GREEK EASTER LAMB ON A SPIT

2 weeks before Easter:
Order lamb from butcher. Has to be whole lamb, including head, gutted and cleaned of all the offal etc and with the hooves cut off. Ideally no more than 10kg in total.

Good Saturday:
Pick up lamb from butcher. Make sure you get separately the animal's lace-like fat covering of the belly. Using long spit (7-8 foot) with a handle at one end, skewer it up the fundament, along the spine, up under the jaw and through the top of the head. Using strongish wire and pliers, tie hind legs together and anchor onto the spit using a U-clamp with protruding spikes. Cross front legs and tie with wire to the spit. Use another U-clamp to anchor head to the spit. Finally, using wire tie the spine tight to the spit (halfway along) and also tie the neck to the spit. All that is done so that the lamb will not slide up and down the spit (or indeed around it) during the cooking.

Stand spit and lamb upright, turn garden hose on and wash thoroughly in- and out. Lay flat, belly up, between two chairs. Rub salt, pepper and oregano inside the belly. Drop into the belly 5-6 quartered lemons, several large hunks of bread and fist-sized pieces of cheese (NOT feta, one of the yellow cheeses, cheddar will do). Using a sack-needle and twine, sew up the belly tight.

With a pointed knife make a dozen deep stabs in the fleshier parts of the animal and stuff a pinch of oregano and a clove of garlic in each.

Rub salt, pepper and oregano over all of the outside of the animal. Tie the lace-of-fat that you obtained separately onto the back of the lamb, for self-basting. Cover completely with a dampened large sheet and let it rest SOMEWHERE HIGH AND OUT OF REACH OF OTHER ANIMALS, ANTS ETC till Sunday morning. The dampened sheet is most important; if you forget this, your lamb will dry up and be more like lamb jerky!

Go to church at midnight, having fasted all day, then have fireworks, come home and eat Easter soup (best not to ask what's in it). Sleep for 6 hours, then

Easter Sunday:
As soon as you wake up, take spade, go into the garden, dig 4-5 foot long trench (and 1 foot deep), fill with charcoal (or even better with pine and vine branches), set fire to it. Coffee and a cigarette, do your ablutions and get dressed. By the time you come back, the fire will have settled into embers (if it hasn't, wait!). Concentrate the embers away from the middle of the trench and towards the two ends. Stick two Y-shaped supports for the spit into the ground at either end of the trench, get a stool and a magazine (to shield your face from the heat), put the spit on the supports and start turning like buggery (abt 2 or 3 turns/second), for at least 90 minutes, all the while making sure the lamb doesn't "catch" (get burned) unevenly. Baste with olive oil mixed with salt, pepper and oregano (or rather get someone else to do it, you're too busy turning the spit and cannot stop).

After about 90 mins the lamb should have taken on a nice first colour. Slow down the turning to abt 1 turn/sec for 30 mins, then to 2 secs/turn for another hour and for the last one or two hours the rate can be 3-4 secs/turn. Total cooking time = 4 to 5 hours. Add 30 mins to 1 hour for getting the fire ready and another 30 mins for slicing the meat off the spit and generally dismembering the lamb, that means starting up at 7am if you want to eat at 2pm.

While all of that is happening, kind people will bring you glasses of ouzo or wine, various tidbits (meze) to nibble, others will come to take over the truning from you (stints of 20-30 mins max), there will be music and perhaps some dancing, and at least one drunk uncle will get out his hunting shotgun and shoot off a tile from the roof by accident.

By 2pm the lamb is ready, you are stuffed with tidbits and a little drunk all being well, you all sit at the table and think "there's no way I can eat all this now".

But you do.