I often think that living in a small scruffy New York City apartment is akin to a pioneer life in a log cabin somewhere remote. Sure, the commute is easier, but the myriad quotidien affronts and man traps of a city existence certainly resemble the perils of life on the range.

This is never more true than in winter when leaving your apartment on an icy weekend is about as enticing as wading through thigh-deep snow while being pursued by a pack of ravening wolves. On the those days, when opening your front door results in a nasty swirl of city trash blowing across your threshold, there is nothing better to do than hole up and compensate for your super’s inattention to heating your building to legally established levels by braising something porky for however many hours it takes to chase the chill back, at least as far the verminious bathroom and its dripping condensation.

In this case, it was some seriously chunky pork neck bones – whose original owner must have been a champion of his breed – braised in a rosemary-scented Guinness broth. Typical of parts of the English Midlands where malty, hoppy ales abound and rare breed pigs grow fat on acorns, apples and whey, this is an ancient recipe and in it lie the origins of the famous baked bean dish that, when transposed to the rather more Puritanical colonies, banished the beer in favor of the sweetness of readily-available sugar coming up from the Caribbean, so becoming Boston baked beans. For those pioneers, the presence of such a stew on the table during a long Massachusetts winter must have been even more important than for us hard-pressed city dwellers today.

It is also very similar to a stew my Great Auntie Annie used to make when a crowd of family descended on her Solihull semi-detached so that the grandkids could spend the day riding around the garden on her husband’s 1/16th scale-model railway. It’s not clear to me how often Great Uncle Roger used his train when there were no young guests in the house, but I rather enjoy the idea that if you peeked through the box hedges of a quiet Birmingham suburb on any given weekday morning you might find a highly eccentric retiree rushing around his back yard on a toy train.

For we grandkids, all the excited shreaking and ducking under low hanging bushes as the train chugged around at a decent clip always left us red-faced and famished. My Great Aunt, the youngest of nine kids, knew instinctively how to cater for large groups of young ‘uns, stretching a cheaper cut of meat with white beans, potatoes, and iron-rich ale.

The quality of the final product relies greatly on the quality of the beer used in the braise. Lager is of no use here and light beer (if it is ever worth drinking) should be completely avoided. A fine malty and/or hoppy English-style brew that will give strength, depth and some sweetness to the stew is what you’re seeking. Auntie Annie used to use Flowers’ Original, a floral English ale (then) made in nearby Stratford-upon-Avon. Similarly, pork necks with plenty of connective tissue and marrow are ideal because the former breaks down to thicken the sauce and latter makes a simple and rustic dish somehow luxurious.

Of course, unlike life in the country where heating is controlled by the number of logs on the fire, your apartment heating is bound to come on, clanking and groaning itself into overdrive, just as you plate this dish, forcing you to sweat through it, and all night long in your bed, in spite of the open window. The following morning, perhaps only to escape the dry, oppressive internal conditions, the grey, freezing city will magically appear more inviting and your struggle on the subway marginally less onerous.

New Jersey, it’s like a cross-section of the entire United States stuffed into a very small area — fenced-in by heavy industry, ugly sub-divisions, peaceful tidal bays and relaxing shore towns — but with its own very distinct character. And, if you drive around it long enough, you’re bound to see some pretty interesting stuff. This goes for the social and the edible, as well as the geographic and architectural.

For example, every spring, you’ll find aged Italian-Americans risking the wrath of New Jersey State Troopers as they harvest dandelions from the banks and verges of Jersey’s myriad highways and parkways. The first time I saw this I thought it must be part of a program to get the elderly outside and active by having them weed public areas. Then, when I’d learned what they were really doing, I marveled at the genetic lottery these robust octogenarians were winning in spite of eating greens picked from the sides of some of the most heavily trafficked roads in the country. So, even though I was apprehensive — for that reason, as well as only having ingested dandelions previously in the form of the disgusting traditional British beverage Dandelion & Burdock (something my grandparents used to trick me into drinking by telling me it was Coke. Its taste is somewhere between sarsaparilla and rust.)— I figured I should give it a go myself.

Now, I haven’t yet had the privelige of picking my own weeds for dinner as cars and trucks whizz by on the NJ Turnpike, and when I do, you can sure you’ll hear about it right here, but I have experimented with eating dandelions a couple of times. The first was an unmitigated disaster, as their unbelievable bitterness ruined an entire meal: leaching acrid chemicals into the sauce and turning my mouth so far inside-out from the first bite that I spent the rest of the evening scrubbing the insides of my cheeks almost raw with a toothbrush.

