Annabel Langbein: Say goodbye to summer with a final barbecue - Greek-style lamb with eggplant dip and flatbreads Drinks matches from Yvonne Lorkin

Barbecued Greek-style lamb. Photo / Annabel Langbein Media

Ah, these last glorious days of warmth … the days parading by blue-skied and breathless, the landscape transforming in a crescendo of fiery hues. There's a stillness that makes time feel suspended, as if nature is holding its breath.

Soon enough, winter will come in an icy blast and send us all scurrying inside, but for now the great outdoors holds us in its thrall. There are walks and swims still to be had, foraging for wild mushrooms, blackberries, pears and nuts, pine cones to collect and the first chestnuts to roast.

Easter falls late this year, but luckily summer's weather lingers on - and with it the chance to tip tradition on its head with a delicious outdoor Easter feast.

It's worth going to the effort of building a fire to cook on, rather than just turning on the gas barbecue. Cooking over the embers is a wonderfully romantic way to cook. It forces you to be actively engaged and present and you need patience and diligence to tame the flames and time everything you are cooking.

There's a deftness to cooking like this, tuning into the heat and the ever-shifting nature of the flames, but it's easy to master and you will feel justly rewarded for your efforts as the taste of food cooked over a wood-fired barbecue is unrivalled.

Be sure to use untreated timber and don't use any chemical fire starters or wood from bay trees, oleander, or any other poisonous plants. Pine cones make a great fire starter and once it is roaring, you can start to build up the fire base with heavier pieces of wood. You want to make a big enough fire that you can rake some of the coals off to one side to cook on, while still keeping the main fire burning. That way you can keep feeding the fire with fresh coals as needed, rather than running out of heat. Wait until the coals are burning red and have started to accumulate some white ash - this is when the heat is at its most dense.

Here's to celebrating the swansong of summer with this simple Easter barbecue feast. Add in a green salad, roast potatoes and/or a platter of roasted beets, carrots and red onion wedges, roasted with a little olive oil, salt and pepper, cooled and tossed with some rocket and a crumble of feta.

With all the Easter eggs to be had, you won't be needing dessert.

Barbecued Greek-style lamb

Ask your butcher to bone and butterfly the leg of lamb for this dish. This marinade also works really well for tasty lamb or chicken kebabs.

Ready in 1 hour + marinating
Serves 6-8

1 boneless leg of lamb, butterflied and trimmed of excess fat

LEMON AND HERB MARINADE
4 cloves garlic, crushed to a paste with 1 tsp salt
¼ cup lemon juice
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp chopped oregano leaves
1 tsp finely chopped rosemary leaves
Ground black pepper, to taste

CUMIN-SPICED YOGHURT SAUCE (optional)
1 cup Greek-style yoghurt
1 tsp ground cumin
¼ tsp salt
1 Tbsp finely chopped coriander
1 Tbsp lemon juice

Mix all the marinade ingredients in a large clean plastic bag or bowl big enough to fit the lamb. Add lamb and turn to coat. Seal bag or cover bowl, and chill for at least 4 hours or up to 48 hours, turning occasionally.

Barbecued Greek-style lamb. Photo / Annabel Langbein Media

Make the yoghurt sauce by mixing everything together. Cover and chill until ready to serve.

Prepare your fire at least an hour before cooking or preheat a barbecue grill over a medium-high heat. Remove meat from marinade, shaking off excess, and grill for 5 minutes on each side until browned.

Lower heat (for a wood fire you can do this by raising the rack or removing some of the embers) and cook until meat is done to your liking (about 10 minutes on each side for medium-rare, depending on size). I like to weight the meat with a large, clean stone or brick wrapped in tin foil, or place a tray on top of it and weigh it down with a couple of heavy stones or a brick, as this helps to keep the meat flat so it can cook more evenly.

Remove lamb from heat, cover and rest for 10 minutes before carving into thin slices across the grain. Accompany with yoghurt sauce.

Greek-style eggplant dip. Photo / Annabel Langbein Media

Greek-style eggplant dip

This is such a handy dip to serve with vegetable bites or toasted flatbreads and it makes a great partner for the lamb. If you are cooking over wood embers, prick the eggplants in a few places to prevent them from exploding and place them whole into the heat of the fire. Turn after 5-8 minutes and continue cooking for another 5-8 or until eggplants are deeply blackened and completely collapsed. You will think you have burnt them. Leave to cool then remove the skins and rinse to remove any char still on the skin.

