3/24 Shepherd's Pie

So what happens when you cook a 5lb+ leg of lamb for 3 people? Well you have leftovers of course! And what do you do with slow cooked leg of lamb?!? Well, you already read the title above, so yes, you make shepherd's pie.

Now, I'm pretty sure a lot of you have already heard my rant about shepherd's pie. If not, here it goes: IF A RESTAURANT TRIES TO SELL YOU SHEPHERD'S PIE COOKED WITH BEEF, RUN AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE TOWARDS THE NEAREST EXIT. It's really quite simple... Shepherds care for sheep. Sheep in turn provide wool, milk and meat among other things. Cowherds care for cows. Cows and sheep are different. If you want a Cowherd's Pie, by all means order one, I'm sure they're tasty. But if you order a shepherd's pie - at the very least, you should expect to be eating lamb soon thereafter...

So anyway, I cooked the lamb with diced onion, chopped garlic, quartered cremini mushrooms, frozen peas, white wine, tomato sauce, fresh thyme and salt/pepper while I prepared some mashed potatoes (2 russets did the trick). Once both were done, I topped the lamb ragu with mashed potatoes and cheese and baked the whole thing in the oven for 25 minutes at 400 degrees. Now I used Gruyeres instead of some sort of lame British cheese and I used homemade tomato sauce in my "ragu" whereas traditionally you would just use stock... Thus my pie is not quite a real shepherd's pie, but at least I DIDN'T USE BEEF DAMN IT!!

So there you go. This wasn't as good as yesterday's lamb & flageolets dinner, but it wasn't far off and it's a great example of how you can turn leftovers into something quite tasty.

Oh, one last thing. If, for some dumb reason, you drop your chef knife -- don't try to catch it with your leg. The results will tend to fall somewhere between less-than-ideal and horrific. Additionally, this can, and probably will, delay the enjoyment of your dinner.

3/23 Easter Leg of Lamb

Cooked up some lamb this weekend for Easter. Followed two recipes that I’ve used in the past, and they worked just as well as in the past. First the lamb. This one came out of Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook. It’s the “seven hour leg of lamb.” Just like it sounds, you basically cook the leg of lamb at a low temp (300 degrees) for 7 hours in a sealed cooking vessel of some sort. Before it goes in, you stuff it with slivers of garlic and throw in a few carrots and onions, white wine and herbs for good measure. Cover, bake and voila! Essentially you get confit leg of lamb that falls off the bone.

Traditionally in France, lamb is often served with flageolets beans. These are essentially small premature kidney beans that once cooked are creamy and delicious. For these I followed a Thomas Keller recipe out of his Bouchon cookbook. Essentially, you quick-soak these by bringing them to a boil and letting them sit for an hour, then you cook them for 2-3 hours with aromatics – but no salt (this apparently toughens the beans). Then you finish them in butter, salt/pepper, thyme and comfit garlic… like I said, very creamy and tasty. (btw it's worth clicking on the picture to make it bigger if you don't do this anyway!)

9/27 Moussaka

After picking up my veggies from Steve from Parker Farms, Haskell and I headed over to Market Basket to pick up some sort of protein to make a meal out of. With no real idea of what we were going to cook, we hoped that Market Basket would provide some sort of inspiration. After browsing through the various offal they have there (veal hearts, beef feet, marrow bones, veal tongue, beef tripe...) I decided I wanted some lamb. Since I still had Steve's eggplants from last week and got more today, I figured a moussaka was in store. Unfortunately I didn't have a recipe, and didn't quite remember how to make it. So this is my bastardized version of moussaka. Basically where I went wrong is that I substituted the white cream sauce that usually bakes on top with mashed potatoes. So the whole thing turned out to be the bastard child of a moussaka and a Sheppard's pie. Not the worst thing in the world by any means. So just to recap what did end up inside this concoction: evoo, onions, garlic, ground lamb, parseley, thyme, oregeno, tomato paste, homemade tomato sauce, mashed potatoes, grilled eggplant, feta cheese all topped with a thin layer of egg yolk, which i guess was my approximation of what should have been a baked cream of sorts... Anywho, it was still quite delicious and will be enjoyed tomorrow at lunch as well.