Monday, March 17, 2003

I slept like shit last night, obsessing, for some reason, about this post.  As if there were no worse fate than getting up on a Monday morning to write about Gigot de Pre-Sale Braise aux Haricots avec Farce Mentonnaise.  Now that I’m up, I realize that it’s not so dire after all, there are lots worse things – for instance getting up on a Monday morning to go to a dead-end job exhausted after a restless night.  But it’s too late. Yesterday was one of those rare, golden Sundays in which I managed to both goof off and get something done.  After weeks of procrastination, Eric and I finished doing up our little dining room, which is now glam and fabulous and otherwise fit for the funky wonderfulness of the Julie/Julia Project.  This is all ultimately thanks to my mother.  Some parents give their kids trust funds or career connections or the family jewels – my mother gives us home decorating resources.  She makes sketches and mails us enormous boxes with window treatments and flokhati rugs she got off e-bay.  Our dining nook is now a draped and iridescent jewelbox, the crowning glory of which is the shaggy Muppet-like lilac chandelier my husband gave me for Valentine’s Day because he is the best husband in the whole entire world.  On the goofing off side there was TBS, which is showing all these unlikely Oscar nominated movies like “Ghostbusters” and “Trading Places” and “Pretty Woman,” movies all which have this way of sucking you in against your will.  And Civilization, sadly.  I am in the midst of a sordid obsessive period – I suppose kicking England’s ass rather takes one’s mind off real and nasty wars. And then there was, as I have previously mentioned, Gigot de Pre-Sale Braise aux Haricots avec Farce Mentonnaise.  Braised leg of lamb with beans and salmon and anchovy stuffing.  It does sound a little odd.  Julia herself calls this last stuffing “an unlikely combination.”  She also says that braised lamb can be stuffed “with any of the preceding suggestions.”  The Farce Mentonnaise is the last of the stuffings, and I think that if there was to be one that didn’t work, it would be this one.  But no matter – we’ll give a whirl anyway.  What could happen? To make the stuffing, mix together a half-cup of canned salmon, six anchovy filets, mashed, ¾ cup minced onions sautéed in butter, salt and pepper, rosemary, minced garlic, and half a cup of ground lamb.  I didn’t much want to buy another pound of ground lamb from the butcher, so I just took one of the odd ends of the boned leg and minced it up, which was kind of a pain in the ass because I need to go get my good knife sharpened.  Smear all that on the inside of the lamb, roll it back up, tie it.  I’m becoming so good at tying lamb it’s not even funny.  Seriously.  Who wants to read about some woman oh-so easily tying up a lamb roast?  That’s a good sign that it’s time to move on.  Sadly, I’ve still got I think three more leg of lamb recipes left, including a boiled leg of lamb, appropriately called l’Anglaise.  Not particularly looking forward to that one. Anyway.  Browned the lamb in a casserole on the stove top in some lard.  Browned the lamb bones, which I had gotten the butcher to cut up for me.  Browned some sliced onions and carrots.  Took all that stuff out, poured in some vermouth, and boiled it off until reduced by half.  Put the meat and bones and vegetables back in, poured in enough beef broth to come two-thirds of the way up the lamb roast.  Threw in some parsley a bay leaf, rosemary, three cloves unpeeled garlic.  Brought it to a simmer, covered the roast with aluminum foil and the cover, and put it in a 325-degree oven.  For three and a half hours.  Turning every half hour or so. The Civilization came in right about here. While the lamb was roasting I also prepared the beans.  Great Northern beans I’d been soaking all day.  (I’m a Texan, and I believe in soaking my beans within an inch of their lives.  There is no disappointment like the disappointment of crunchy beans.)  I put a pot of water on to boil.  Unfortunately one of those Mountain Standard Time pots that takes about three thousand years to boil.  But whatever.  I put the beans in boiled for two minutes, and turned the heat off.  Let them sit for an hour.  Turned on the heat again, and let them simmer for an hour.  This was probably more cooking than the beans really needed, but as I said, there’s no such thing as an overdone bean in my book. When the roast was half an hour from done, I took it out of the oven, removed the roast, and strained and degreased the sauce.  (You know what I love?  I love my degreasing cup, with the spout that pours the liquid out from the bottom, so the fat, which is on top, stays behind.  It is degreasing cups which separate us from the apes.)  Then I put the sauce back in the casserole, along with the lamb and the beans.  Brought it to a simmer on the stovetop then stuck it back in the oven for another half hour. And that was dinner.  Which we ate in our dining nook.  And it was great.  The lamb was meltingly tender, as were the beans, with that great, mellow, long-cooked flavor.  The stuffing, as I suspected was not entirely successful.  It pretty much disappeared, until all of a sudden you’d get some passing whiff or taste of fish, which was a slightly scary thing to run into while eating braised lamb.  Not out and out bad, ever, but it lent a sense of jeopardy.  As did eating in our dark, dramatic dining nook, huddled in the pool of light pouring down from the shaggy chandelier.  We’d gotten rather too used to eating in front of the TV; it’s easy to forget the loveliness of eating in a room meant solely for eating.  Eric said he felt like we were plotting the downfall of the French or something. And I guess we were.  I guess we were.   7:20:56 AM    comment []