Recipe - Salt Cured Leg Of Lamb (Spekemat)

3 pound Salt
4 qt Water (less if the leg is
smaller)
1 tablespoon Sugar
8 pound Leg of lamb

You will need a large saucepan and a large crock. Dissolve the salt in the
water to make a brine. Add the sugar. Put the leg of lamb in a large crock
and pour enough brine over it to cover it completely. Put a weight on top
to keep it underwater. Leave to take the salt in a cool pantry (not below
the freezing point, or the salting process comes to a halt) for 2 weeks for
a leg weighing 8 lbs (roughly 2 days per pound of meat.)

Take the leg out after the allotted time and rinse thoroughly so that you
do not get too salty a rind. Hang it out to dry in a wellaired cool
pantry, wrapped in a loose bag of cheesecloth or muslin to protect it from
flies. It will be dry, delicious, and ready to eat in 2 to 3 months.

Serve, cut or sliced up very thin with a sharp knife, as part of an indoor picnic
meal, with sweet butter, fresh hardboiled eggs, a sliver of 'geitost' (the
Norwegian sweet brown cheese), and flat bread or potato pancakes to wrap
around each morsel. A bowl of sour cream and some fresh raspberries can
follow as a replacement for Norwegian cloudberries.

Yield: 3 to 5 lbs dried meat. Allow One fourth pound of dried meat per person.
Time: Start 3 months before you need it; 20 minutes

From: "The Old World Kitchen The Rich Tradition of European Peasant
Cooking" by Elisabeth Luard, ISBN 0553052195 Posted by: Karin Brewer,
Cooking Echo, 7/92

From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at www.synapse.com/~gemini