Leg of Lamb with Tomatoes and Garlic

Last Sunday I wanted to make something we could enjoy during the week for leftovers, but what? I didn't have anything in particular in mind...I thought of Teena's random number generator (by which she selects recipes in moments like this) but not having a mathematician's tools I went with just opening the book and cooking whatever was on the page, if I hadn't made it already.

So, hello Leg of Lamb with Tomatoes and Garlic! Perfect!

OK, not completely perfect, because lamb is not the cheapest meat in the world and I just had to pretend I didn't see the $30-something price tag. And if you too are trying to eat as organically as possible, you should know that 8 heads of organic garlic are also kind of pricey.

This is one of those beautifully malleable recipes. The roasting part is pretty straightforward--you start off in a hot oven, then turn it down after 15 minutes to reasonable and cook the lamb til it's 135. Let me speak once again of my love for my remote digital oven thermometer--if you cook large cuts of meat in the oven and you don't have one yet, for the love of peter sagal why not?!?

And what gets cooked with the lamb? Tomatoes, rosemary and garlic--the tomatoes can be fresh or canned (I went with a large can that we had in the pantry); the garlic requires only that you remove the papery outsides; and the rosemary is just draped across the top of the lamb.

That's it!

The results--delicious, as you might suspect. Roasted garlic is a treat, and it's a winner paired with lamb and tomatoes. We ate this all week long, mostly cold.

If you want to try this at home (and the recipe is not on Epicurious but it ain't hard, people) my suggestions would be to cut the garlic back to 3-4 heads (and that only if you lurv garlic) and instead of draping whole rosemary sprigs, take a little bit of extra time to mince the rosemary and rub it into the lamb with some oil. I say this because the sprigs just kind of burned--not sure they contributed much more than blackened decoration.