But recently, I decided that they deserved a second chance. So, arming ourselves with a little research, as well as a precautionary array of tongue scrubbing devices, we set about turning a large bunch of sandy weeds into a delicious side dish. Happily, after a sound preliminary blanching, the outcome was an enormous improvement on our first, rash experiment. And, as part of a scrumptious early fall dinner of veal chop, rich buttery rosemary-brandy cream sauce, and a frankly beautiful (if I do say so myself) roast turnip, I was delighted to concede that eating weeds can, in fact, be very enjoyable.

Of course, the world needs another basic veal chop recipe like Williamsburg, Brooklyn, needs more frickin’ hipsters, but we have been on kind of a veal chop kick since we returned from Argentina in the spring. It’s an expensive habit for sure now we’re back, but in Buenos Aires, as with all kinds of cattle products, veal is very reasonably priced and is treated with a similar degree of skill as the more famous beef.

One particular veal dish stands out. At the rather trendy-looking Grappa restaurant in the Palermo “Hollywood’ district of BA, Amy had a spectacular grilled veal chop slathered with one of the most mushroomy sauces imaginable. It was as if entire sacks of porcini mushrooms had been somehow liquefied on her plate. The menu described it simply as a chuleta de ternera con crema de hongos and our pathetic (certainly for food and menus) dictionary couldn’t tell us what hongos are.

Still, we knew that we liked them and they were delicious, not to mention that hongos is just a fun word to say, so a couple of days after eating said dish, perusing the shelves of a local almacen, we were excited to find large bags of dried Chilean hongos at rock-bottom prices. It was only after we returned to Brooklyn that we learned that hongos translates as “fungus”, but even with a couple of bags of hongos in our pantry, we’re still not exactly sure what kind of fungus we are the owners of. They look and taste very similar to porcini, so we’re assuming that they are a related species, but research into the differences between hongos and setas (wild mushrooms in Spanish) returns no categorical answer except that taxonomically, mushrooms are fungi and fungi are mushrooms. However, one almost helpful Argentine website informed us that, fungus usually refers either to inedible mushrooms, or to the large (usually subterranean) organism of which the mushroom is but the visible, and gatherable, part. To turn the example above ground, the fungus is the apple tree, the mushroom is the apple.

Anyway, though we, like the fungus, might still be in the dark about many micological issues, we can assure you that should you find hongos on the menu anywhere in the Spanish speaking world, you should eat them, especially if paired with veal and a delicious buttery sauce.

Grappa
El Salvador 5802 – Palermo Hollywood, Buenos Aires
T: 4899-2577
E: grappacantina@fibertel.com.ar
Every day 12noon to 1.30 a.m.

Spring hasn’t exactly sprung yet here in Brooklyn. The trees are still bare and are showing no signs of sprouting anything. Even the crocuses, let alone the daffodils, remain mostly tuberly and dormant.

Nonetheless, there are some signs of the changing season as our long-suffering chives are poking through all bright green and soft, and our tough little tarragon plant is also making a comeback. And, it’s these weak, but brave, first signs that we’re clinging to in order to retain sanity at the end of what seems like a very long and cold winter.

So, with these hints of verdant optimism poking through the bare earth, we’re looking ahead to the increasing bounty of our tiny garden, and asking you to nominate your Top Five favorite herbs. This month’s winner will receive a package including various herb seeds and a cookbook/guidebook to growing your own essential culinary flavorings.  Click here to read the rules of our monthly top five giveaways.

Amy & Jonny’s Favorite Herbs:

1. tarragon
2. chives
3. lavender
4. thyme
5. sorrel

If spring has already sprung where you are, why not try our very delicious recipe for Grilled Lamb Shoulder Chop with a Yogurt Herb Sauce and Grilled Pita or this Lavender & Herb de Provence-stuffed Pork Rib Roast?  How about a simple and healthy Artichokes Stuffed with Parsely, Garlic and Parmigiano?

Think spring, readers! Think spring.

Check out WANF’s other Top 5 contests and winners here.

I feel kinda cheesy. I admit it, I feel cool about using a butcher. I understand this is lame and that butchers have been around for ages, but, truthfully, in the recent year, we’ve really gotten to know our neighborhood butchers. Growing up in the ‘burbs, meat was only bought pre-cut and pre-packaged. Yes, every once in awhile you’d see the grocery store’s butcher come out from behind those weird black, plastic doors with the small square window. You’d wonder what rock he/she crawled out from because, more often than not (now I mean NO disrespect) those grocery store workers who came out from the back had a few less teeth than me and looked as though “meth” could’ve been their middle name.

