What shall we do with the drunken Scotsman?

No stereotyping intended – at least two of them did get drunk. I should explain. Forthe last couple of years, our local recreational soccer league for kids has hired a team of young scotsmen (and a woman but she had already gone back to Scotland) to help inexperienced coaches coach kids in our league. They are all great people and great coaches. But they are young, keen on sports and Scottish – so they like their drink.

We and our friends hold a dinner party for them every year as a way of saying thank you and I get asked to make roast lamb. Last year I did a traditional red wine, garlic and herb lamb but this year I pulled out all the stops. I had the lamb marinated with a mixture of honey, mustard, garlic, rosemary and red wine. My assistant took it upon herself to add soy sauce to the marinade. This is always a surprisingly runny marinade because for some reason when you mix honey and mustard together you get something far more runny than either of them is seperately.

Grilled honey-mustard leg of lamb

I used three legs of lamb – each about three to four pounds butterflied (leg bone removed). I usually get them already butterflied because the lamb usually costs the same with or without the bone where I live. Marinate for at least two hours. Set up your preferred grill (large kettle in my case with charcoal) and let it get nice and hot. Brush the grate with olive oil and set the lamb on it skin/fat side down. Cover and adjust to keep hot but not blasing flames. Typically you need to grill for about twenty minutes per side for a four pound butterflied leg of lamb. But test and keep testing when you get near the end. You want the middle still red but not jelly-raw-like. I got it really right this time. Nice rich deep red-brown on the outside, pink shading just to red in the middle.

In the meantime simmer the rest of the marinade sauce gently. If it is too strong on honey or mustard, add more red wine to thin down to a decent taste.

We served this with a rice pilau made in the rice cooker with lots of onion, garlic, black peppercorns, cloves and cardamom seeds. I also did my usual mix of greens – in this case mustard, collard, spinach and arugula with lots of garlic, red chilli flakes and ginger plus soy sauce and balsamic vinegar. We also had the infamous cilantro sauce.

The Scots lads also had several six packs of beer (Fat Tire, Negro Modello, Guinness, Harp Lager and Red Tail Ale) and we all had a couple of nice pinot noirs. Or maybe it was three. It was hard to keep track of the lads’ prodigious intake. They liked the food too.