Slight Change in plans...

OK, the soup posting is coming, I promise. But I've had a couple recent dinners that just required a post.

1. Spanish lamb shanks with fried potatoes. I'd picked up some lamb shanks from Hannewald Lamb at our farmer's market, knowing I'd enjoy them on a chilly fall day. Well, that day came yesterday. Now, these don't cook in 5 or 10 minutes--they take 2-3 hours to get good and tender. So, I figured I'd brown em and get them started braising soon after I got home. I hadn't really decided exactly how to fix them when I started--I just knew they'd need 2-3 hours of wet cooking, low and slow... The classic is probably a Provencal preparation--with onion, carrots, tomatoes, herbs de Provence (rosemary, thyme, etc.)--and I figured I'd do something along those lines. Chopped up the onion, and went for carrots--to discover we were out. But I found a couple red peppers (sweet variety) that needed a use. And the Spanish smoked paprika happened to be out on the counter. So, I knew we were going Spanish style. After browning the shanks, I sweated the veggies (peppers, onions, and garlic) for a bit, added a can of tomatoes (here is one place canned is actually better, or at least much easier, than fresh), and deglazed with some inexpensive but tasty (fruit driven) Portuguese wine. Back into the pot went the lamb, and into the oven for 2.5 hours. As the meat neared completion, I parboiled some waxy blue potatoes from the market, then fried them in goose fat (rendered from a large stewing goose from the market--more on that in the soup post). Along with a Spanish onion, and a hit of paprika, yum. The gelatin had cooked out of the lamb, making for a thick, beautiful sauce, and the tomatoes and onions and garlic and peppers just merged into a massively flavorful part of that sauce. It was true cold weather food. Paired iwth a 10 year old Spanish tempranillo from Valdepenas, it made for a great dinner.

The other recent amazing meal really was just a way of approaching steak--did up some home-trimmed strip steaks, and topped them with a couple market quail eggs each, fried so the yolk was still runny--made for a great sauce--and a batch of shiitake mushrooms, also from the market, fried in olive oil and finished with a splash of soy sauce. The steaks themselves were actually not all that high quality of a meat--but grilling them added some flavor, and the accompaniments over the top made for a great flavor profile. I should say that these steaks come from strip subprimals that I can get from time to time at a great price--which is nice--but it also means 12-14 steaks arrive at a time, and even when frozen, you end up eating steak fairly often (and inexpensively, at under $4/lb.) So, it's good to have some alternative ways to eat them, to keep from getting bored. And this was one that worked. Paired with a mixed mash of rutabaga and potatoes--not bad at all.