After our first attempt at making homemade sausage, I realized how invaluable a butcher is. We live in a country where many people don’t know what kind of animal their meat comes from. Hold up an eggplant to a 10-year old and good chance they may not even know what the hell it is. It’s sad that the neighborhood butcher is starting to become a thing of the past. Hell, I live in Brooklyn, NY, one of the most multicultural places on earth and, in my hood alone we only have a few butchers left. I’m talking about the neighborhood butcher, not that gourmet food store up the street. You know the place – the guy/gal behind the counter has butchers hands and fingers, you know his/her name and he/she knows your name, they don’t switch employees as quickly as McDonald’s and they can easily ask you if you want “the regular”. Word is that the decline in these gems is because young people aren’t interested in carrying on the family trade. Maybe with this economic downward spiral Americans will be more willing to work with their hands again and see the beauty how happy meat/poultry can make people.

Jonny and I have wanted to try and make a dish that we ate in Florence, Italy at the awesome Coco Lezzone since the last time we recreated their Pappa al Pomodoro. It was one of those meals from start to finish that will forever stay etched in my mind. Saveur did a cover story on their Herb-Stuffed Pork Loin in their April, 2006 issue. We tweaked the recipe just a bit (lavender wasn’t a part of the original recipe) and, thanks to our awesome butcher, the dish turned out phenomenally. We’re going to do a version of this for Christmas Day dinner because it’s pretty inexpensive and extremely delicious. I highly recommend you go give your butcher a big hug tomorrow.

COCO LEZZONE’S HERB AND LAVENDER-STUFFED PORK LOIN RIB ROAST – Serves 6

Ingredients:

• 1 6-rib center-cut pork loin roast (about 4-5 lbs)
• 6 cloves of garlic, peeled and ground to a paste
• 2 tablespoons of chopped rosemary
• 3 tablespoons of chopped sage
• 2 tablespoons of thyme
• 1 tablespoon dried lavender
• 2 tablespoons + 1/4 (or so) cup olive oil
• salt and pepper

What to do:

1. Preheat over to 475 degrees. In a small bowl, add together the garlic, all the herbs and lavender with a pinch of salt and pepper and 2 tablespoons olive oil. Use a fork to make sure it’s all incorporated together.
2. Push the handle of a long wooden spoon through the center of one end of the pork roast allowing it to poke through the other end’s center. Do this again, moving the handle back and forth and in a circular motion to allow the hole to get bigger. It will end up being about 3/4 of an inch wide.
3. Reserve about 3/4 of a tablespoon of the herb mixture to be use in a moment. Using your fingers, push some of the herb/garlic mixture into the center hole starting on one side and the finishing on the other. Put roast in a roasting pan.
4. Pour about 1/4 cup or so of olive oil over the roast. Rub it in a bit. Using the reserved herb mixture, rub all around the top and sides of the rib roast. Season generously with salt and pepper and roast the pork in the oven until golden brown – about 25 to 30 minutes. Reduce the oven to 350 degrees and continue to roast for an hour longer or until the internal temperature is 160 degrees.
5. Allow pork to rest about 10 minutes and then carve into individual chops. Serve with the pan drippings (which are DEEE-LISH, by the way!).

Have you ever eaten something so fabulous, so lucious, so decadent that you almost felt the need to run to confession (to confess your indulgent food “sins”), say three Hail Mary’s (that’s for you Catholics out there) and pray really hard that you can zip your jeans up again? Ok, a bit exaggerated, but looking back, this is a bit how my first real taste of lardo made me feel.

Now many of you may be scratching your head wondering, “Lardo? Wait, did she mean to write that? Maybe she mean Lardons? Surely she’s not talking about Lard?” Well, kids, hold on to your Spanx-controlled muffin-top, I am talking about lard. But lardo ain’t just any old lard… it’s special lard. Very, very, very special lard.

In our few trips to Italy over the past couple of years, lardo graced our palates a few times, but only in very small quantites (as it should!). The first time we ate it – in Modena, Italy – we were, sadly, so fiercely hungover that we couldn’t really appreciate it. However, this saved us from eating what was an obscene amount of it – slathered in thin ribbons over a beautiful 12 inch thin-crust pizza and topped with the town’s famous aged balsamic.

Apologies for the awful, 1970s plate. I’m blaming the in-laws.

Pearly-white inside and darker and grainy at the edges, lardo, which is basically salt-cured pig fat flavored with rosemary (and occasionally other herbs), is made throughout Italy, though the most famous – lardo di Colonata – is produced only in Colonata, a small, isolated Tuscan town, where the pigs are fed on a steady diet of acorns to better flavor their fat.

In some areas of northern Italy, lardo is used as the cooking fat in which soffrito is sauteed in the preparation of a sugo or ragu, but like other salume, it is often eaten in thin, bite-sized pieces and allowed to melt on the tongue, before being washed down with an effervescent white wine. Which is how, if you can find yourself some, you should try it for the first time. Yes, that’s right, cured pigs’ fat straight-up. No crackers, no bread, no olives. Just fat and your tongue in perfect harmony. It really does melt.

