The following measurements are a rough approximation:

1 lb ground lamb
thyme leaves from 5 or 6 fresh sprigs
1 tsp kosher salt (halve this if you use table salt)
large bunch of parsley, finely chopped
zest from 1 lemon
several grindings of fresh pepper

Combine the ingredients in a bowl with your hands, and form into meatballs about 1.5 to 2 inches in diameter. I made 9 meatballs from 1 lb of ground lamb. Grill them, turning periodically so that multiple sides of the meatball get seared and it starts to firm up. I did not find that these needed a sauce, but a bit of fresh lemon juice, or a sauce of lemon juice mixed into greek yogurt might be nice.

Make sure you wash your lemon well before zesting, since they are often sprayed.  I’ll also note that lamb can be really hit or miss in the U.S. A lot of lamb sold here is too old, which I didn’t even realize until marrying an Australian and realizing how good lamb is down under. We do not eat lamb that often, but when we do, we get it from a very good butcher who works with carefully chosen local farms.

Lisl first made this lamb roast not long after we met. If I went for sensational titles I’d call this the “how to impress your new boyfriend without slaving in the kitchen, but make him think you did” lamb roast.  It actually remains my favorite way to cook lamb by a long shot, and it is so easy to do that it isn’t really a recipe but a simple process (which is one reason why I have time to blog it at the moment).

Lisl prefers to do this roast with a leg of lamb, but we used a boneless lamb sirloin roast and while it fell apart a bit when slicing, I found this cut to be incredibly good.  I also loved the gratin we served with it, which I’ll describe at the bottom of the post.

30 minutes before starting the roast, place the lamb in a baking dish and slather grain mustard all over the meat (for this 3lb roast, I think Lisl used about 4 tbsp), and then generously drizzle soy sauce all over.  Pre-heat the oven to 425F.

Roast the lamb for 10 minutes, and then lower the heat to 325F.  Turn the lamb over every 20 minutes or so, and cook until the internal temperature reaches 130F (an instant read thermometer is really handy here). Remove the lamb to a cutting board and loosely cover with aluminum foil until you are ready to slice and serve.

Place the baking dish on the stovetop — we use our pyrex right on the flame, but if you are working with porcelain, use a heat diffuser.  Deglaze the baking dish with water and a tablespoon or two of flour to make the gravy.  It will be very salty, but a little drizzle over the lamb and you’ll be in heaven.

We served this with two sides: a potato, fennel and chard-stem gratin, and the chard greens sauted with shallots and a touch of lemon juice.

I loved this gratin.  It was the same process and basic ingredients as my adaptation of Ina Garten’s potato and fennel gratin (click link for recipe), but this time I added chard stems to the fennel and onion (which is sauted before putting the gratin together).  I also used a mix of gruyere cheese and parmesan cheese.  So good. It is a dish well suited for cooler weather (and we’ve been having very cool, wet weather).

I had thought that the re-emergence of warm weather would put me in a vegetarian mood, harkening back to those wonderful Food Blogga salads from last year.  That was before I made a stop into my favorite butcher, Fleishers.  So much for being leaf-eaters. We devolved into fully fledged T-Rex.

Josh Applestone (Fleisher’s proprietor — should it be a requirement to be in the food business with a great last night like that?) gave me a great deal on two monster porterhouse steaks (bottom left in that pic), which were between 2 and 3 inches thick.  Fleishers’ beef is entirely grass fed, and while some argue that “corn finishing” improves marbling, I love the flavor of grass-only, and tend to be fairly minimal with how I treat cuts like this.  I got some hickory chips going, salted one side, seared for 2 minutes with salted side down, salted the top side, and flipped for another 2 minute sear, then moved them on the grill to cook with indirect heat and smoke until done.  The thickness of the steaks required a little more time, and the meat came out beautifully. Three of us shared one of those monsters!

