Originally Posted by
Shutree
I stuck the lamb in the fridge for two days then out onto the drainer for five hours to warm it up. When I opened it I realised that the Makro staff who had been debating what buttons to push for the lamb had priced it as pork. It should have been over B400 and they had sold it to me for a quarter of that. Such is fate.
Now the gf is not wild about lamb, she'll eat it well done and she doesn't want the smell in the house. No problem, I took the larger air fryer to the outside kitchen. It is one of those glass bowl things, I don't know if it has a special name. I also have a basket style air fryer which lives inside and is not big enough anyway for a kilo of meat.
Thus prepared, I set about creating the recipe and soon had a foil-wrapped lump of lamb sitting in the air fryer. I added some time to the recipe, allowing 90 minutes overall, and I bumped the setting up to 180C. I had a plan. Then I had a cocktail.
As we know, most plans evaporate upon first contact with the enemy. After 20 minutes I went to turn the meat over, which is tricky because I don't have a tool or a technique to lift a hot lump out of a hot bowl. I found some tongs and with the aid of some strong language I got the thing rolled over. Another cocktail was required as I pondered just how many times this recipe needed the meat to be moved.
The second lift was much harder because by this time the juices were leaking from the upturned foil. Recipes never focus on the practical challenges. Lifting the lump was one thing, turning the fat covered, foil bundle was another. Shouting abuse at it didn't help much. Eventually I got it right side up without burning off any fingers, then I basted it with the oil/soy/mint/worcestershire sauce, failed to wrap the foil back tidily and retreated to the aircon for a cocktail, or maybe two.
We were on the home stretch. Another 20 minutes and another trip outside to remove the foil. Ha! Easier said than done but done it was. The heat and the mosquitoes were no match for the master chef. What to do in the final half hour of browning the meat except to sip on another cocktail?
Time was up and I collected my carving board and the jug with the lamb stock ready to become a rich gravy with all those meat juices from the air fryer. When I opened the door, the air ouside was filled with a thick cloud of termites. Where had they come from? There had been no rain that day and no termites the night before. They were in my hair, in my face, wriggling down my shirt. I was breathing through clenched teeth to avoid swallowing them. I battled on and retrieved the meat. Meanwhile the termite air force was making kamikaze attacks on the gravy jug. I got the meat onto the board with a few spuds and carrying the board with two hands I arrived at the door which I would open with my third hand. Feck! Only have two hands. Call for assistance without opening mouth. Door opens and a zillion termites head for the bright lights of the kitchen. I dived in, saving the meat and leaving the termite gravy to its fate.
By this time, the termite attack was in full swing, they were swarming through the sliding window frames. The room seemed filled with the things. We had to turn out the lights. I was now walking on a wriggling carpet of termites as I found the smallest light possible to see where to cut the meat without adding too many insects to the dish. The meat was cooked well at the ends, too medium for the gf at the centre, so I sliced off the ends to eat and cut the remainder into two pieces, one of which went into the indoor air fryer. At the last moment I remembered we had a new oil spray bottle and a quick spray of the air fryer basket was needed.
Now, it is possible that the cocktails up to this point might have impaired my mental acuity and it is possible that the oil bottle has a confusing shape. Whatever the reason, I directed a strong squirt of oil in exactly the opposite direction from the air fryer. It sprayed over my shoulder and gravity helped it find a wide area of the kitchen floor. I thought this immensely amusing, the gf not.
I got some lamb onto a couple of plates and tiptoed through the teeming termite lake and around the oil slick. Finally, dinner, in the dark. Without gravy. My end pieces turned out to be barely edible hunks of fat. There was rather a lot of cleaning up required. The resident geckoes should be happy, they got termites with EVOO for dinner.
Most of the meat is now in the fridge. I'll probably make a curry with it. The gf doesn't much care for lamb and doesn't like curry at all, so I think I am on to a winner with this one.
(No. Of course there aren't any more pics.