Ready in 40 mins
Makes about 2¼ cups

2 eggplants
¼ cup boutique extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed to a paste with 1 tsp salt
1 large tomato, cored and finely chopped
¼ cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley leaves, plus extra to garnish
2 Tbsp finely chopped red onion
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tsp dukkah, to garnish (optional)

Preheat oven to 200C fan bake and line an oven tray with baking paper for easy clean-up.

Place whole eggplants on tray and bake until they start to blacken and deflate when you touch them (about 30 minutes). It's important they are completely collapsed, if not they won't mash.

Leave to cool, then peel and discard the charred skins. Place the eggplant flesh on a board and chop coarsely. Transfer to a bowl, add the olive oil and mash until smooth.

Add the remaining ingredients and mix with a fork until evenly combined.

Garnish with parsley and dukkah, if using, before serving. If not using at once, chill and store in a covered container. It will keep for 4 or 5 days.

Lahmacun flatbread. Annabel Langbein Media

Lahmacun flatbread

I love this Turkish-style flatbread, it's one of those "something out of nothing" recipes that delivers so much more than the sum of its ingredients. Sometimes I add 1-2 tsp of cumin seeds.

Ready in 15-20 minutes
Makes about 12

2 cups flour
1 cup natural yoghurt
1 tsp salt

SESAME THYME OIL
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp dried thyme
¼ cup sesame seeds, toasted
1 tsp chilli flakes
1 tsp flaky salt
2 tsp cumin seeds, toasted (optional)

To make sesame thyme oil, shake or stir all ingredients together in a small jar or jug.

To make flatbreads, mix flour, yoghurt and salt in a large bowl to form a soft, pliable dough. If not cooking at once, the dough will keep in the fridge, wrapped in baking paper, for up to a day.

When ready to cook, take smallish golfball-sized pieces and roll as thinly as possible on a floured board. They should be almost paper-thin.

Preheat a heavy-based frying pan and dry-cook over medium heat until puffed (about 1 minute). Flip and cook the other side (about 1 minute). Remove from pan and brush with a little sesame thyme oil. Repeat with remaining dough.

Match these with ...

Match these with ...

by Yvonne Lorkin

(Barbecued Greek-style lamb)
Pegasus Bay Aged Release Prima Donna Waipara Pinot Noir 2012 ($130)Great lamb of any description is always better with a large goblet of pinot noir. Which is why I'm recommending three of them today. Yes, this wine is up there, but I cannot overstate how lovely this library-release is to consume. Ten years of quiet slumber in the cool, dark cellars at Pegasus Bay has created a pinot noir perfumed with mixed spice, rhubarb crumble and raspberry. It'll saturate your sipper with silky textures, a tsunami of tamarillo and shiploads of spiced cherry complexity before finishing with vibrant tension and velvety-soft tannins. Only made in tiny amounts, and only when the fruit is immaculate.
pegasusbay.com

(Greek-style eggplant dip)
Lime Rock White Knuckle Hill Central Hawke's Bay Pinot Noir 2013 ($60)
When it was first released, I raved about this wine. Tasting it again, nine years on, I feel like I should have hollered louder. The White Knuckle is a vertigo-inducingly steep vineyard site where large life insurance policies are necessary for the person charged with tackling it with the tractor. Only made in exceptional years, and having been carefully cellared for so long, it now smells like moss-covered kauri trunks fallen in the forest – ancient trees soaked with recent rains and slowly merging with the earth. It's a lush and sexy smell to match a succulent, exotic palate. Delicious and desirable.
limerock.co.nz

(Lahmacun flatbread)
Villa Maria Attorney Marlborough Pinot Noir 2019 ($119)
Produced from a parcel of certified organic fruit that winemaker Helen Morrison and her team deemed the dux of the vintage, it was designed to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Villa's first harvest back in 1962. Hand-picked, cold-soaked for a week, gently fermented with wild yeasts and matured for 15 months in mostly older, seasoned oak, it was then bottled unfined, unfiltered and in vegan-friendly fashion. Heady and sensuous to sniff and sip, with exotic spices, layers of black tea, cherry, tamarillo and juicy, pomegranate encased in earthy, smoky oak. Wow.
villamariawines.com