Quiet Christmas

Tanya got the unhappy news that her Uncle Paddy has passed away. He had been unwell for a while but it was still a shock. He'll be missed, he was quite a character.

Tanya has flown home for the funeral in Cairns and her parents are meeting her there.

We'd planned to have dinner on Christmas Eve with our good friends Weaver & Andrea (who're East Coast transplants). I'd planned to cook an Aussie lamb roast for Christmas dinner and we decided to stick with it.

I bought a full leg of lamb without really thinking it through. When I got to A&W's place I discovered the leg wouldn't fit in their largest baking dish.

I'd called home to wish everyone merry Christmas and mentioned my predicament to both Liam and Dad. They had very different solutions and I ended up going with Dad's, which involved more knife work (bone the leg out and place the bone on the bottom of the pan) but less violent whacking with a meat mallet (Liam suggested paring the meat back and then breaking the leg).

After making several incisions in the meat and stuffing them with slices of garlic the lamb was ready for a beer bath. I'd picked up a bottle of St Peters Organic Golden Ale and poured the whole bottle over the lamb in the baking tray.

The veggies were 'unique'. Andrea and I had a bit of a communication failure (and several glasses of wine) and the sweet potato got finely diced :)

It all worked out pretty well. Cooking a full leg of lamb for three people was a tiny bit of overkill but it did leave us with lots of leftovers.