It’s unlikely that we ate lardo di Colonata that day, as the real thing is almost as expensive as the most highly-prized prosciutto, but what we had was still beautifully perfumed of bacon & rosemary, and incredibly rich & luscious tasting, and probably quite pricey in its own right. With the crackle of the pizza crust underneath and the honey sweetness of an ancient balsamic, it was one of the most texturally amazing things I’ve ever put in my mouth, sober, drunk or hungover.

Occasionally, in the intervening year, we’ve complained of a lack of lardo in our lives, but we were completely shocked to find it at a local specialty foods store over the summer – and it was cheap too! They had about half a pound left, and we bought the whole thing, fearing that we might not find it ever again outside of Italy. Fortunately, because it’s cured, it has a good long shelf-life, so we’re taking it easy to make sure we don’t drop dead from cholesterol-related disease before we’re done eating it.

I think we need to do more research into recipes that call for lardo, because apart from taking it neat, so far we’ve only recreated that decadent pizza from Modena. There’s a recipe below, but the sad thing is, if you don’t have any lardo or anywhere that sells it, and you don’t have a 25 year old balsamic vinegar to top it with, that recipe might not be much use. Still, you can aspire to collect these ingredients, and trust me, when you find them, make this pizza and you’ll be glad you waited for it. It might be the most incredible pizza that ever passes your lips.

Lardo Pizza with Wilted Radicchio & Onion

For an absolutely tried & tested, nailed-on recipe for the perfect thin-crust pizza dough read this previous post: Remembering Italy with Thin-Crust Pizza. To get the finest aged balsamic vinegar available in North American delivered to your door, click here, or if you don’t want to buy the good stuff, you can reduce the ordinary kind in a saucepan until consistency resembles molasses.

Unfortunately, Italian lardo is not exported to America. The American Department of Agriculture wants it heated to 156 F (69 C) before it is sold to consumers, but at that point, the fat would start melting, and it would no longer be lardo. However, we found some domestically produced lardo completely by chance in a local store, so you may get lucky somewhere along the line. And while it is widely thought that Italian lardo is greatly superior to any made domestically because it is aged for so much longer, we found US lardo to be very acceptable indeed. Your best bet if you don’t have any awesome gourmet food stores nearby, and this may be even trickier, is to get friendly with your local organic hog farmer and have him save you some back fat from best fed pig on his farm, then cure your own pig fat! Why not? Good luck!

Ingredients & Recipe

1lb fresh pizza dough

1/2 head of radicchio di Chioggia (regular round, red radicchio), shredded finely

1/2 spanish (yellow) onion, finely sliced

2tbsp good olive oil

1 pinch kosher salt

- Sweat radicchio and onion until soft and decorate your pizza with it.

- Then, place thinly-sliced lardo on top and fire pizza in the oven. Remove and dress immediately with balsamic vinegar.

- Savor every mouthful.

The Italian region of Liguria is famous for its dramatic landscape of mountains plunging into crystal clear waters, and narrow terraced fields leading down to tiny, colorful villages precipitously perched on the edges of cliffs of which the Cinque Terre (five lands) of Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore in La Spezia province are the most famous. It’s a region of hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters, though the rugged terrain creates many tiny sub-regional micro-climates, and driving through it, you can go from dry scrub oak and wild thyme to olive groves to chestnut forests and back again in half an hours’ journey.

So it is that Ligurian food, like all Italian regional cuisine, reflects the landscape from which it comes, and because of this much of the local food has traditionally come from the few plants that are able to withstand the poor, dry soil, the salty air at low altitudes, and the cold at higher elevations, supplemented by seafood and, occasionally, game and poultry.

**Sorry for interrupting your reading, but I had to find a place to put this picture in. No lie, we passed this goat going about 45 mph in the Ligurian countryside and I thought I was hallucinating. I made Jonny reverse about 1/4 of a mile down a very winding, thin road to find out if I really was on drugs. This Gandolf-looking creature was smiling from behind a very primitive and small barn about 5 inches off the side of the road. I fell in love at that moment. He looked mythical!

In her recent paean to the Liguria of her ancestors, The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken, author Laura Schenone recalls that while things have changed in modern times, for millenia the fortunes of most of the region’s inhabitants have been directly related to the availability of chestnuts from which many staples were made — including the ubiquitous gnocchi and pasta.

Another plant that grows very successfully in Liguria’s poor soils, as they do a few hundred miles west in the rocky garrigues of Provence where they remain the principle diet of many peasant farmers and, indeed, their livestock, is the chick pea (ceci/garbanzo), and like the chestnut, Ligurians pound the dried cecis into a flour which they use to make a kind of flat bread found nowhere else in Italy save certain parts of Sicily (which is deep fried chickpea dough often used in between bread or as a snack called Panelle – we hope to make this version soon), farinata. The French have their own version of this called Socca, but today we will focus on farinata. Farinata is a kind of street food found in Liguria and can often be treated like pizza as it is often cut into wedges and can come with various toppings like onions.

