jducoeur

The lamb legs for last weekend's party were somewhat loosely cut; there was a lot of meat still adhering to them. Here's what we did with it.

Ad Hoc Lamb Stew

(So named because this was entirely a "that sounds good" sort of dinner, invented by each of us suggesting ingredients until we decided we'd better stop.)

To start with, we took the shanks and boiled them down, as usual for leftover meat. This works better for lamb than for turkey, because the bones are all pretty large, so we wound up with a few bones, a big pile of meat, and four cups of lamb broth. We separated the broth, and froze the three cups of fat-free for later uses.

For the Stew, we started by rendering half a pound of bacon (because, hey -- bacon), sliced into 1/4 inch pieces, in the big Le Creuset. Removed the bacon from the fat and set it aside. Then sauteed 2 medium yellow onions, coarsely chopped, in the fat. Once those were sweated a bit, added 2 Tbl shallots and 2 heaping Tbl commercial minced garlic. Tossed in 20 oz sliced white mushrooms, and cooked until those were mostly reduced.

We then tossed in the leftover lamb meat (probably 2 lbs or so), 1 can low-sodium beef broth, 1 bottle of decent beer (Pete's Wicked) and the last cup of the lamb broth. (Which included the fat from the boiling: probably about 1/4 cup of fat. This was useful, because the meat itself was a bit dry by this point.) Bring to a simmer, add 1 lb of sliced carrots, cover, and cook for 15 minutes.

Tossed in 3 remaining raw small red potatoes, quartered, and 1 jar of pearl onions. Added a heaping Tbl of Better Than Boullion Beef (low-sodium), to kick up the broth. Simmered another 15 minutes, covered.

Tossed in a cup or two of green beans, and another several small potatoes (these had been cooked, so wanted less time). Simmered another 10 minutes, covered.

Tossed in half a cup or so of frozen baby peas, and the rendered bacon. Simmered another 5 minutes, uncovered.

Served with crusty french bread for sopping. Yum!

Tonight's dinner was a homebrew Eggplant Parmesan, which came out well enough that it's worth putting in the household cookbook and writing up here. Recipe and detailed notes below the cut.
( The complex Eggplant Parm I wanted on Friday )

Say what you will about Food Network, they are a good source of inspiration. Dinner tonight was a variant of "Dang Cold Asian Noodle Salad", off of Guy Fieri's show. Here's a link to what we wound up with, after adding some chicken, a bunch more veggies and more sauce. Really fabulously good -- it'll probably become one of our potluck standards...

Scarcely even counts as a recipe, given how simple it is, but it's worth noting because it is *so* good. Thanks to my father for the suggestion.

Take an eggplant. (We did it with the round purple-and-white ones. No idea what they're called: the guy at the farmer's market simply named them "purple".) Slice it fairly thin -- quarter-inch slices or so. Brush on olive oil on both sides (I'm experimenting with flavored oils, which are proving interesting), and sprinkle with a bit of pepper and a dash of kosher salt.

Grill on direct high heat, pretty quickly -- 2-3 minutes per side, until each side has very dark grill marks. Serve immediately, and enjoy...

[Happy birthday to alexx_kay, which was the main focus of the day!]

After a year of semi-regular use, I'm getting pretty comfortable with the grill and its use -- I'm starting to trust my instincts about how long to cook things, how to get an appropriate level of brownness, and so on. So it's time to start playing more seriously with recipes.

Today was my first attempt to formulate a rub from scratch: heretofore, I've been tending to use various store-bought options. (Both of the rubs at msmemory's party were commercial. The strongly herby one was Stonewall Kitchen's Chicken and Pork Spice Rub, which can be found at most gourmet shops. The dark and smoky one was Jake's Grillin Original Chicken Rub, bought at Whole Foods -- the principal flavor is coffee, which sounds improbable but is really quite good.)

Anyway, today's rub, whipped up to go with the chicken breasts we were bringing to Alexx' birthday party, was very loosely adapted from several recipes from Steven Raichlen's Barbeque Bible, and worked well enough to keep. I wasn't exactly taking notes at the time (nor measuring precisely), but roughly speaking, the recipe is:

1 Tbl Kosher salt (I actually used a scant 2 Tbl, which the Raichlen original says, but I don't think it needs that much)
1 rounded Tbl ground black pepper
1 scant Tbl ground cumin
1 Tbl dried oregano
1/2 tsp or so ground chipotle pepper
1 Tbl sweet paprika (this was very rough: it was really just a heavy shake for a few seconds)
1 scant Tbl Spanish thyme
1/2 tsp ground mustard

This makes enough to coat 6 ordinary boneless, skinless breasts of chicken (or so -- there was a little left over, but not much). Put the rub in a bowl, put the chicken in and make sure it gets thoroughly coated. Grill 6 minutes or so per side over direct heat. I brought barbeque sauce to go with, but it really didn't need it: this has a ton of flavor, and a good spicy punch. We cut the breasts in half for serving and let sit a bit, which allowed some juice to run out; that works really nicely to moisten the grilled rub.