joint effort I make with my wife, Stuffed Lamb Fore Quarter which is cooked in a Weber barbecue. Bet you haven’t heard of that one before?
