Braised Lamb Shoulder with Tomato, Citrus, and Anchovy

from April Bloomfield's "A Girl and Her Pig"

• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 bone-in lamb shoulder (about 6 pounds), neck and rib bones removed
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• 3 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 2 Dutch or other spicy long red chiles, pierced with a sharp knife
• 4 small celery stalks, cut into 1/2-ince pieces [Blanked on the fact that I had tossed the celery I had. When I got home from the store, I had zero desire to go back out again.]
• 1 garlic head, cloves separated, but not peeled
• 1 large Spanish onion, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 1 blood orange or small regular orange
• 1 lemon
• 1 tablespoon rosemary leaves, roughly chopped
• One 28-ounce can peeled whole tomatoes, drained, trimmed, and squished with your hands
• 4 whole salt-packed anchovies, rinsed, soaked, and filleted [Another Bloomfield favorite.  Eh, I'll just use oil-packed ones.]
• About 1 1/2 cups dry white wine, such as Sauvignon Blanc

 
Mise en place.  Using boxed wine because I've heard it doesn't oxidize in a minute like the bottled stuff does.

 
Browning the lamb shoulder.  Okay, I realized the rib bones are still attached and I would've gotten more browning action if there were not.

 
It was bitch to muscle around the 4 1/2-pound shoulder around the pot, but here it is looking all pretty.  Bloomfield says to remove the shoulder to a plate and then cook the vegetables in there, but it was far easier for me to take that task over...

 
Into another pot.
Add carrots to the pot first.  Then the rest of the veggies but don't stir stem for ten minutes.  I guess, technically, the carrots are supposed to brown while the rest of the veggies steam; though I can't imagine a pot that would be used for this dish that wouldn't allow all the veggies to have some contact with the pot.  Afterwards, cook while stirring occasionally until the vegetables are all softening and browning.

 
Cut long strips of zest of the lemon and orange.  And this, the rosemary, anchovies, and tomatoes and cook for five more minutes to allow the flavors to marry.  Squeeze in the juices of the orange and 1/2 the lemon.

 
Return the shoulder to the pot.  (Or in my case dump the veggies in with the shoulder) Pour the wine and 1 1/2 cups water around the shoulder and bring the liquid to the simmer.
Some of the juices from the veggies splashed onto the shoulder as I poured it in, but I figured I was trying.

Cover the pot and begin to braise in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes.  Lower the heat to 300 degrees and braise for 3 1/2 hours until the shoulder is very tender.  Remove the lid for the last 30 minutes.
It all smelled pretty amazing and first but less intense later.

Let the lamb rest for 10 minutes and then spoon off the fat from the top.  Which should amount to about 1/2 cup.

 

The finished shoulder with the meat pushed off the bone.

A pretty good dish though it didn't knock it out of the park.  The length of time it had to braise was killing me since I didn't start that part until somewhat after 10pm at night.  Wish I had bread around to mop up the broth when it first came out of the oven.

My Curry

From April Bloomfield's A Girl and Her Pig

• 1 tablespoon fennel seeds, toasted
• 2 tablespoons cumin seeds, toasted
• 1 tablespoon fenugreek seeds, toasted [I'm not sure why I visited the same Indian grocer in Central Square a couple years back and thought I could only buy the powdered stuff, but it was sitting there this time around!]
• 10 whole cloves
• 2 whole star anise
• 3 green cardamom pods
• 3 fresh kaffir lime leaves [I could drive myself nuts looking for these or I could just used the dried stuff from Whole Foods.]
• 1 tablespoon crumbled dried pequin chilies [Bloomfield seems to be in love with these babies, but I am not yet going to special order them from Amazon.  AND if they cannot be found on Amazon, it's just not happening.  L'epicerie screwed me once; it's not happening again.] or red pepper flakes
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 2 teaspoons ground tumeric
• 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 2 cups thinly sliced shallots
• 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 1/2 small cinnamon stick [Eh, I used a whole one instead.  How bad can that be?]
• 1/2 cup finely chopped fresh ginger (from a 3-ounce piece)
• 3 cups drained, trimmed, and chopped canned peeled wholed tomatoes
•  2 tablespoons Maldon [another Bloomfield favorite] or another flaky sea salt
• 8 cilantro roots with 2 inched of stem attached, washed well and finely chopped [Shopping for Zak Pelaccio has taught me to not even try to look for this stuff.  I can wait for it to happen to me, but that's as far as it goes.]
• A 5-inch strip of orange peel, any white pith cut away
• A 5-inch strip of lemon peel, any white pith cut away
• 1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice [Maybe if I had to include the peel as well...]
• 1 1/2 cups pineapple juice (fresh, bottled, or canned)
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 4 pounds boneless lamb shoulder, cut into 2-inch pieces
• 2 tablespoons Maldon or another flaky sea salt

$60 worth of lamb shoulder.  The whole (-ish I assume) shoulder is from Whole Foods and set me back the usual crazy amount of money.  This is for another Bloomfield dish coming up.

