Roast Leg of Lamb with Garlic and Rosemary

The first lamb of spring arrives at the market sometime in late March, and you know it before you see it because the butcher is smiling. A whole leg, bone in, with a good cap of fat and that pale, clean look that only young lamb has. This is the roast that marks the turn of the season. The clocks have gone forward. The garden is waking up. There's rosemary on the bush by the back door that has been growing quietly all winter, waiting for exactly this.

Studding lamb with garlic and rosemary is one of those preparations that looks like technique but is really just common sense. A sharp knife, a few incisions, a sliver of garlic and some rosemary leaves pushed into each one. The aromatics melt into the meat as it roasts, scenting it from the inside. The kitchen fills with that particular smell, fat and herbs and heat, that makes people wander in from other rooms to ask what time lunch is.

I cook this every Easter without exception. The mint sauce is made from scratch, which takes five minutes and bears no resemblance to the bright green vinegar in a jar. The new potatoes, if the timing is right, are the first Jersey Royals of the year, boiled until they yield and tossed in butter. A recipe is a conversation, not a contract, and this one has been refined over thirty years of Sundays until it is exactly what it needs to be and nothing more.

I wrote it down in the notebook years ago. Just a line: lamb, garlic, rosemary, April, the table full. That was enough.