Sunday, March 16, 2003

There is such a thing as kismet.  Take, for instance, the page of the book I wrongly opened to Friday morning to look over the evening’s menu.  The page on which Julia suggests it is possible to take any of the stuffings for lamb (we were on Stuffing #5 of 6) and mix  it with ground lamb to make “lamburgers.”  This revelation could   not have come at a better time.  The all-lamb, all-the-time diet was taking a severe toll on our financial situation, and as it  happened, I had asked Eric to buy a quarter pound of ground lamb while he was at the butcher, but he wouldn’t sell him anything less than a pound of the stuff.  So here I was with no money but a surfeit of ground lamb.  Perfect! It was Farce aux Olives, Olive and Ground Lamb Stuffing.  Half a cup of ground lamb, have a cup of minced onions sautéed in butter, a cup of stale bread crumbs soaked in chicken stock, twelve pitted and chopped black olives, an egg, salt, pepper, thyme, allspice, and minced garlic.  I just mixed it all together with some more ground lamb, made it into patties, coated them with flour and fried them in a pan with butter and oil.  Lamburgers. First, though , there were the artichokes to prepare for Fonds d’Artichauts Mornay, Artichoke Hearts Gratineed with Cheese Sauce.  I don’t know whether to be proud or slightly sad in an Alexander-saw-the-breadth-of-his-domain-and-wept sort of way, but artichokes no longer seem such a pain in the ass as they once were.  I just broke off the stems and then the leaves, chopped off the top of the cone and trimmed the green bits.  I didn’t have lemons (this is getting to be a trope), so I rubbed the cut placed with vinegar, and it seemed to really help with the discoloring.  I made a blanc of flour, vinegar and water, and boiled the trimmed artichokes in them for forty minutes or so, then cleaned the chokes out.  Easy.  And of course while that was happening I’d whipped up a mornay sauce.  I put a bit of the sauce in the bottom of a casserole dish, put the artichoke hearts, quartered, on top, and covered with the rest of the sauce, and of course some more cheese and butter.  That I baked for half an hour. The lamburgers were good.  Eric, I think, would say “very good,” but olives continue on being not my favorite flavor in the world.  The artichokes were also good, but you know what?  As I was writing this just now, on Sunday, it took Eric and me a full twenty minutes to remember that’s what we’d had.  So that’s not such a great recommendation, is it? I’ll tell you what’s good.  Caneton Montmorency is good.  Caneton Montmorency with homemade waffle potato chips is really good.  Caneton Montmorency is, for those of you who don’t keep up with these things, Roast Duck with Cherries.  It much like Roast Duck with Orange, only, you know.  I couldn’t find fresh cherries anywhere, even at Whole Foods.  Also at whole foods, they don’t have regular beans in bags, only special kinds in little plastic containers, which made me snappish with the Whole Foods employees, for which I am sorry.  They did have organic frozen cherries, though, and I bought those. An easy recipe, mostly.  Put some sliced onion in the duck, salt and pepper it and tie it up, and roast it, browning it on high then lowering the heat.  The cherries, thawed, I soaked for half an hour with cognac, sugar and lemon juice (I have lemons now!)  I cut some potatoes into waffle shapes with my fancy-dan mandoline, a 4th anniversary present.  Eric and I watched this documentary show about early man, and it altered my thinking for the whole day, as those sort of things will do.  So as I gradually figured out the technique for cutting perfect waffle fries – it involved turning the potato a quarter turn with each slice, kind of hard to explain – I felt like beating my chest and grunting triumphantly.  Is it not amazing, this species of ours?  Who else would think up waffle chips and unilateral wars on Iraq?  Nobody, that’s who. So anyway, I cut the chips and heated up some oil in a pan and fried them.  And they turned out great.  The cherry sauce I kind of fucked up, it was one of those problems that comes up some times when you’re flipping back and forth between a master recipe and a variation, I forgot to make the caramel with sugar and red wine vinegar, but then I remembered, I did it, simmered it with some duck stock I’d made with the neck bone & giblets, put in some cornstarch mixed with Madeira, and the cherries, and simmered it until thick and yummy. It was good.  Good good, with capital letters, Good like “So this is why the French are considered so Good.”  Duck with cherries.  Right up there with tomato and basil, coffee and cream, chocolate and peanut butter.  And with the potato chips, which were perfectly golden and crisp, if I do say so myself, it was a revelation. It’s funny.  Usually, it’s the cooking that gets exhausting, the writing is the easy part.  But this entry has been like pulling teeth.  And here I am with guess what – you’ll never guess, never in a million years – in the oven.  (Yeah, it’s lamb.)  So I’m off to tend to it. So for now, tomorrow is another day, and as God as my witness I shall never be hungry again, (ain’t that the truth,) and all that Scarlett jazz. 8:17:15 PM    comment []