Yum!

Our annual Thanksgiving meal was a success! The lamb was delicious. The butcher where we've been getting it for several years now is very good. He gets his beef, veal, and lamb from the Limousin region not far south of here. It's fascinating to watch him prepare a leg of lamb.

The lamb is cooked rare. Some of the pinkest parts will get cooked again as we eat the leftovers.

We painted the leg with olive oil and added ground pepper, allspice, dried thyme, and some hot red pepper flakes before roasting it for a little over an hour. Garlic and bay leaves helped flavor the juices. When the internal temperature reached 55ºC (about 130ºF), we took it out of the oven to rest for about fifteen minutes, covered.

Flageolets in front and green beans behind.

We served the lamb with flageolet beans. I read them described as white beans that haven't matured, so they're small and still green. We also had some green beans from our garden in the freezer, so we served those, too. After the main course, we ate a salad of Belgian endive and roasted beets with toasted walnuts, followed by a cheese course (petit basque, pont-l'évêque, and cantal) with figs. All was washed down with Beaujolais Nouveau. Dessert was, of course, pumpkin pie. We were both pretty full afterwards, but isn't that the point?