While we were in Genoa last summer, we saw farinata in bakeries all over the city but, curiously, found that it wasn’t offered in restaurants, though it was probably because of the glut of delicious seafood and various pesto preparations we gorged ourselves on rather than this reason, that we missed out on trying farinata in the region of its origin. Not to be denied though, we sought out some chick pea flour (yes, I know, if weren’t such post-modern bourgeois slacker-tourists we would have pounded our own from dried beans…) at a wonderful gourmet grocers in Park Slope and proceeded to use the wonderful invention that is Babelfish to translate any number of recipes on Italian websites to find out how to make it authentically. If you can not find chickpea flour in your local grocery store, check out some health food shops, Indian and/or Middle Eastern specialty stores. Chickpea flour is a key ingredient to many Indian and Middle Eastern foods.

Regular readers will know that we strive to find and make the most authentic preparations we can, but you will also know that this kind of research often leads to the unfortunate conclusion that there is rarely only one “authentic” version. Referring again to Laura Schenone, who describes farinata as almost like a chick pea flour focaccia – crispy on top and soft and chewy underneath and baked in a wide, shallow pan in a brick pizza oven, we found that this conflicted with our recollections and other recipes we had come across for thinner, almost completely crispy flatbreads. In fact, what we discovered was that the longer the cooking time and the less batter you add to your skillet, the crisper the farinata. Like, duh, right? For a more baked polenta-like consistency underneath with a crisp top, I would recommend pouring enough batter so that it is 1/2-deep and cooking our recipe for 1/2 the time, possibly finishing it off under the broiler for a few minutes. The recipe below will be for a crispy version of farinata – one that almost can crack like a cracker.

**Window shopping in Genoa – check out the farinata being served in the upper right-hand corner

We would like to try the softer version so we can decide which we prefer. Regardless, we thoroughly enjoyed the crispy, thinner and darker bread with its nutty, salty flavor that we made and are enthused to attempt the latter as soon as possible.

Typically, farinata is eaten either alone or dipped in good Ligurian olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt, whereas we decided to use it almost as a canvas for a rather overly decorative carpaccio of zucchini (courgette) with pine nuts, shaved pecorino, and lemon juice. We encourage you to make yourself a farinata or two (preferably not in the hot months as we did, unless you have a good AC!) and eat it anyway you like, reminding yourself, yet again, that peasant food made from humble ingredients is almost always good, and because that’s often all there was/is to eat, it has to be.

CRISPY FARINATA (LIGURIAN CHICKPEA FLATBREAD) WITH ZUCCHINI CARPACCIO SALAD – (makes about 1 12-inch farinata)

Ingredients for farinata:

• 1 1/4 cup of chick pea flour
• 1 1/2 cups of water (maybe a bit more to get the consistency somewhere between whole milk and lite cream)
• 1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (or enough to cover your pan)
• plenty of freshly ground black pepper
• 6 sage leaves, thinly sliced
• 1 teaspoon of chopped rosemary (optional)

Ingredients for zucchini salad:

• 1 large zucchini, sliced into paper-thin slices using a mandoline
• 1 ripe roma tomato, sliced into small dice
• 2 tablespoons pignoli nuts (pine nuts)
• 1 scallion (spring onion), sliced into thin rings
• 3 tablespoons good extra virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon whole grain mustard
• 1 salted anchovy filet
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• pinch of salt and black pepper

What to do:

1. Sift your chickpea flour in a bowl and add your salt, pepper, sage and rosemary. Stir generously.
2. Slowly add your water, whisking the whole time allowing everything to be incorporated (again, you want the batter to be about the consistency of whole milk/light cream).
3. Allow your batter to rest for at least 1 hour or as long as overnight.
4. When you are ready to cook, preheat your oven to 425 degrees. If any foam has surfaced on your chickpea batter, remove with a spoon.
5. Pour olive oil into your 12-inch baking pan – preferably a cast iron skillet. You want the olive oil to generously coat the bottom and sides of your skillet.  Add your batter until it is about 1/4 of an inch  if you want it super crispy or  1/2 inch deep if you want it thicker and possibly softer.
6. For a crispier farinata, bake for about 30 minutes. Check on it, though, as ovens differ and you do not want the batter to burn! If you want it a bit softer, I would recommend baking for about 15-17 minutes and then finishing it under the broiler for a minute. Allow to cool before cutting!
7. Slice zucchini into very thin, long slivers using a mandolin or a very sharp chef’s knife and thinly slice/dice your other veggies. Arrange everything on top of your farinata and sprinkle with pine nuts.
8. Using a mortar and pestle, pound the anchovy and the mustard together and squeeze in the lemon juice and then mix well. Immediately before serving, whisk in the olive oil to make the vinaigrette. Season with salt and pepper and drizzle all over the zucchini carpaccio and farinata.