One thing I like to do during grill season is play around with the flavors and concept of a “burger”.  Two examples from this weekend:

• Take some ground lamb, add finely chopped red onion, a finely chopped spring onion (including all the green part), a sprinkle of cumin and some salt. Form small patties and grill. Serve with a sauce of ketchup, with some lime juice, chili powder, and freshly chopped cilantro mixed in.
• Go the herbal route and mix some ground lamb and pork together, a finely chopped spring onion (including all the green part), salt, and a bunch of fresh thyme or oregano.  Grill and serve with a slight squeeze of lemon juice on top.

We didn’t survive solely on meat, however.  I broiled ramps with olive oil and kosher salt, made my favorite grilled mushrooms, and there were other supporting-actor veggies.  I also threw together a refreshing little salsa, which we ate on toasted bread and with chips.  I don’t know that it deserves a recipe, because really it’s just:

Chop up tomatoes, tomatilloes, green pepper, red pepper, jalapeno pepper, red onion, garlic, a ton of cilantro, and mix together with some salt, freshly squeezed lime juice, rice vinegar and white wine vinegar to taste.

Once you start eating it, it’s hard to stop.

I was also pleased to cross two things off of my “must do” food list (care of the Adams market in Kingston — why the hell can’t we have a market as good down in Westchester?).  I finally got ahold of some fresh fava beans (believe it or not, I had never worked with them before), and I also found winter savory at the garden store and planted some in the herb garden.

That picture above is the pod from a fava bean.  It has the coolest puffy foam padding on the inside.  I have to wonder if packaging engineers have studied it for replication.  I ended up working them into a nice salad, but my grand idea for their use got stymied by parental duties. Ah, kids.

Winter savory is an herb I’ve used in dried form, and it is referenced often in books on southern french cooking.  I have never seen it fresh in a market, so was tickled pink to spot the young plants.  The fresh leaves are absolutely delicious (along the same lines as oregano and marjoram, but different), and I can’t wait to work with it. The deer better stay away!

Finally, lest you forget that it is still only April(!), I’ll close with a shot from this gorgeous thicket of forsythia I discovered in the Rye nature reserve.

There is still quite a wait to reach those days, but at least yesterday we had deliciously warm weather. In an amusing dichotomy, the kids down the street had a snowball fight in short sleeves and shorts. As for me, I enjoyed an almost French stroll with my dog, walking into town and returning home with supplies from the butcher and the wine shop. If I was not baking my own bread these days, a baguette would have completed the picture. And some cheese. Really good cheese. And why do the carrots you find in French outdoor markets make our carrots look so pathetic? I digress. French markets do that.

I was pleased to see that our butcher had made some fresh lamb merguez sausages, and that became our dinner. I threw together a country stew that was quick to make and complemented the full-bodied Spanish red I had picked up. This kind of meal is cozy and handy when time is short. You want to make sure you like the sausages, since they provide much of the flavor heavy-lifting in the stew.

Lamb Merguez and Lentil Stew

Serves 2
4 lamb merguez sausages, skins removed and chopped
1 onion, diced
14 oz whole, skinless tomatoes, chopped (with liquid)
1/2 cup green lentils
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup water
10 oz spinach, washed and chopped
salt
2 eggs (optional)

In a deep saute pan, heat up a splash of olive oil and brown the sausage meat, then remove to the side. Place a tablespoon of the oil back in the pan, and discard the rest.

Saute the onions until translucent, then add in the tomatoes and cook for a couple of minutes. Add in the lentils, wine, water and sausage meat and simmer for 20 minutes.

Stir in the spinach and continue to let simmer for 15 more minutes, or until the lentils are soft. If the stew starts looking too dry, add a little more water (you want it to finish moist but not soupy). Salt to taste — this will depend on the strength of the sausages.

I served this with the wine and some thickly sliced bread, but if we had not been out of eggs, I would finished the stew off with two eggs baked on top (with a little ground pepper and a pinch of paprika on top, and the pot covered and on low heat). Apparently this is trendy now, but I ignore such things. I just think it would have tasted great. To see what I am talking about, check out We Are Never Full’s Eggs Cooked in Ragu.

