Merguez
More than justpigs, really.
My ambition as it pertains to cooking is simply to make great food and share it with my family and friends. This blog is just another way to do that. Welcome to my table!
"You have to love either what you are going to eat, or the person you are cooking for. Then you have to give yourself up to cooking. Cuisine is an act of love."--Alain Chapel
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lamb
Labor Day Feast
"Let's have a dinner party."
"Oh! I'll get the tongues out."
"...and the liver..."
"...and the pig's foot."
This is how conversations go at our house on the weekend. We pull a bunch of crazy stuff out of the fridge and get cooking. The pigs foot was boiled in a vegetable & white been soup, then rubbed with spices and barbequed, and finally dropped back into the soup pot for a later meal. But we ended up using the other things we pulled out of the freezer for a fantastic, fun, impromptu dinner party that lasted about four hours and fed sixteen people.
Labor Day Feast
A selection of cheeses, olives, cornichon, and sweet pickled peppers
Bread and breadsticks
Melitzanasalata with pita bread
Lamb's tongue and potato salad with salsa verde
BBQ'd larded lamb's liver
Tim's Homemade Pizzas
Margherita
Olive and Basil
Salami
Leg of Lamb marinated in Anchovies, Garlic, Rosemary and Olive Oil
Roasted potatoes
Israeli Couscous with Grilled Vegetables, Preserved Lemon, and Feta
Brownie Sundaes with Fresh Berries
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Offal Yummy Salad
This is what happens when you go on vacation with me: I bring lamb hearts. I keep them in the fridge. I cook them and subject you to trying them. The brave and noble Valentines endured my culinary extremism about a week ago at Stinson Beach. Lucky for me, the hearts were very tasty and my friends didn't feed ME to the sharks.
I've never cooked heart before, but I wanted to try it after finding a recipe that looked great in How to Roast a Lamb. I picked up my whole lamb box plus six tongues and two hearts from Mel at Sierra Farms the day before we left for our vacation.
The hearts were easy to prepare, they were nicely cleaned by the butcher and very fresh, obviously. I simply trimmed the small amount of fat off the outside, trimmed off the very top, butterflied the hearts, and cut out a couple little internal veins. Each heart yields one small piece and two larger pieces. The meat is a beautiful dark red, like lean but tender steak.
Grilled Lamb Hearts with Crispy Fennel and Red Onion
--adapted from How to Roast a Lamb by Michael Psilakis
Serves 4 as an appetizer
2 lamb hearts, trimmed and butterflied
Salt & Pepper
1/2 large fennel bulb, very thinly sliced
1/4 small red onion, thinly sliced
1 TBS chopped chives
1/2 dozen mint leaves, chopped
1 TBS chopped dill
2 TBS fresh lemon juice
2 TBS olive oil
Season the butterflied lamb hearts with salt and pepper and drizzle a bit of olive oil over them. Preheat your gas or charcoal grill.
Mix together the fennel, red onion, chives, mint, and dill with a generous seasoning of salt and pepper. Refrigerate.
Put the lamb hearts on the grill and cook only for about a minute on each side. Just until you get a char-mark on the outside. Let the meat rest off the grill for 2-3 minutes. They will be medium rare.
Mix the meat together with the cold fennel salad and add 2 TBS lemon juice, and roughly 2 TBS olive oil. Toss and season to taste.
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I'm back!
After a busy month of hosting house-guests and doing some traveling ourselves, I'm back in the kitchen and ready to resume all the fun on justpigs.
Sunday I cooked for the first time in almost 3 weeks. I went straight for the recipe page of The New York Times Magazine and was rewarded with a beautiful Lamb Tagine and Citrus Rice. What a great way for me to get reacquainted with my kitchen.
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WASTE NOT: Lamb Hash
We had a great Rob-style meat-fest yesterday which lasted the better part of the afternoon and early evening. Rob fired-up the grill and treated us to pork spare ribs and lamb ribs each with a different rub. Then, after a brief break, he roasted a leg of lamb with potatoes, carrots, & garlic. It was a very meaty Valentine, but lovely nonetheless.
Needless to say, there were some leftovers. This morning I opened the fridge to find a pile of thinly sliced lamb and some cold fingerling potatoes. A delicious excuse to turn on the stove and get cooking. I put a pat of butter in a pan to melt and diced half an onion, half a yam, the potatoes and lamb. I put the onion and yam in first and let them cook for about 5 minutes, then I added the potatoes and lamb and just let them heat through. I grabbed some fresh parsley from the garden and threw it in with some salt and a generous grinding of black pepper. I topped it all off with a poached egg and we all enjoyed steaming-hot lamb hash to get the day started.
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WASTE NOT: Lamb Pie
My husband used to say that we had the most expensive compost ever. I admit I have not historically been a whiz with leftovers. I am making a real effort to change that. It's inevitable that some recipes flop. The failure sits in your fridge until a brave soul mercifully throws it out. To me, that's justifiable compost. But many things go to rot because we don't remember they're back there or we can't bear to eat the same thing, in the same way, for the third time in one week.
Making something new and delicious with leftovers forces one to be imaginative. There are few, if any, recipes for leftovers in contemporary cookbooks. So, in a way, re-cooking food isn't bound by many, if any, rules--though good intuition does help. The end product doesn't always work, but when it does the dish is doubly satisfying.
We have been cooking a lot of lamb lately. Mostly because it's our favorite meat of the moment and we have been buying superb whole, locally grown lamb from Sierra Farms. We recently had some quality leftovers from a dish of four braised lamb shanks. A couple of nights ago Rob got the leftover shanks out and mixed them with a little tomato and some small potatoes to make a very good lamb stew. Tonight, I warmed the leftover stew, added a bit more lamb and a head of roasted garlic from the leg of lamb we recently had, along with some olives and peas. I baked it all in en croûte. The result was one of my best leftover creations yet: Lamb Pie. We ate it with lettuces tossed with olive oil & fleur de sel.
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A Post-Xmas Dinner Party
Le Menu
Assorted Cheeses, Olives, Nuts
Olive Tapenade Twists and Roquefort Tartlets
Rabbit Sausage with Wilted Dandelion Greens and Fingerling Potatoes
Roast Leg of Lamb with Tomatoes and Roasted Garlic
Polenta with Parmesan
Wild Mushrooms Cooked in Parchment
Spinach Salad with Roasted Red Peppers, Feta, Almonds, and Bacon Vinaigrette
Truffles, Candied Orange Peel, Bûche de Noël
photos ©Tim Murphy
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Merry Christmas!
I wasn't up for cooking much. Rob valiantly stepped up to the plate and cooked rack of lamb over fingerling potatoes. I made orange cauliflower with dandelion greens and a salad of greens, goat cheese and pomegranate with pomegranate vinaigrette. Beforehand, we had some homemade saucisson sec with cheese and bread. Cookies and truffles for dessert.
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lamb
saucisson sec
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