Tag: lamb

This weekend, I once again proffered my fantastic cookery in two dishes- one sublime, one subpar. Not to say the subpar one didn't come out alright...

The night before grocery day is always a bit of a scrounge for miscible ingredients, since there's not much to plan a main course around. While the Tart was telling me the same three ingredients she'd been mentioning every night for a week - eggs, bacon, and potatoes - I used my fantastic powers of looking at things and discovered a bag of thin egg noodles.

Since we stock about twenty billion cans of broth just in case we need one, I salvaged two cans of chicken stock and set both of these out. Now, I needed something interesting, something that would keep this from turning into a generic chicken noodle soup.

After poking around in the fridge, I found a third of a ham steak in a tupperware container. Now, I remembered this ham steak. Sort of. Kind of. You see, we'd had it for quite a while. I might have named it had I remembered it existed.

I lifted the lid and sniffed. Okay, this smells bad. Or does it? I remembered something I heard a teacher say in high school- if you accidentally switch sodas with someone else, the first sip always tastes like the soda you were expecting. Human suggestibility is prominent in our sensory awareness, being the point. So I sniffed again and convinced myself that what I felt was the florid odor of decay was, in fact, just the inscrutable hamminess of... well, ham.

I mean, back during the Great Depression they threw rashers of bacon out in the streets, right? Bacon lasts forever by dint of its high salt and low moisture content. Isn't ham cured pretty much the same way? Waste not, want not. With all those things I convinced myself to cook.

So, I diced the ham steak and fried it with some butter in a large skillet, then added the broth and noodles. Nice and simple. Nobody would suspect that this was Hindenberg ham. Would they?

Figuring that if we were all going to die from some ungodly taint, I'd rather be hung as a sheep than as a lamb, I made sure to add extra chunks to my serving. I couldn't get the thought that I was serving this to small children out of my head.

You know what? It turned out pretty good. I didn't get sick. The ham was kind of tangy though. Nah. It's all in my head.

Oh, that little ubiquitous display in the produce section of the grocery store. You know exactly what I mean- the really expensive-seeming meat and cheese display, where markets display their largesse and where seemingly only the rich and epicurean seem to shop.

I've long lusted over this section, as it seems to have the most concentrated stink of adventure in the entire grocery. Seriously, even more than the cultural foods. On one weekend, our curiosity was so potent that we had to take the dive and grab ourselves a hefty chunk of diversity.

As Americans, we tend to be less curious about cheeses than our friends overseas. I'm guessing a few too many folks who watched Pepé Le Pew get mistaken for limburger as children grew up frightful about the entire variety cheese concept. Wake up, America. You're missing out.

In the center of the cracker tray above is a container of Greek-style hummus, a Middle-Eastern favorite made of garbanzo beans and tahini (which is essentially sesame-seed butter). Hummus is fantastic. If you're not eating it, you're missing out. This particular variety was strongly flavored of pepper, garlic, and lemon juice.

The triangular wedge on its own platter is Brie, a relatively familiar French cheese. The white coating on the outside is mold, but don't let that put you off- soft, spreadable Brie is fantastic with or without this part, but definitely has a bit more zest if you take it altogether. Brie is a cow's-milk cheese, and is nutty-flavored and delicious.

The other plate has a few pieces of summer sausage, as well as some folded pieces of Italian salami, cured in oil. Off these meats, we played a few different cheeses.

In staying with our American/British roots, there were some slices of hickory-smoked cheddar, probably the most familiar cheese in the States. Cheddar is named for the process by which it is made- stacking the cheeses until the bottom ones are pressed firm. As a result, it is a sturdy and strongly flavored cheese.

The small white-yellow strips of cheese are Gruyere, a Swiss cheese (but not 'the' Swiss cheese, which is known as Emmenthaler). Like Emmenthaler, it is a bit waxy, and is very delicately flavored- I was a bit put off by it, because the flavor was not apparent when combined with other ingredients.

Possibly not showing in the photo above were some slices of Havarti, a Danish cheese often impregnated with dill. This tasted almost exactly like Emmenthaler, but with a much more pleasing texture. It's enough to make me swear off the Swiss cheese for good.

Finally, there is a small container of goat's cheese, or chevre. This has a very strong flavor that is somewhat gamey; we ended up not eating very much of it. But I did use it later in the Greek night lamb recipe.

