Tag Archives: lamb

Spring Lamb from a Once Noisy Rock

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[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

Silla used to be Scylla. Those were heady days. When the Greeks were in charge this was a mighty place. Sailors knew: “but that is the den of Skylla, where she yaps / abominably, a newborn whelp’s cry, / though she is huge and monstrous.” Six heads of monstrous per Homer, who knew a bit about showmanship, with “triple serried rows of fangs and deep / gullets of black death.” The place had a buzz.

Opposite the rocks that lore named Scylla was Charibdis; a Sicily-adjacent whirlpool, impassible. To risk the whirlpool was to lose your ship. The rocks meant a sacrifice of six crewmen, “from every ship, one man for every gullet.” It was the original hard place.

Further south along the toe’s coast, you find Palmi, with views across the Tyrrhenian of the Aeolian Islands’s Mt. Stromboli to the northish and across the Strait of Messina of Mt. Etna to the southwest. There aren’t many places in the world from where you can see two active volcanoes. Keep going with the sea to your right and olive trees to your left to reach Reggio Calabria, the provincial capital (Overly simplified: Italians say regions when Canadians would say provinces and their provinces are what we’d call counties.)

The most interesting thing about Reggio Calabria to me right now is that it’s listed as the 100th most populous city in Europe by Wikipedia. Not 99th. Not 117th. What are the odds that the city I read about last night and decided to look into further this morning would hold such a decidistinction? In grade school I was told that Mt. Everest was found to be 29,000 feet tall but reported as 29,001 because the statisticians didn’t think anyone would believe the round finding. “Latest measurements” put it at 29,032 feet. Better lasers than in Hillary’s time, I suppose.

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I’m Told It’s Called Lamb Keema Curry

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[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

My family gave me James May’s cookbook, Oh Cook! 60 Easy Recipes That Any Idiot Can Make, for Father’s Day.

“Hey!” you might be saying to yourself as you read this. “I know James May. He’s that English guy from Top Gear back when it was cool and producers got punched. He’s the one who wears those Jackson Pollock shirts and whose hair won’t let him be his age.” And you’d be right.

I’m a cookbook reader, by which I mean when I get a new cookbook, not always but usually, I start at the beginning and read all the non-instructional text. I do read the text of recipes before I eventually make them, but I like the stories and bits of history and trivia that pepper the pages enough to put up with the naturally sourced/sustainable/organic sanctimony (Jamie Oliver thinks he’s Food Jesus.) I’ve pored over Escoffier, Marcella Hazan (Her Name Be Praised), and again and again the books of M.F.K. Fisher. I don’t write this lightly:

Under the heading “A Note on Weights and Measures,” James May has written the most important paragraph ever to grace the pages of a cookbook.

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Braised Lamb Shanks with Tarragon

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[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

“Agnus Day with gnocchi and some zucchini. Easter is this Sunday.”
– Gregorian Chant (alternate)

I don’t use direct salt when I cook stir fries because I let soy sauce lull me into complacent bliss by hiding its sodium content in that little white square on the back of the bottle, filled with numbers and uninteresting acronyms, that nobody ever reads. According to Waverley Root, tarragon does the same thing but with no scolding square to ignore. He goes further. From his book, Food: An Authoritative, Visual History and Dictionary of the Foods of the World:

“In the less than a thousand years that it has been known to Westerners, food writers have extolled [tarragon] for its ability to replace salt, pepper, and vinegar. (It can also replace garlic for those for those allergic to this food.)”

This was news to me, although since reading I’ve found numerous dietary web sites that make the same claim. I can see the peppery and maybe some of the brightening of flavor you get from vinegar or other acids. That brightening may be what he means when he says tarragon replaces salt, but I have to concentrate to find it. It is there on the tongue, but as a shadow.

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Boxing Day Recipe: Lamb Stuffed Cabbage Rolls In Tomato Sauce

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[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

Why can’t I simultaneously heat the interior of my car and defrost the windshield? Why is this an either-or proposition? Yes, I can get heat through the floor vents while defrosting but the steering wheel is freezing and leeching whatever warmth was left in my numb fingers so immediacy is required up top instead of down below and no promises of eventual relief from rising heat will mollify my mystification at the inertness of the wide open and ready dash vents. I drive a Hyundai. It’s not the most luxurious vehicle ever devised but if there’s one thing they nailed, I mean engineered beyond my dreams and avarice, it’s the power of the heater. I can go from teeth-clattering misery as I get in the driver’s seat to wishing I had taken off my jacket or sweater in a matter of minute, from sitting in an icy pond to standing under a launching space shuttle. It’s a quick quickener.

The Koreans outfitted my car with four fan speeds. That tells me that there’s a little wiggle room. I could set the heat at fan speed two or three to warm me and my fellow travelers and there should theoretically still be enough juice in the motor to push warmed air through the vents at the base of the windshield where carpool number cards live. Naturally, I’d prefer to have both the defrost and heater roaring at speed four, but I would settle for as low as two if that’s what it takes to see both in action simultaneously. Not speed one though. I’m not a pushover.

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