Category: Lamb

February 9, 2012

Look: another sighting of my dinner, rare as hen’s teeth these days. It’s been strange getting back into the regular cooking routine after so long out of it. It’s not the actual making of dinner, which I have not in fact forgotten how to do, but trying to reconcile all the wild flights of culinary fancy that my mind embarked upon while my hands held sandpaper and brushes (rather than knives and pan handles) with the quotidian realities of wandering into the kitchen at 5:30 and making good food from a cold start. So much of what I rely on to lift my meals up a level or two are the various time-intensive processes and ongoing experiments and just plain old leftovers that are in the fridge on any given evening, so it’s taking a little while for those secondary rhythms of production to catch up and I feel a little clumsy.

Bread-baking never stopped, although there were some hiccups. The vinegars are thriving. Cheesemaking is back under way, which is grand, so whey is in the mix, and of course there’s plenty of charcuterie about for mincing into soffriti to lend that lavish depth in an instant: salami, guanciale, duck prosciutto, bresaola, and lardo. And the freezer always has something worth eating in it. What galls me most at this time of year really is the dearth of good vegetables; there are still greens in the garden, sure, and a few roots, but I daydream about being able to walk outside and load up a basket with all the fat bounty that is still invisible over the horizon. This mild hardly winter isn’t helping, either; I keep feeling like I should plant stuff. The birds and spring bulbs are equally confused. I’m sure we’ll get some monster blizzard in a few weeks after everything is all budded out and lose it all.

Meantime, comfort food is still on the menu, though this example was leavened some with a couple of summery ingredients to symbolize my yearning for spring and the ephemerality of life, man.

October 27, 2011

I make ceramics because it’s relaxing, and because I make the plates and bowls that I want. It’s the same reason I paint; the images I want to look at are not in the world so I need to make them if I want to see them. It’s not complicated. That simplicity is important, and I try to always keep it in mind. What happens to the work after I make it is largely out of my control (though that fact chafes sometimes) so I try not to worry about it too much and trust in the process of making. It has not let me down so far.

I like the daily practice of cooking; it’s easy to get better at something when you do it regularly. And since I’ve been back in the ceramics studio a bit lately, that familiar feeling of climbing the learning curve has been a welcome part of the process. I unloaded a kiln today, and unpacking all the work back here got me excited to make a dinner worthy of the new pieces. My plates make me cook better.

September 25, 2011

I know I’ve been slacking here, but between the last article and my ostensible main gig as a painter it’s been hard to find the time. Now that summer is over, I’m hoping to get back into more of a routine. Another plus to the advent of fall is the cooler weather, of course, which allows for such lavish luxuries as baking bread after 7AM without wanting to kill oneself, wearing pants (actually kind of a hardship), and braising tough, inexpensive cuts of meat to transform them into unctuous and sensual delights. And having a pressure cooker makes this last item possible in half an hour flat.

August 25, 2011

Before I get carried away with whatever the hell I’m going to write about, you should all head over to Diana’s to read my guest post about my Grandmother’s best of all time pie crust and make it for yourselves. It’s fast, easy, and is guaranteed to kick the ass of whatever recipe you’re using now.

So what am I going to write about? Well, I was going to write about something from a while ago because it tasted good and the pictures are pretty, but instead I’ll cover tonight’s dinner while it’s still fresh in my mind. It also tasted good and you can let me know if you think the pictures are sufficiently attractive.

August 10, 2011

This time of year is so bountiful that it can easily become a full-time job just trying to wring every useful calorie out of all the food that’s exploding on our modest plot. I have the pickles under control, but there’s a ton of drying to do and I haven’t even gotten started on the fruit. The upside is that all I have to do is walk out into the garden to get all the inspiration I need for dinner every single evening. And the other regular kitchen activities like baking, curing, and making yogurt provide everything else one could need to round out the meal.

July 28, 2011

I had a pretty torrid affair with spruce this spring, and there are still a couple of containers of dried but unused tips lurking around in the corners of the kitchen as I write. I’ve used it to cure meat, flavor sauces, and dehydrated and ground it to make a spice. The spruce vinegars smell absolutely heavenly, though they’re not ready yet. But this summer I may have found something as profound and versatile that threatens to usurp the hallowed number one spot that spruce has so far nobly and justly occupied in the “fragrant garnish/condiment/stealth aromatic” category for 2011.

July 20, 2011

When I was out procuring short ribs for the ill-fated hot dogs, I also stumbled upon some local lamb breast. I got four hunks of it for $8, which ranks as one of the better scores in recent memory. It can be pleasurable indeed to covet the cheap cuts, and guiltlessly filling one’s basket with meat is a major reason why. I’m especially glad I found these when I did, because the unmitigated hedonistic triumph of the lamb bacon–smoked at the same time as the dogs–really took the sting out of the beef debacle. Lamb bacon is seriously wonderful, and highly useful in a wide variety of culinary contexts.

April 27, 2011

Easter was a simple affair, but still a good dinner. It centered around a Flintstonian slab of lamb–a whole shoulder–that I rubbed with spices (cumin, 5-spice, coffee, coriander) and slit and stuffed with copious ramp bulbs.

April 7, 2011

Our buddy Rich runs Elephant, one of the best restaurants in the Hudson Valley, down the road in Kingston. If you live at all nearby and haven’t been yet, go. One of our favorites there, which is mercifully always on the menu, is his plate of three little lamb sliders. The strong flavor of lamb makes a superlative burger, and the small size of a slider somehow seems to concentrate it further. I don’t eat his often enough, and I don’t make them at home often enough. Now I confess at the outset that I did not bake fluffy little rolls for these. But that really didn’t diminish the pleasure of eating them one bit.

April 2, 2011

I worked in a welding shop as a summer job between sophomore and junior years at college. For the princely sum of $5.50 an hour, I cut, bent, ground, drilled, and otherwise manipulated various forms of mild steel into the shapes the welders needed to make the trailers, truck racks, and various other things that were the bulk of their business. On my lunch breaks I taught myself to stick and MIG weld. It was an interesting learning environment; Bob, one of the welders, who drank a six-pack and smoked a joint in his Camaro every day at lunch, would wander back in, look at my work, and say something like “I fuckin hate mawdin aht” and beat my work apart with a hammer. Obnoxious? Yes. Funny as shit? That too. But also a hell of an incentive to learn; within a month I could really weld and he couldn’t knock my stuff apart any more. Right before I quit (to go be a carpenter’s helper for a whopping $8 an hour) I stick-welded a big rectangular pan of 16 gauge sheet steel without making a single hole. The grudging praise of the guys in the shop meant a great deal to me. I bought myself a welder later that summer, and made a lot of sculptures over the ensuing years. I still have it in the garage.

Why does this matter? Well, the shop foreman, Charlie, who was about 90 at the time, had this brilliant piece of advice if ever I had an issue with a piece of uncooperative steel. He’d look at the thing and say “Why don’t you hit that with a hammer?” and walk away.