Check out some other posts you may enjoy:

• BEET AND RICOTTA FILLED RAVIOLI WITH BROWN BUTTER AND POPPY SEEDS
• ITALIAN-STYLE SLOW ROASTED PORK SHOULDER WITH SALSA VERDE
• FUSILLI WITH SALSA DI NOCI AND MUSHROOMS (WALNUT PESTO)
• European Roast…? (Why Coffee Tastes Better There)
• Drink of the Month: Vin Santo (May, 2008)

I feel like we go on and on ad nauseam about our trip to Italy last summer, and I suspect that if it hasn’t happened already, our faithful readers will begin to tire of our constant references to those halcyon days of pastoral bliss, romantic nuptials, and devastatingly good food. So, before your goodwill towards us is exhausted, I want to wring out the last of it with this post on the remarkable dish that is deep-fried lamb rib chops

Perhaps ironically (and this may extend your patience toward us), the only meal, or in this case, part of a meal, that I ate during that trip that was not first-class was the secundi course of the meal in Bologna that included the frankly phenomenal ragu bolognese my wife wrote about recently, namely the deep-fried lamb rib chops. Not that it was bad or even close to bad, it was actually pretty good, but they were slightly overcooked and therefore dry, something I am almost proud to say I could discern even during the intense examination of the final dregs of our third bottle of Barolo.

Crispy exteriors combined with unctious, moist interiors are the holy-grail of almost every fried, grilled or roasted meat dish, where the crispy outer layer insulates the flesh and keeps it moist. However, there is a very fine line between success and failure in these endeavors. Too far one way and you’ve got a crispy outside, but a dry and tough inside. Too far the other, and you’ve got a limp crust and a bloody interior. Lamb rib chops are the beautiful, tender pieces that correspond to the rib-eye (the rib attached to the tenderloin) on a steer, and are frequently served as a rack, medium-rare, with the bones nicely trimmed (Frenched) and often with a garlic & parsley breadcrumb crust that is rarely as crunchy as you want it to be, and I wanted to experiment whether deep-frying could provide the crunch as well as the medium-rareness I had tragically missed out on that night in Bologna.

Indeed, the stakes were further raised by the horrifically high price of lamb in the US. It took this transplanted Englishman a long while to get used to the scarcity of lamb in this country where beef is king (despite there being huge swathes of land that are eminently suitable for sheep-grazing), and the cost has kept us on a steady diet of braised shoulder chops, unable to branch out into the leg or the rack until a fortuitous wander into our local Pathmark store coincided with a virtual giveaway of perfectly Frenched rib chops. Seizing this opportunity with a vigor that may have shocked my wife, I loaded up our shopping cart (yes, the trolley) with rib chops and it was this bounty, as much as anything, that convinced me to try deep-frying them. After all, if it didn’t work and they turned out like hockey pucks, we could still broil or grill ourselves some dinner with the rest.

A little bit of luck, and I prevailed in this experiment and I’m delighted to say that these rib chops were as good as any I’ve eaten anywhere. Assuming you also have the good fortune of finding lamb rib chops at a reasonable price, you should not only grab an armful, but you should try this recipe right away. It would be the perfect thing to impress dinner guests with, and since the chops are fried and therefore quite rich, two per person will suffice, making you appear generous and feel thrifty at the same time. Joy.

Fried Lamb Rib-Chops with Grilled Polenta, Broccoli di Rape and Balsamic Reduction

So, before continuing, I should say that I shallow fried my chops instead of deep frying them as I was nervous about overcooking them. Shallow frying allows you to do the “poke-test” on them (poke the meat with your finger, if it feels soft, it’s rare or very rare, if it is firm, it’s well-done, you want it somewhere between. The trick is knowing when is enough.)

Ingredients (serves 2)

• 4-6 lamb rib chops, frenched
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1 cup panko, or very coarse fresh breadcrumbs
• 1 cup soda water/sparkling mineral water
• 1 tsp salt
• 2-3 cups vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1 clove garlic, smashed but with skin-on
• 1 sprig rosemary

Recipe

• Combine salt, water and flour in a mixing bowl into a batter of medium thickness.
• Put oil in a 10inch (20cm) diameter frying pan. Should be about 1/2inch (1cm) deep.
• Heat oil to around 350F (175C)
• dip chops in batter, then dredge in panko (breadcrumbs) and lay them gently in oil. Do not overcrowd pan. We did ours two at a time.
• Fry chops for about three minutes per side, or until slightly darker than golden brown on the outside.
• Use poke test to determine done-ness.
• Place in a warming oven (200F/95C) and allow to rest for five to ten minutes.
• Add balsamic vinegar, garlic and rosemary to your smallest saucepan.
• Over medium heat allow it to come to a boil. Reduce heat to about medium-low and allow to reduce by at least half.
• Keep your eye on it at this stage because it can very quickly go from a perfect consistency to a bitter-tasting molasses.
• Remove garlic and rosemary and serve sparingly over your lamb chops.

