A word on lamb

Dinner went over well, I think, and the only reason we have an ass-ton of leftovers is the fact I cooked for eight and there were five us (two of whom have small appetites). But that’s how it always is when I cook for people, there are always leftovers.

For the lamb stew, I knew I would have to take steps to make the lamb less lamby. I was raised on lamb chops so the meat’s gaminess doesn’t bother me. But I know it bothers other people. Figuring that the gamy flavor comes from the fat, the first thing I did was to trim as much fat as possible from my cut, a boned leg of lamb. I cut it into chunks and trimmed away even more fat.

The next thing I did: I macerated the meat in salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes, Spanish smoked paprika, coriander, cumin, lots of cinnamon, and a little bit of allspice and clove. That sat in my fridge for a couple of days. On the morning of the dinner, I floured the pieces and browned them in bacon fat and olive oil. Add some duck stock, a couple of bay leaves, and the diced up piece of bacon that had contributed its fat; bring to a boil. And now the real trick, the whole point of this post: I did a slow simmer in a 220 F oven for 3 or 4 hours.

There were enough spices on the meat that I didn’t need to adjust the seasonings one bit. I prepared my vegies separately (onions, carrots, yams, apricots, which I know are not vegies), added them in towards the end of the cooking time, and garnished with fresh parsley and cilantro.

Oh! The key point. Almost forgot. I poured off all the juices/broth from the meat and separated out all but about two tablespoons of the fat. No lamby gaminess! The meat was fork tender and tasted of lamb, but not overwhelmingly so. The cinnamon and other aromatic spices came through clearly.

Making b’stila with duck confit is probably not worth all the bother. It was better than the chicken version, but not that much better. We’re talking about a dish that’s pretty damned good to begin with. Still, it had been a few years since I had made a confit, and I was curious to try it again. Guess I could have made a duck salad with it. Ah, next time.

D.

The menu

Back in med school, we used to have dinner parties for our friends. A lot of dinner parties. Paul Prudhomme’s barbecue shrimp was a favorite, since it was easy to prepare, tasty, and impressive. Up north, once we’d made some friends who were foodies (and, thus, would reciprocate in kind), we ventured into more elaborate territory — like raviolis in a browned butter and sage sauce.

Tomorrow night, we’re having my partner and his wife over for dinner. Mind you, I like to get complicated just for the fun of it, but it helps my motivation to know that his wife loves to cook. Thus, there’s at least some thin sliver of hope for reciprocation.

Here’s the tentative menu . . .

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The allure of comfort food

This afternoon, I took my son to the doctor’s office to get his flu shots, and afterward we went out to lunch at Tahoe Joe’s. I’ve been gaining weight for the holidays, a lot more than I usually do around Christmas, so I tried to order something skimpy. Soup and salad.

The soup was cream of mushroom, and it diverged but little from the Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom of my childhood. I’m sure I haven’t had this since I was single-digits, and oh boy did it take me back. I had vivid memories of our old home, of the bowl, of the way I would let it cool so that a skin would form on top, and then I’d spoon off the skin (my favorite part) and wait for another skin to form. I remember how the mushrooms were those tiny little cubes. The mushrooms today were actual slices, but other than that, the flavor was identical.

I remembered the black-and-white TV in our den that we’d watch while eating lunch. Remember having to walk up to the TV to change channels? Remember adjusting the rabbit ears?

I used to have Saltines with my soup. Today, no Saltines. I missed them.

Meanwhile, part of me realized that this soup was really vile and that I’d rather be eating any other type of soup. I had hoped for “real” cream of mushroom, you know, the kind of stuff I would make were I to make it at all, but instead the restaurant went for the old familiar. Which was cool in a way, but ultimately yucky.

I didn’t finish it, but I came awfully close.

D.

There must be a trick

I have a pizza peel. I have a stone. But for the life of me, I can’t get the pizza to slide from peel to stone.

I floured the peel and sprinkled corn meal on it, then checked to see that my dough would slip around okay. It did. I skimped on the tomato sauce, since I can recall problems with a damp, doughy crust when I’ve used too much sauce, and I didn’t want to make the whole thing too heavy (sliding problem, once again). I didn’t particularly care for the idea of adding sauce, cheese, and meat once the dough was already in the oven, since inevitably I give myself a hell of a burn reaching into the oven. So I loaded up my pizza and then tried to slide it off the peel.

No go.

I used a large spatula to loosen the pizza from the peel, working circumferentially to lift every last bit from the wood. It still wouldn’t slide.

Fortunately, I could fold the pizza over and make a calzone, which for some bizarre reason slid very nicely onto the stone. Still, I’d rather have had a pizza. The meat inside a calzone never gets crispy the way pizza meat does.

I’ve become quite good at pizza and focaccia doughs. I start the dough at around noon, first making a sponge of 1 cup of unbleached flour, 1 cup of water, and a packet of yeast. I whisk it up along with a half teaspoon of salt and about a teaspoon of honey. Wait for it to get frothy — about an hour or so at room temperature — then whisk in another teaspoon of honey, half teaspoon of salt, another cup of flour, and a good bit of olive oil, maybe 2 tablespoons. The dough may be a little wet, but that’s okay. You still have another rise to go through. After that, you can turn it out onto a floured wooden board, and as you knead the dough, you can work more flour into it to make something that looks like pizza dough.

If you’re making focaccia, don’t bother kneading or working in extra flour. Turn the moist dough onto parchment paper and use a large plastic spatula to push and pull the dough into the right shape. Add your toppings, then bake at 450 F until done.

Now, if I could get the damn thing to slide off the peel, I’d be in business.

D.