Lamb Cheeks

Last night, I managed to cook up a meal that is near the top of all time in my view. Now, my wife was not a fan of this for flavor and texture reasons, so universal praise was not part of the picture here... But here's the scoop:

Sparrow Market, an Ann Arbor classic grocery and meat market, had lamb cheeks on sale. Now, who has ever eaten lamb cheeks? Well, I've had pork and beef cheeks, and I find the texture and strong flavors enticing, so I figured, what the heck, let's try this out. I didn't come home with any particular plan, other than figuring I needed to braise them for a couple hours. A classic sauce with a variety of lamb dishes is a Provencal style sauce--so I built on that theme. After browning the cheeks stove-top, I sweated mirepoix (onion, carrot, celery) plus garlic, added a couple tablespoons of tomato paste, and cooked that for maybe 5 minutes. I deglazed with white wine, added some lamb stock tossed in a bay leaf, a few sprigs of thyme and rosemary, supplemented with a dash of Aleppo Pepper. After bringing to a boil, the cheeks went back in, and the whole cast iron Le Creuset business went into a 325 degree oven for 2 hours.

Meanwhile, I needed a side dish--and risotto seemed the perfect choice. So, out came some chicken stock, some Arborio rice, a bit of butter and shallot and Parmesan cheese. This is such a yummy, but easy, rice dish, I don't know why people are so afraid of it. Yes, you spend 20 minutes stirring a lot. Yes, you add stock gradually, deciding when the rice is at a doneness you like. Is it technically hard? Not at all. No fancy knife skills. No balancing 8 pots cooking at once. Just a bit of patience and attention to what you're doing.

As the risotto finished up, I removed the cheeks from the cast iron, strained the sauce to remove veggies and herbs, and reduced it by about half. I finished it off with a pat of butter, rewarmed the cheeks in the sauce, and sat down to a delicious dinner. I got out a 2006 Tourade Vacqueyras to accompany. It worked pretty well, although I think the wine is in a bit of a closed, awkward phase right now--there's still a lot of structure, fruit buried under it, and I think it'll be a very pretty bottle in a couple years. Right now, it's not bad at all, but not showing gorgeously yet. So, 5 more bottles to watch over 3-8 years.

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.

Happy Birthday to me, Part II. Gifts

As you have probably just read, today was my 35th birthday. I am so lucky--I got some great gifts. Three especially notable things:

1. Julie got me a bottle of wine. Domaine Pegau Chateauneuf du Pape, 2005, Cuvee Reservee. It probably won't be drinkable for at least a decade, and I'm thinking it might be about right when I celebrate my 45th or 50th birthday. We had a bottle of their 1998 vintage last year at my birthday (at the Earle), and I've had a 2000 at a party. This is a very earthy, almost horsey, barnyardy wine, with a ton of complexity. 2005 was an utterly amazing vintage in the southern Rhone, and this should be a classic wine. Looking forward to the passage of years for this beauty!
2. My mother, in the spirit of free choice, sent me the most fungible of assets -- cash. I turned some of it into a splurge--on another 2005 chateauneuf, in this case, produced by Beaucastel. I got it at a relative steal--about 75% of its usual retail cost, from a local boutique grocery with a killer wine program (Think Whole Foods with reasonable prices, unpretentious staff, locally owned, and sane management.). I have never had a true Beaucastel -- they're not an everyday bottle, by any means. But I've had their 2nd wine (coudoulet, which is a technically a CDR), which is a really beauty, as well as a number of others produced by the Perrins (notably, Perrin & Fils, Vielle Ferme). They all seem to represent a certain "honesty" of approach to the grapes, a real finesse in winemaking. So, again, in 10 or 15 years or so, I'll be enjoying this beauty. Thanks, mom!
3. My inlaws sent me books. Both about food/wine. I'll focus on the food driven one--All About Braising. It's a lovely cookbook which is so much more than your average package of recipes. Sure, there are plenty of those, and they are mostly pretty appealing, complex yet approachable. But what I really like are the real descriptions of the dishes--from their history and tastes, to a certain rationale of why you do what you do, this is a serious book. And most recipes have suggested wine pairings, and many - most are Old World wines, which I happen to love. Thank you, Lyn and Debbie!