Friend Chuck, that is a very authentically Italian way to prepare meatballs. No wonder everyone raved!
Review of my Christmas dinner...it was, in one word, successful! There wasn't a single dish that I wouldn't rate either very good or outstanding! I was so pleased!! First, to talk about the main event, the leg of lamb was magnificent. Instead of buying it at a supermarket, I went to a meat store. Now that I live in a cosmopolitan area of Denver, it's easy to go to specialty stores. I first selected what I thought was leg of lamb from the freezer and brought it to the counter. The people there informed me that I was not buying leg of lamb, but lamb shanks instead. They showed me the one leg of lamb that they had and it seemed huge. It was 11 pounds of meat. I looked at it, took a big breath and said "I'll take it" even though I didn't think it would fit in my refrigerator or oven. But it was such a magnificent piece of meat that I couldn't resist!
I got the LOL home, all protected in its plastic wrapper, and it just barely fit across the lower shelf of my fridge. On Tuesday evening, I plopped it in a salt brine in a cooler and put it outside where it was just below freezing overnight. Then, late on Wednesday (Christmas eve) I rinsed off the LOL and put it back in the fridge to air dry. On Christmas morning, I rubbed olive oil over it and stuck it with slits in which I placed slivers of garlic and dried rosemary. I placed it in a 325 degree oven in late morning and by 1 pm it had achieved 145 degrees Fahrenheit. I took it out of the oven and let it rest for 10 minutes. Then, I warmed a ladle full of Pernod over a gas flame, dipped the ladle to set the liqueur on fire, and poured it over the LOL. The rosemary popped and exuded its fragrance while the flame danced. I then carved and served the lamb with horseradish and mint jelly. The gravy came later....