Easter lamb and ham, scaled to suit your crowd
The Easter table's main attractions — lamb by the leg, ham bigger than a diver's helmet — are built to feed a crowd. But options for a modest holiday gathering can be rustled up more easily these days, thanks to the availability of tidy lamb roasts in netting and an up-and-coming fresh ham alternative.
Spring is the season to buy fresh lamb, as you'll be rewarded with more flavor than a frozen cut yields. The shoulder is a juicier and chewier cut than the leg, so slow-roasting and braising are the optimal ways to cook it. A rolled-and-tied boneless leg needs to spend less time in the oven per pound than a shoulder, and it cooks more evenly than a butterflied leg with its thick and thin sections of meat. It can be trimmed to fit almost any appetite, but via your butcher or local farmers market purveyor you'll find a less expensive alternative in the lamb breast — the flat and fatty cut atop lamb ribs. It can be rolled as well, and is even more receptive to developing flavor through spices and stuffing.
The headliner of chef Will Morris's Easter menu at Vermilion in Alexandria, Virginia, this year will be tender, rosy slices from a boneless lamb roast rubbed with a paste of garlic and mint. He has streamlined the preparation with a relatively short time for flavor infusion and exterior slathering only; no need to unroll the roast you bring home. He turns pan juices into a jus while the meat rests.
Ham, the huge cut from the pig's hind leg, became an Easter tradition because the legs that were hung in the fall to cure in smokehouses would be ready by spring. Fresh hams are more available but are still a rare find in grocery stores because they are more perishable than other large cuts of pork. Their size is the main drawback; at 20 to 25 pounds, fresh ham is a tough choice for a smaller crowd.
For the past few years, Wagshal's Market butcher Pam Ginsberg has offered butterflied and rolled front-leg sections of pork as a fresh ham alternative. They have less girth and, to her mind, more flavor than what comes from the back leg. If you're familiar with the anatomy, you know she's cutting into the source of the picnic/butt/shoulder. You can call it a ham roast and excuse any nitpicky terminology types from the table.
She likes stuffing it with leeks before tying the roast tight, tight, tight — three knots and pulls of the twine each time. It's enough to cause the skin to gather. Speaking of, a benefit of this cut is that fat cap and skin, which keeps the meat moist as it cooks and, treated to high heat at the end, is rendered crispy enough to cut into bits and make one decadent garnish.
Now's the time to place your orders with producers and butchers, and to explore ways to use smaller cuts. Here are two ways to go for small lamb and ham roasts.