Buttermilk Leg of Lamb with the Meadow Sel Gris

The sheep is one of the first animals domesticated by mankind. For about ten thousand years, we’ve been living together and feeding each other. The true testament to the strength of our relationship is that it hasn’t changed much. The passion is still alive. One secret to this longlived tryst is that sheep are uniquely unwilling to give up their sheepy flavor, so that every time we eat them it’s like a first date, or the first time, or an earlier time, or a mythic time. We’ve domesticated the gaminess out of most everything we eat, but every time we toss a leg of lamb on the fire we grow bushy and wild, our countenance waxing fierce amid the ghostly tendrils of burning fat and smoky mountain herbs. And after we toil over the flaming coals, the table is laid, the tapers lit, the dark wine poured. Aromatic and rackling—golden on the outside; savagely, voluptuously rosy on the inside—a leg of lamb is a meal of the ages. Salting a leg of lamb should be approached with anticipation and reverence; this is one of the truly sacred uses of a coarse and lusciously moist salt—in other words, sel gris—in both the cooking and the inishing of the food. Any good, moist sel gris will work here, but I cannot resist calling for my own true love, the rather obscure but sublimely supple salt we have adopted as our house sel gris at The Meadow. The zesty flavors of Parameswaran’s pepper—a whirl of eucalyptus, celery seed, lemon peel, and cedar—is likewise a point of precision that can lend yet more depth to the flavors of the dish.