Coscia di Agnello Schiacciata sotto i Mattoni
La Coscia della Sposa (The Bride’s Thigh). Once upon a time, the panarda was a rustic sort of feast hosted by a farmer for his neighbors and friends, for his tribe. A feast whose substance was bread and lard—pane e lardo—the words meshed, dialectically, as panarda. Lard was a precious comestible, a potent winter fuel that could keep a body whole up there in the mountains. Thus, if a family had a pig to slaughter, it was a family blessed. And if this family was wont to share its sainted beast, even if only the herb-scented renderings of his fat spread on a trencher of honest bread, it was a festival cheered. Time and greater plenty swelled the proportions of the panarda, it growing into a flushed reveling, a Pantagruelian episode staged by one who desired to give thanks for some plague disarmed, some spiritual wound soothed. The panarda became a gastronomic pageant, a devout rite of Christendom quickened with mystical invocations—a duality, then and now, with which the Abruzzesi are at their ease. A wake, a wedding, a generous harvest, an homage—all these became motives to unfurl the festival, to illuminate, throughout its thirty courses, the inextinguishable Abruzzese ebullience. So fraught is the feast with the host’s honor and the honor of his forebears that guests at his panarda must take to heart the intricacies of the culture into which they have entered. He who does not is imperiled. Stories are recounted of one or another unwitting stranger, who, by the twenty-fifth or twenty-eighth plate, begged his leave from the table. It was then that the barrels of primitive muskets were leaned against the temple of the blunderer, these inspiring, pell-mell, the rediscovery of his appetite. Still, today, when one sits at a panarda table, one is bound to partake of any and all that is set before him. To this, I make personal testimony. Our induction into the rites of the panarda was at a country wedding near the city of L’Aquila, its thirty-two courses presented to nearly two hundred celebrants. Here follow the two dishes I loved best, the first for its straightforward symbolism and display of the ticklish Abruzzese humor, the second for its pure, seminal goodness.
Recipe information
Yield
serves 6
Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
In a small saucepan, warm the olive oil and scent it with the garlic, rosemary, chile, and fennel, leaving it on a gentle flame for a few minutes, taking care not to color the garlic.
Step 2
Place the prepared lamb in a large, noncorrosive baking dish and pour the warm oil over the lamb, rubbing it well into the flesh. Mix the wine with the vinegar and add it to the dish, rolling the lamb about in the liquids. Cover the lamb with plastic wrap and permit the lamb to rest in the marinade overnight at room temperature.
Step 3
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Build a wood or charcoal fire. When the oven is hot, heat two pizza stones or half a dozen quarry tiles for 1/2 hour. Remove the lamb from the marinade, drying it with absorbent paper towels and salting it generously.
Step 4
When the embers of the fire are red/white-hot, place the lamb on a rack, place the rosemary branches over it, and immediately place one of the heated stones or half of the tiles over the lamb. Keep the remaining stone or tiles hot in the preheated oven.
Step 5
Grill the lamb for 15 to 18 minutes. Remove the stone or the tiles and the rosemary branches, turn the lamb, add fresh rosemary branches and the reserved hot stone or tiles, and grill an additional 15 to 18 minutes or until the flesh is rosy and still dripping with its juices.
Step 6
Remove the lamb to a board that will hold its juices and carve it at table, serving it with thick slices of roasted onions dressed in good oil, oven-toasted bread, and cold white wine.
