Ben's lamb dinner

As the saying goes, the direct path to a guy's heart is through his stomach. I didn't broach the topic, but he brought up throwing a dinner party at his place. "I can cook," I eagerly offer my homemaking services. "What would you like me to make at your dinner party?" "Our dinner party," he counters. "You invite your friends and I'll invite my friends. Should we invite couples or keep it a singles' party?" Was there ever a more loaded question?

We decided on leg of lamb. A classic family style roast with prewritten gender roles of the female netting the lamb and the ceremonious craving of the meat table side by the man of the house, in this case his newly renovated home in the midlevels. Invites were sent, a date set, and lamb ordered from New Zealand. Only one problem. I've never made lamb in my whole life. I grew up on American beef. Lamb was not a staple where I'm from. And honestly I would have winged it if I didn't like him so much.

But because I somehow thought that if I could deliver the perfect meal he would somehow like me as much, I drove myself insane crafting the perfect meal. Nights were lost studying cookbooks, I even bought the Jamie Oliver DVD box set for one recipe. Except the DVD showed a butterflied leg of lamb, and in my fantasy dinner party, rather our fantasy dinner party, I had imagine an entire leg, bone and all. Arg, frustrated, I write to Jamie Oliver posing my delimma. I was half surprised that he wrote back with a recipe with called for XXX, well that doesn't seem right.

I ran this idea by XXXX of Michelin starred Amber. "This guy, what is he?" Richard asks. "Aussie," I say. "Well you can't serve an Aussie a leg of lamb with XXX. Jamie's a Brit, the Aussies do it differently" He proceeded to run a laundry list of how make the perfect leg of lamb but of course this is Richard XXX of two michelin star rambling, I'll never be able to recreate this at home.

I buy two legs from XXX in Causeway Bay on the suggestion of my dinner party-cohost. One will have to be a test run. Now, I know my way around the kitchen and I'm not afraid to improv, but this leg of lamb scared the shit out of me. So much so I kept pulling it in and out of my freezer several times.

I was picking up Italian tomatoes from Sicily to practice a salad I've made a million times when the phone rings, it's XXX him; "Hey, how's it going?" "Everything's good, looking forward to our dinner party," I said cooly. "I was making a test leg of lamb," shut up I'm giving up too much information. "Wow, really? When I was a kid my grandmother would roast a leg of lamb, it was one of my favourite moments growing up." Ah shit. "She would put-" at that precise moment a roaring city bus crosses my path. "Wait, what did you say? I'm sorry I couldn't hear you," I say half panicked. He mumbled his grandmother's secret ingredient again but I still couldn't get a clear connection through the city roar. The forces were against me. I asked loudly a third time like someone using a mobile phone for the first time thinking since the person is far away he could hear me better if I screamed and I now I just sounded like a dweb. And then I said it without meaning to: "I'm sorry I can't understand your Aussie accent unless I see your lips move."

I have four more days before he returns from his trip and before I entered his kitchen. Deep breaths I told myself. "You need to serve mint sauce," the general manager at Zest told me. "Mint sauce? That's an English thing right?" "Ok, keep it simple. You want to win this guy right? Forget shoving in anchovies, forget the bacon, forget everything. Simple. fresh mint sauce, fresh rosemary stuffed in the lamb, roast potatoes, gravy. You know how to do this. You know how to make head cheese for god's sake."

"I think I'm just too nervous that I'll fuck it up," I admit. "You have too much riding on this. It's cute how worked up you get. How about this, my kitchen will prepare everything for you. You just need to pop it in the oven." This was so cheating, but it was so brillant.

No one really cooks from scratch anymore, we think we cook, but all we really do is assemble all the prep parts we pick up from the market. Ok, conscious resolved. "You sure you want to be with a guy that drives you this crazy?" the chef asks before handed me over the goods the night of.

Was I crazy? Obsessive yes, all the best ones are, but crazy? I guess I was alittle nuts. I did bombard three chefs with a collective of five Michelin stars on how to make a simple roast, I did invest in three legs of lamb from New Zealand, another leg I'd have the entire set; I did buy special dishes that held exactly four medium sized tomatoes sliced in halves; I did hand carry a bottle of whiskey from the US, truffles from France, grey salt shaved from the salt banks of Gunmuden, herb rub from Borough Market, and a bottle of aged balsamic vinegar from Italy for this party, I am now the owner of a gravy bowl in the shape of a duck. I founda supplier of Antartic ice cubes, but thought that to be unsubtle. This was going to be the G-8 of dinners. Ok, maybe I went a little crazy.

"Hey, um, we've got a problem. All my friends cancelled," he texts to tell me as I'm getting hair and makeup done. "What?!" The blast radius of my scream silenced all the blow dryers. "Yeah, let's postpone ok?" Not ok, but I didn't say that.

I made the lamb any way, but for me and close girlfriends. I ditched all the professional sauces and just popped the leg in the oven dotted with a few cloves of garlic and rosemary sprigs and it turned out to the most delicious and honest meal to ever come out of kitchen. Made with love, not crazy psychotic behaviour, we feasted.