Check out these other posts you may enjoy:

• Truffled Butter: A Prince Among Ideas
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It’s the Thursday after Easter and most people out there are still picking the candy and chocolate out of their teeth having just gorged themselves on all manner of Easter Bunny-shaped confectionery. Ever the destroyers of convention, we have been doing something altogether more real and, some may say, sinister. Yes, friends, cover your children’s ears, for over the weekend, we — like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction — put the Easter Bunny in the pot.

Easter traditions have a lot to answer for in the removal of rabbit from the American table. It is no coincidence that around the turn of the 19th century, fifty years or so after German immigrants had brought the habit of fashioning rabbits out of chocolate and sugar to the New World at Easter-tide, the amount of rabbit being eaten in the US fell into an almost terminal decline. It is only really in the last fifteen years that it has returned, and even now is commonly regarded with suspicion and, in many cases, horror. For what could be crueler than eating a lovely, cute and furry bunny?

Now, lest you think us heartless carnivores, I should point out that I am a big fan of rabbits – and I mean live ones. Not only did I have rabbits as pets for many years as a child and have very fond memories of how much fun they were, but I also believe that contrary to public perception, rabbits are in fact quite intelligent creatures with individual personalities and do make excellent pets.

So, you ask, how could I possibly, as my vegetarian sister puts it, “eat my friends”? Well, readers, first of all, sadly, my rabbits both died nearly twenty years ago, so I am not (and would not) eat the rabbits that were my friends, and secondly, we did not put a pet rabbit in the pot as Ms. Close did, but rather we bought two skinned, headless and footless rabbits (at quite a hefty price) from a local butcher, rather like you would a couple of chickens. And, few, save perhaps fellow poultry, mourn the passing of a couple of chickens.

Then, to immortalize this fortunate (it was making an important contribution to our dinner – what an honor!) and extravagantly-priced creature, we prepared a delicious Provencal-style stew with olives, capers and tomatoes, the making of which we recorded to fashion our first We Are Never Full podcast! What better way to give thanks for the life of a noble beast than to prepare it for the hereafter with a savory, herby sauce and record this event for posterity in mp3?

But, regardless of your feelings about eating rabbits, it really was a truly memorable meal and an excellent recipe (see below). We hope you’ll listen to the podcast and let us know what you think about our first, amateurish foray into the world of multimedia production. We’re planning more podcasts for the future and expect to get much better at it with every attempt.

Provencal Rabbit Stew with Olives and Capers (serves 4)

Rabbit can dry out quickly when cooked because it lacks fat, so this stew works perfectly to keep the meat moist and to tenderize it through long, slow cooking. We ate it with some boiled potatoes for the first meal, then over some tagliatelle as a ragu the second time. Either way it’s delicious and would also work well over rice or just served with some crusty country bread.

Ingredients

1 large rabbit (2-3 lbs)
2-3 tbsp olive oil
½ cup plain flour
½ cup smooth Dijon mustard + 2 tablespoons extra
2 cups coarsely chopped onion
½ cup coarsely chopped carrot
1 cup white wine (whatever you plan to drink with the meal)
1 large sprig thyme
1 medium sprig rosemary
1 bay leaf
1½ tsp tomato paste
5 finely chopped garlic cloves
3-4 cups chicken stock
1 16-0z can of whole, peeled tomatoes (tomatoes only, no juice)
¾lb brine-cured green olives (without pimentos)
1 can black olives, drained
¾ cup capers (large, not nonpareils)
¼ cup finely chopped/chiffonaded parsley

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 375F
2. Cut rabbits into 6 pieces: hind legs (2), forelegs (2) and center-loin/spine (cut in half) or have your butcher do this for you.
3. Brush the rabbit pieces with mustard and then dredge them lightly in flour, shaking off excess.
4. Put a large, high-sided ovenproof pot (we used our big enameled cast-iron Le Creuset) over medium heat and add olive oil.
5. Add rabbit and brown on both sides – 2-3 mins per side or until golden brown. Remove and set aside
6. Add the onions and carrots to the pot and cook over a slightly higher heat until onions have some color. Sprinkle in the leftover flour, if any remains, and stir well into onion. (Additional oil may be necessary here if pan is dry.)
7. Deglaze pot with white wine over high heat and mix well to get all the crusty bits off.
8. Add the thyme, rosemary and bay, extra two tablespoons of mustard and tomato paste and garlic. Mix well.
9. Return rabbit to pot. Add plum tomatoes, olives and capers and add enough chicken stock to cover meat and vegetables by about an inch. Bring to a boil. Cover and braise in oven for 1½ hours or until meat has begun to pull away from bones.
10. Return pan to stove top and reduce sauce by about half. You may also thicken sauce with flour, if desired.
11. Check seasoning and sprinkle with the parsley.
12. Serve. Bowls are best, we found. Enjoy!

