Rosemary and lamb. A perfect combination.
Suggestions:
- Other/or mixture of herbs can be used along with rosemary. Rinse them and use them wet to line your oven pan.
- Chicken and pork can be used the same way, cut off excess from pork.
- It is worth it to invest in a meat thermometer. It gives you your desired stage of cooking and keeps the guessing and disappointment out of oven roasted pieces.
- A piece of meat does shrink alot when roasted at high temperature. But it is still tender and juicy. If you want less shrinkage, bake for longer at 150-160 °C.
- Temperatures for lamb: (taken from “La grand Larousse gatronomique)
- rare: from 60-62 °C (very pink with pink juices still running)
- medium: from 62-64°C (pink with clear juices running)
- well done: >64°C (slightly pink to completely cooked/gray)
“You smell like rosemary“, said our daughter when she hugged me at the train station. I bloomed. I liked the thought of smelling like rosemary. It says…mother. Care . Childhood. Home. Remembrance.
Later that night, after our dinner of rosemary lamb and catching up on her life as a young working woman, I lay in bed dwelling on her words and my thoughts drifted off. I dreamed how wonderful it would be if our daughters would talk about us one day along the lines of something like this:
“My mother was cook in the kitchen. My father was cook at the barbecue. And between them grew a rosemary bush. I have my own rosemary bush now and when I walk past it and feel my legs brushing the leaves, a heady fragrance envelops me making me feel lightheaded with memories. I smell my mother after her fiddling in the garden among her roses and herbs and I see my father bending over the rosemary bush, cutting and snipping leaves for his lamb cutlets. Our mealtimes were festively spent around a table in the garden, or in the summer kitchen by die barbecue or under the walnut tree overlooking hills or elegantly candle lit in the dining room or simple and homey around the kitchen table. I recall hours of inventing new recipes, cooking and preparing, tasting wines, all the while eating at pretty set tables around laughter and jokes, teasing and chatting and many a times heart-to-heart talks.
I have no doubt, that there where they are now, they still reign as queen of the kitchen and king of the barbecue. And between them, a rosemary bush grows high and lush”.
…Hartman’s handmade rosemary brush- a piece of copper piping, a string pulled through to the other side with a loop…
…snip some rosemary branches and tie the one end of the string around…
…pull at the other end of the string, fix the stems inside the copper pipe and cut the tips to form a firm brush – baste your meat with melted butter, marinade…
…voilà a fresh rosemary brush…
…some rosemary folie for a home- in teapots, in a jug, on a door, on linen, as a kebab, on oven roasted vegetables, with preserved quince…
..until next time!!..
Myfrenchkitchen 
