Tuesday, February 25, 2003

I firmly believe that you can trace most of the evils of the world – certainly war, probably the destruction of the environment, institutional racism, and spam as well – to office politics.  And if there’s anything more annoying than having your work day hijacked by a neurotic departmental culture not your own, please don’t show me what it is. Anyway, home at 8:30 – just in time to make leg of lamb stuffed with Farce aux Herbes and Gnocchi Mornay, and eat it (just) before midnight. Heroic Eric had shopping duty, not only because I was at work late, but also because (damn and blast and oh-so-typical) I seem to have lost my wallet.  The poor boy schlepped out to this communist butcher in Astoria – thanks to Kristin for giving us the tip on this place – to get boneless leg of lamb.  Apparently this is a pretty cool joint, the communist butcher – sawdust on the floor, you have to go through this labyrinthine Soviet procedure involving tickets and lines and your social security number to order and procure your meat.  Which he did – six pounds of boneless leg of lamb, nicely tied, for twenty bucks.  Which is a lot when you’re a couple of losers renting out a hellhole in Long Island City, but ain’t bad, relatively speaking.  He also carried home drinking tools and the rest of the groceries, and books I’d ordered off Amazon and got delivered to his office, because we can’t get things delivered to our house, because our delivery point is a mailbox wired to a padlocked gate on an industrial street inhabited mostly by construction workers and crack whores.  He’s a good man, my husband. I was not worried going in, and the truth is that this was not an ungodly difficult meal to make.  The stuffing for the lamb is just chopped parsley, rosemary, shallots, garlic, powdered ginger, and salt and pepper, mixed up together and spread over the inside of the lamb.  Of course I had to untie the pretty little package of meat to do that, and when I’d spread on the stuffing, I had to roll it up and tie it again.  Which for some reason didn’t go easily.  I had an abrupt mini-breakdown when I couldn’t get the string tied right, but Eric donated his finger to the cause, and soon enough we had the thing trussed up again.  It wasn’t what you’d call neat – in fact, it looked like Eric and I had engaged a little lamb in a bit of rough trade – but it would do.  After that it was simple.  I threw the meat into a roasting pan in a 450° oven, in which I’d already melted a couple of tablespoons of lard.  I seared the roast, a few minutes a side, until it was good and brown all over, then turned the oven down to 300° and left it there awhile. The Gnocchi Mornay, I’ll admit, was not quite so simple, but it wasn’t so bad either, and after all I had plenty of time to kill while the lamb was roasting – God forbid I sit down and spend time with my husband after all, especially after a day at work that had me fantasizing about throttling the entire Community Relations Department, a bunch of crazed government wonks, the lot of them, grr argh… anyway.  Gnocchi Mornay.  Start by peeling and quartering and boiling some potatoes until tender.  Put them through the potato ricer – always good for a laugh – and stir them in a pan over moderate heat until they dry out.  Make some pate a choux, which is very satisfying because as JC says, it’s a “useful preparation like bechamel sauce which every cook should know how to make,” and like béchamel, it’s pretty much a no-brainer.  Make a roux with butter and flour.  Then beat in a cup of flour until the mixture becomes a dough that forms a single mass.  Beat in eggs, one at a time.  And you’re done.  Easy, easy stuff. So, mix the pate a choux with the dried-out, riced potatoes and some grated swiss cheese.  Make the dough into little cylinders, about two inches by one inch.  The dough is very sticky – with a bit of pathetic eye-batting you can get your significant other to turn cookbook pages, carry pots, and turn on faucets for you.  Poach the gnocchi in salted, almost simmering water for twenty minutes or so, until they’re puffy and they roll around in the water easy.  Let them drain on a towel while you make the mornay sauce, another no-brainer… roux, boiling milk, salt, pepper, cheese.  Arrange the gnocchi in a casserole dish, pour the mornay sauce on top, and sprinkle with a bit more butter and cheese, just for kicks. When you take the lamb out to let it rest, stick the gnocchi under the broiler while you cook down the lamb’s juices with a bit of stock for sauce.  When it comes out it’ll be nice and browned. Dinner was quite lovely.  Pretty on the plate – golden cheesy gnocchi, a big round of pinkish brownish lamb with the line of green stuff in the middle, and some bagged mesclun.  And good to eat.  The lamb tasted mostly like lamb, not so much like stuffing, and maybe it wasn’t quite as rare as I like it, but it was definitely moist and good.  And the gnocchi, well, I don’t know if it was correct or not, but the soft potato dumplings blended with the thickened cheese sauce into this big yummery mush, and it was good.  Man, though, eating this stuff at eleven-thirty at night Can. Not. Be good for a body.  This job is kicking my ass.  The cooking must stop. Wait a minute.  Scratch that.  Reverse it. P.S.  So by the way, my Mom's home and recovering nicely.  Wasn't dying, is rather immortal in fact, but between the cold and the cellulitis, she was giving a pretty good imitation.... 8:07:29 AM    comment []