Thanks to Dean & DeLuca for the base of this recipe.

Please note that we are FINALLY up on iTunes. Check out all our podcasts

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So maligned are pressure-cookers that it seems almost sacrilegious of a food blog like this, that likes to extol the virtues of fresh ingredients and traditional cooking methods, to even consider adding a recipe that calls for using one. Undaunted, here we are flaunting convention and defying the culinary thought-police once more with a recipe for red wine and herb braised lamb shanks made in our brand spanking new pressure-cooker. Of course, this is but an exaggeration. We’re perfectly happy to try almost any food and any cooking method, and since we’d got given a pressure-cooker for a wedding present, and yesterday was the first autumnal feeling day of the year, we thought, why not give it a try?

Pressure-cookers got their bad name originally for two principal reason. Firstly, they were fundamentally quite dangerous contraptions that were liable to explode and inflict either physical injury by launching scalding lumps of food at those in the kitchen, or enduring damage to your kitchen decor, or both. And secondly, because they tended to stew food, boil out it’s goodness and turn everything to mush. However, advances in design and therefore safety mean that modern pressure-cookers are regaining popularity for their astounding ability to cook dishes that normally take several hours, within forty minutes, while preserving the food’s goodness.

We were first put on to the beauty and convenience of the pressure-cooker by the humble, and vastly underrated, Jacques Pepin. On more than one episode of Fast Food, My Way, Monsieur Pepin gets out his trusty pressure cooker and makes a delicious braised dish (beef, mushrooms and pearl onions, from memory) in about half an hour, while describing how he was inspired by his mother who used to use her pressure cooker on weekday evenings to create a hearty family meal in under an hour. Apparently, Maman Pepin would chop the vegetables and meat while still in her coat, and then slap the lid on the pressure-cooker, while she did various other household chores, and while we used our pressure-cooker for the first time last night (a Sunday) we can definitely see how using it on a weekday meal in the winter would work extremely well.

Here’s the recipe for the dish we made, but there are probably hundreds of different things you could make, all of them inside forty minutes. Next time, we’re going to make lamb rogan josh curry.

Check out some of our other pressure-cooker recipes: Lemongrass Beef Shortribs, Korean Style Pork Ribs and Lebanese Fatteh Blahmeh.

Wine-Braised Lamb Shanks with Rosemary and Thyme in the Pressure-Cooker

1 1/2 – 2lbs lamb shanks (probably 2 shanks)
1 spanish onion, roughly diced
3-6 large garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1 large carrot, roughly diced
1/2 lb mushrooms (whichever kind you like) quartered, halved or whole depending on size
3 sprigs fresh rosemary
7-10 sprigs fresh thyme
1/4 bottle red wine (whatever you like drinking)
1pt chicken or vegetable stock
3 tbsp olive oil
4 tbsp flour
kosher salt
fresh ground black pepper

1. add a couple of good pinches of salt and pepper to the flour in a bowl and dredge lamb shanks until lightly coated.
2. add half the oil to pressure cooker at medium-high heat and brown lamb until colored well on all sides. Remove and set aside.
3. reduce heat to medium and add onion, carrot and mushrooms to pot and remaining oil. sautee until onions go opaque and carrots soften a bit and get sugary. add garlic and sautee for three more minutes.
4. add herbs and the lamb shanks back to the pot. turn heat back to high and add wine and about 3/4 of the stock.
5. bring liquid to a boil then place lid on pressure cooker. keep heat turned to high until pressure monitor shows maximum pressure has been reached, then follow manufacturer’s directions for keeping pressure at the right level for the right amount of time. On our model, I turned the heat to medium, and cooked it for 35 minutes.
6. release pressure and stand back until steam clears.
7. season to taste before plating, but be careful! I burned the sh!t out of my mouth tasting the sauce
8. Enjoy.

I served the lamb with a smoked provolone, cream and parsley polenta and wilted broccoli di rape, and it worked very well indeed. It’s worth noting that the whole thing tasted much better the following day, as is often the case with sauces – they improve until finally they go off.

Do any of you have good pressure-cooker recipes? And, if so, are you brave enough to come out and say that you too appreciate the noble pressure-cooker for what it is – a much-maligned invention of genius? Well, come on then, let’s have them!