Don't let fear get you down. Eat the cheese. Learn to experiment. Live a little. You only get to do it once, after all.

Here's some pics of the lamb and tzatziki I did, anyways:

I obviously don't want to take up much kitchen space at EU Zero, so I prepared the lamb smear (which the lamb will be dipped in before the panko roll) here at home.

So far, the ingredients look something like this:

• 3 Tbl Olive Oil (oregano flavored)
• 3 Tbl Tahini
• 1/2 container spreadable goat cheese
• 1 tsp fresh thyme
• 1 stripped twig rosemary
• Onion powder (to replace 1/4 onion)
• Garlic powder
• Black pepper
• Paprika (just a dash)
• Soy sauce (just a dash)
• 1 tsp fresh dill
• Lemon juice

So far, it tastes rather strongly of tahini... but a lot of the flavors that come after come in notes. The goal, of course, is to augment lamb and maybe obscure the slight mutton taste, not to become the flavor of the dish. So the lamb won't be very thickly covered.

The thin coating is the reason I decided to experiment so much with this dish. I haven't seen any recipes online that suggest coating lamb with either tahini or goat cheese, so I may be well on my way to a tremendous flop.

Stay tuned.

Hopefully, you've seen my lamb and tzatziki article. That recipe was made in preparation for tomorrow night, Edible Unknown Greek night. My mission today: to consider what I could have done differently, to make each dish both authentic and still unique. Think Greek fusion.

I'm pretty notorious around here for my habitual overuse of black pepper, a trait which comes from my German ancestry. I'm thinking a lot of pepper could do a lot for a tzatziki; I sort of wish I could harvest some of the medieval European herbs that were used in place of pepper before true piper nigrum came into common use.

The lamb? I'm not quite sure- everyone I'm serving it for hates lamb, so I have to magically transform it into something else- but I think, even through the hate, that I'll let the lamb flavor shine through. It's too delicate to waste.

Tonight, I'm doing lamb chops and tzatziki sauce. In fact, it's broiling while I type.

I started the tzatziki last night, draining some plain yogurt, grating a cucumber into it, and mixing in some dill, grated garlic, red wine vinegar, and pepper. It has been sitting in the fridge for a full day, but not without several inquisitive spoonfuls being borrowed...

Tonight, I mixed a stick of melted butter, some fresh thyme and mint, a couple squirts of dijon mustard, a quarter of an onion (chopped), some cayenne, and some black pepper and dill into a mess, then dipped the lamb chops in it and rolled them into breadcrumbs (pouring the rest of the mess in between them).

After broiling on both sides for five minutes apiece, I put a baguette from a local bakery on the bottom rack and turned the oven onto three-fifty. Give me a second to check on it...

Alright. The lamb is going to come out pretty soon; pictures (hopefully) at eleven.

...

Update: Rare is definitely the way to do lamb; it got barely any oven time after its broiling and I wouldn't have had it any other way.

The tzatziki had a little too much red wine vinegar; I'd suggest tasting it regularly and adding the vinegar (especially) at a slower pace. Remember that the tzatziki is going to be a bunch of separate flavors before it goes to the fridge, and taste accordingly.

Lamb is an interesting ingredient. It plays better with those obscure herbs in your spice rack than the standard American meats do; lamb with a little tzatziki is certainly a complex and wonderful experience.

Just a note: before tonight, I've had lamb three times and hated it each time.

Hi all,

Usually, we here at EU are pretty religion agnostic when it comes to our articles. Mainly I think because we don't want to offend anyone or misrepresent anyones holidays. However, I figure I'd touch a bit on Slava, since it has so much to do with food.

Basically, Slava is a feast that's held for the patron saint of the family in Orthodox Christian homes.

When I say feast, I mean FEAST.

The wife and I went the other day to some of our Serbian friends' Slava. With the exception of eating until I thought I was going to die, it was pretty cool.

First, there's soup. Then, stuffed cabbage. Then, sliced Pork loin, Chicken, Lamb, country ham, and salami. And cheese. and then there's dessert. Baklava, cakes, cookies, something I can't remember.

Did I mention there was drinking? Oh probably not.

At the hosts request, we drank. alot. I drank 5 heinekens, and 2 glasses of cognac, along with 3 shots of plum brandy. I was smashed.

Plum brandy is good.

I digress. There should be plenty more holidays where you eat until gluttony no longer applies and it turns into some new word that hasn't been made up yet.