Wilhelm Coetzee's Butterflied Leg of Lamb

I first met winemaker Wilhelm Coetzee back in 2006 when he was working for Flagstone. He's now working at Durbanville Hills and this is his favourite 'braii' recipe.

"In South Africa a lot of our lamb meat comes from the "Karoo" (an arid but beautiful part of our country and a place where the farmers are very passionate about their meat). The shrubs that these lamb feed on (free range) is very herbaceous and spicy, so when you buy the meat it's already tender with a natural herby/spicy character. For the recipe you need a small leg of lamb (1.3kg), deboned and butterflied.

The marinade:
500ml Bulgarian yogurt
2 cloves of garlic finely chopped
1 tbsp of grounded coriander seeds
1 tsp of grounded cumin
1 small onion finely chopped

Mix all the ingredients together, keep half of it aside (store in a airtight vessel) to serve with the barbequed lamb, cover the lamb with the rest, put in a plastic bag remove the air and leave in the fridge for two days.

Before you barbeque, remove the lamb from the bag and wipe off excess marinade with paper towel.

Basting sauce for the barbeque:
250g good quality unsalted butter
100ml Verjuice
1 clove garlic finely chopped

Put the ingredients in a saucepan and melt the butter over a low heat.

Barbeque over medium hot coals but not too close to the heat. Turn after 10 minutes, baste, and season well with Maldon salt and black pepper. After another 10 minutes turn again and do the same as above. Now you can start turning every 5 minutes, basting after every turn. Take the lamb off the coals when medium done (about 50 minutes) and let it rest for 10 minutes. Slice thinly and serve with the marinade that was kept aside. (What I also like to serve with the meat is a fresh coriander pesto made with salted pistachio nuts instead of pine nuts).

With the leg of lamb I like to serve oven roasted vegetables. I prefer to use red and yellow veggies like:
Red and yellow peppers
Red onion
Nice sweet tomatoes
Butternut squash
Carrots

Just drizzle with olive oil, season and pop into the oven at 200 degrees C until they're tender (about 40-45 minutes)

To complete the color scheme do a salad of green baby leaves and parmesan shavings, squeeze some fresh lemon over and drizzle with olive oil.

To all this you add good friends and wine and have a feast!

Wine to serve with this:
Originally Wilhelm suggested the Flagstone Dragon Tree 2004 (a blend of Cabernet, Pinotage, Shiraz and Merlot) as the ideal match but since he moved to Durbanville Hills he's loyally suggesting the Durbanville Hills Bastion 2011, a smooth, minty Cabernet Shiraz blend (not currently available in the UK so far as I can make out but any similar Cape blend or Cabernet blend would do)

Image © sumos - Fotolia.com

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