This freedom is more fleeting in art, where there is a stronger fear of being derivative, partially driven by an art economy that places “new” on a pedestal. In food there is certainly a celebration of innovation, hence the fame of E Bulli and Alinea, but perhaps because cooking is as physical as it is mental, there is a greater acceptance, even glorification, of tradition and the merger of past and present. The physical also provides boundaries for how far things can be stretched. If something tastes bad, no amount of curatorial exposition can explain it into a good experience (though no doubt, some try).

So why the long introduction? Well, this recipe was triggered because I dropped by a lovely Greek food blog, Kali Orexi, and saw Maria’s chicken baked with orzo. Stopped the mental presses. Slammed on the browser brakes. I knew one thing at that moment: I had to bake the lamb shanks lurking in my fridge with orzo.

Then I spent an enjoyable part of this morning researching lamb shank cooking techniques in order to synthesize my own dish. I traversed numerous cookbooks (Child, Boulud, Tanis, Brown, etc) and many websites/blogs (Epicurious, Cookstr, Simply Recipes, Wednesday Chef, etc), and got some good ideas and discovered some cool things for future recipes.

The end results of this particular meal were fabulous. I do not always love lamb, but the flavor combinations were great, and I was also working with very young lamb carried by Fleishers, my favorite butcher. After flubbing a dinner on Friday night (I managed to create a tasteless pork chop brine, it seems… yes, the talent!), it was quite a relief to believe that I can cook after all! When an Aussie tells you that you did a good job with lamb, I think that means you can feel a sense of accomplishment, even if she is your wife (or should that be, especially?!).

Braised Lamb Shanks with Orzo
Serves two or three

2 lamb shanks (approx 1 lb each)
1 large vidalia or spanish onion, chopped
3 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
1 1/2 tbsp tomato paste
3 garlic cloves, peeled
4 stalks of parsley
1/2 cup of dry vermouth
1 to 2 cups of chicken broth
2 pinches of ground savory
2 pinches of ground sage
2 pinches of dried thyme (or a few stalks of fresh thyme)
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper
1 cup orzo

For prep, preheat oven to 300F and heat up your chicken broth in a saucepan or microwave.

Lightly salt the shanks. On a high flame, heat up a healthy splash of olive oil in a dutch oven large enough to fit the lamb shanks, and brown all sides of the lamb shanks, then remove the shanks to the side. Immediately lower the heat to medium-low and place the onions in the pot, stirring for a few minutes, and then add the carrots and celery. Cook for several minutes and add in the tomato paste, and cook for several more minutes.

Deglaze the bottom of the pan with the vermouth, and then place the shanks back in the pot. Add in enough chicken broth to reach about halfway up the shanks. Add in the garlic, herbs, bay leaf, and 1/4 tsp coarse salt.

Cover and place in the oven. Braise for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, turning the meat every hour.

Near the end of the braising period, bring a large pot of water to boil. You will use this to partially cook the orzo before adding the pasta to the dutch oven.

Remove the dutch oven from the oven, and remove the shanks to a side plate. Discard the garlic cloves. Spoon out the fat/oil from the surface of the liquid (this is the most painstaking part of this entire recipe). While you are doing this, boil the orzo for no more than 5 or 6 minutes in your pot of boiling water. Reserve about 1/2 cup of the starchy water (although if there is very little liquid left in your dutch oven, you might reserve a bit more), and drain the orzo.

At this point, you should have skimmed as much oil as you can from the top of the liquid and vegetables in the dutch oven. Stir in the 1/2 cup of orzo-cooking water, and then stir in the orzo itself. Place the shanks back on top, and return to the oven, uncovered, for 15 more minutes.

Finally, remove the shanks to the side, remove the meat from the bones and gristle, and sprinkle with a little salt. Taste the orzo and vegetables for salt and pepper (I found that this dish wanted a lot of ground pepper, but do so to your taste). Serve the lamb on a bed of the orzo mixture.

This dish pairs nicely with a relatively full-bodied red wine, such as a strong zinfindel but a shiraz or cabernet sauvingon would also be nice.