Who knows if the "Lamb Stew" meat from McKinnon's is even shoulder.  I was going under the presumption that it was close enough.

Alas, I could not lay my hands on boneless lamb shoulder.  Since this dish involved a literally stupid amount of prep work, let's say that rendering the meat boneless cost me at least an hour.

Oh, 2 cups of finely sliced shallots.  I'm unsure how much time this took me, but I sat in front of the computer playing a poker tournament while doing it.  I don't think that two hours is unreasonable.

A direct quote from "A Girl and Her Pig":

Don't let the long ingredient list scare you off; this curry is easy to make.  The only time-consuming part is collecting all the spices.

NO!  I have many of the spices already.  I'd say that even if I had managed to find boneless lamb shoulder, the shallots and the garlic prep was fucking retarded.

I think I'm toasting cumin seeds here since there seems to be an awful lot of them.

I was being coy and thought I could grind up all the spices in one batch, but that wasn't true.  In any case, like I mentioned, this was a minor pain in the ass compared to other stuff I had to do.

Mise en place.  Finally!

"Oh, hey," Bloomfield says to me.  "I'm pretty sure if you cook these shallots over medium-high heat for ten minutes, they'll wind up deep brown."

I'm like "WTF.  Are you kidding me?  Caramelizing onions takes more like a hour than 10 minutes."  I give this a shot, but I know what's up.

The garlic goes in at the same time, but that's besides the point.

Add spices and ginger (I think I lost close to an hour to the ginger.) and stir constantly for 3 minutes.

Add tomatoes and salt and cook, stirring frequently, (Um, ok) until most of the liquid has evaporated and the mixture looks quite dry.

Add juice and peels and set aside.  Cilantro roots if you got them I guess, but I don't.

Brown the lamb.  This took ages since, um, like every other kitchen I've dealt with the stove-top is slanted.  Eventually I figured there was enough grease in the pan to use the full area, but it wasn't until pretty late.

As you go, dump the browned in that laborious mixture above.

Another dish that called for a broad range of ingredients but failed to live up to the effort involved.  After all, it's really an unspectacular curry dish.

So after the whole browning process, the dish goes into a 350 degree for 1 1/2 hours.  Then you turn down the heat to 250 and it's a whole other hour.

I was pulling out the dish every 1/2 hour to give things a stir, and I'm not sure when I noticed this but all of a sudden the knob had gotten wrenched up to 450 degrees.  Honestly, I don't think my brushing up against the knob trying to reach something on a high shelf did this, and I don't think the brain-dead roommate we might be rid of soon would touch the oven...

In any event, the meat was tender enough without the extra hour at low heat.

Lord knows if I would've noticed any real nuance to the dish if the temperature stayed where it should've been.  I say because I'm never ever doing this again!

Harira [Ramadan Soup] (BRW)

• 1 tablespoon butter or olive oil
• 1 pound boneless lamb shoulder or boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 bunch of fresh parsley, large stems removed, chopped
• 1 bunch of cilantro, large stems removed, chopped
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground tumeric
• Salt and black pepper
• 1/2 cup dried chickpeas, soaked overnight, or 1 cup canned or precooked chickpeas, drained
• 1/2 cup dried lentils, picked over
• 2 larges tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped or about 2 cups drained canned
• 1/4 cup vermicelli or other thin noodles broken into small pieces
• 2 lemons

Mise en place.  The bowl of herbs had me crying uncle after processing the parsley and halfway through the cilantro.  The two herbs grow very differently since parsley has several branches per stem and cilantro only has one small clump of leaves.

Browning the lamb.

Cook onions until they soften a bit.

Add herbs and spices.  That big bowl of herbs wilted down in moments.

Add chickpeas and 6 cups of water.  Cook until they begin to soften.

Add lentils and simmer for 30 minutes.  Do the same to the tomatoes.

Add noodles 10 minutes before serving.  (Since the stew is so hearty in the first place I didn't worry about the whole noodles getting mushy in leftovers thing since they absorb excess liquid thing since there wasn't much excess liquid to begin with.)  Add the juice of one lemon.  The dish was supposed to be served with lemon wedges, but the soup was waaay tart enough with the one lemon.

Pretty good, interesting, hearty stew though the herbs were a pain.  Also, I fear that I've been adding too many lean dishes to my biweekly menu plans for the the season.  It only drives me to eat lots of Chinese takeout and TV dinners.