The Faudie Had a Little Lamb

We've had a first here at Chez Boeckman-Walker: I prepared lamb.

Yeah, yeah, I know, Gentle Reader. It's lamb. Lambs--and grown sheep to some degree--are pretty adorable creatures. They're adorable on the same level as Bambi and bunnies and calves.

I hate Bambi. But yeah, bunnies and calves are pretty cute. I've never eaten rabbit and never will, seeing as how I had pet rabbits as a kid. I've eaten veal--or some meat that The Olive Garden claimed was veal.

We came to have raw lamb--boneless leg of lamb, to be precise--because I finally got around to reading The Kitchen Detective by Christopher Kimball. It was among some of the first cooking books I bought way back, but it's lingered at the bottom of the stack of books beside my nightstand. After finally getting through The Ten-Cent Plague (great premise, not so great execution), I thought I'd give Kimball's tome a try. After all...

I Heart Christopher Kimball

But as much as I heart Christopher Kimball, I've skimmed past most of the "case files" in this book. It's contents are all too similar to the types of food America's Test Kitchen tends to focus on: traditional, all-'merican (i.e., bland, New England) dishes that are the meat and bones of kitchen bibles of yesterday and today. Even the dishes that come close to the "ethnic" category are toned down.

That said, there was something about his case file for Indian-style lamb stew that made me not only carefully read it but also consider trying it. I mean, I should have flipped past it after glancing at its introduction:

American beef stew is satisfying [speak for yourself], dependable [read: boring], and, unfortunately, a bit dull [Amen!]. With just a few flavoring additions, the use of lamb instead of beef, and a couple of changes in cooking method, I set out to transform an American classic into something special.

Yeah, I know, Gentle Reader: Kimball's not even starting with an authentic Indian recipe, so why should I give this thing the time of day?

Blame it on another book: Ziryab: Authentic Arab Cuisine by Farouk Mardam-Bey. It's one of those odd finds from the Half-Price Books in Round Rock, which is the antithesis of Austin: unabashedly white, older, far from worldly. Anywho, this fascinating book is chock full of tasty-sounding dishes that primarily use lamb as their protein source. Unfortunately, many of these recipes include ingredients that I've yet to track down, and given my skinflintedness, I'm not quite ready to use a bevy of new-to-me ingredients for a really exotic-to-me dish.

In other words, losing my lamb virginity (Ewww! But better than ewe!) with a recipe with ingredients I know well from a source I trust seemed like a very reasonable, logical thing to do.

Lamb Stew With Cinnamon, Cloves, Cumin and Coriander3 T vegetable oil
3.5-4 lb. boneless leg of lamb, trimmed of visible fat and silver skin and cut into 1" chunks
1 1.5" cinnamon stick
6 whole cloves
2 onions, cut into 1/2" dice
6 medium garlic cloves, pressed or pureed
1 2" piece of ginger, peeled and grated or pureed
1 T coriander seeds, ground
1 T cumin seeds, ground
2 C canned diced tomatoes, drained
2 1/2 C chicken stock (if using canned, choose a low-sodium brand)

1. Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a large, heavy-duty Dutch oven, deep skillet or saute pan over medium-high heat.
   
2. Liberally season the lamb cubes with salt and pepper.
   
3. When the oil just starts to smoke, brown the lamb in batches, then set it aside.
   
4. Lower the heat to medium-low, then add the remaining tablespoon of oil.
   
5. Add the cinnamon stick, cloves and onion, then saute 5-6 min. or until the onion is softened and just beginning to color.
   
6. Add the garlic, ginger, coriander, cumin and tomatoes, then cook, stirring almost constantly, until the liquid evaporates, the tomatoes soften, the oil separates and turns orange and the spices become very aromatic (5-6 min.).
   
7. Add the lamb and chicken stock and stir to combine with the other ingredients, scraping the browned bits from the bottom of the pan.
   
8. Raise the heat to medium-high, bring the liquid to a boil, then lower the heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cook for about 1 hour (this time may vary) or until the lamb is very tender and the liquid has thickened. (If the lamb needs more than an hour to soften, cover the pot to keep the sauce from reducing too much.)
   
9. Adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper, then serve immediately.

Yield: 6 servings of unknown size

Nutritional Info
Dear Mr. Kimball fails to provide a nutritional breakdown for the recipes in his book. For shame!

The Faudie's Futzings
Since this recipe's my first attempt to do anything with raw lamb, I wasn't about to screw with it too much. But I did futz just a wee bit:

• I used jarred minced garlic. So sue me.
  
• I was too lazy and my hip too sore (damn bursitis) after doing all the prep work with the spice seeds and the onions and the lamb (more on that in a moment) to peel and grate ginger. So I used two relatively heaping teaspoons of ginger paste.
  
• I'm sure this does matter to Mr. Kimball because his book includes a rather lengthy expose on the importance of making one's own quality chicken stock and chicken broth and the differences between the two, but I used low-sodium chicken broth, not chicken stock.

The boneless leg of lamb the husband and I acquired at our insane first trip to Sprouts, the new "farmers' market" supermarket that just opened in Round Rock. It's very similar to New Flower Market in far south Austin, which we visited a few weeks back, in that it appears to be a scaled-down version of Whole Paycheck for folks who bike because they can't afford a car and wear Birkenstocks they got used from Goodwill, not brand new from Whole Earth Provisions. (You know, the real crunchy-granola, hairy-armpitted hippie types, not the overfed, laser-hair-removaled, Prius-driving crunchy-granola hippie-wannabes.) That Sprouts and New Flower call themselves farmers' markets is rather galling because they're nothing at all like farmers' markets. Very little of the produce is local, and much of what we saw was imported. Most of the other products were not local either.

But, hey, we were there and had found high-gluten flour in the bulk foods area (which was hardly accessible because the lines for the checkouts extended so far back), so why not pick up that hunk of boneless leg of lamb? And that hunk of dark chocolate-covered honeycomb from the bulk bin? And those whole, raw almonds on sale?

Once I got the lamb out of the package and onto a cutting board, I set out to do as Mr. Kimball advised: trimming off visible fat and the silver skin before cubing it. Now, I'll admit that buying frozen, boneless, skinless chicken breasts has robbed me of much practice at trimming fat, and I found myself cursing my sloth for I dearly needed some experience and skill to get all the fat off this f'in piece of lamb's leg.
Good grief, the stuff was thick in places, and getting it off with my handy chef's knife was damn near impossible.

Towards the end of the trimming, I gave up, set my knife aside and just started tearing away the fat and translucent...stuff that I knew wasn't meat with my bare hands. It was oddly satisfying to do so, Gentle Reader. Gads, does that make me some sort of barbarian?

Hacked to Bits

The cooking 'o the stew was pretty basic and very similar to chicken curries I've made in the past. Once I got to the part at which I was just let the stuff simmer so the lamb could become tender, I started to worry. I'd not been entirely successful at removing all visible fat and...translucent stuff, so would that doom my stew? Would I end up with chewy, nasty-tasting chunks of meat? Would I miss the 5:30 p.m. dinnertime deadline I'd set for myself and find myself in a tizzy at 6 p.m. because even after 90 minutes of simmering, the meat was far from tender?

At 5:30, the basmati rice was ready, the stew's sauce had thickened some--but not a whole lot, which also had me worried--but poking at a few chunks of lamb didn't give me great confidence that the stuff was tender.

As I sent the boys to the table with their servings, I secreted a small chunk of meat out of Chive the Dutchie and into my mouth. The chunk practically melted in my mouth. Hazzah! Success!

Having declared this culinary misadventure a success, I have to wonder if I'd make it again. At its heart, the recipe isn't all that different from a few simple chicken curries I've made, but the lamb was, well, kind of expensive and required more prep than what I'm accustomed to doing. I can't imagine using chicken in lieu of lamb, nor can I imagine substituting beef since I prefer not to eat beef.

As for The Kitchen Detective, it's not a keeper. The bulk of the recipes are just not for me and the boys, and dear Mr. Kimball's tales of his own culinary misadventures in his pursuits to perfect the recipes do have some interesting insights into this thing called cooking. These insights you can parlay into other recipes, so the book is useful. However, unless you enjoy the types of dishes dear Mr. Kimball aims to perfect in the book, you probably wouldn't keep it on your bookshelf either.