The lamb makes its final appearance

       This is not, repeat, not haute cuisine that I'm going to tell you about. Rather it's memories of a noodle dish I used to go crazy about in Vancouver. Dense with little nuggets of stir-fried lamb, fragrant with cumin, it was comfort food to tuck into on a rainy day.
       The sun has been shining most of the week but I was still curious to see if I could recreate the flavours. More to the point, I still had a hunk of cooked lamb sitting in the fridge. In case you've got the same, here's what you can do. Chop the lamb into little pieces and reheat it with its juices (I should have said earlier that having rich, flavourful cooking juices around makes all the difference). Add a teaspoon or more of toasted cumin seeds and red chili flakes to your taste. Then let the lamb burble away while you

 cook some linguine (or spaghetti). Drain it, mix with the lamb and top with lots of chopped green onion and fresh coriander. Delish. As I said, not haute cuisine but a good way of using up leftovers. 

      

Gigot d'agneau à la cuillère.

    "Leg of lamb served with a spoon" is what food writer Trish Deseine calls this succulent dish in her cookbook Nobody Does It Better...Why French home cooking is still the best in the world. One glance (and you could say the same about English-speaking cookbook writers who live some, or all, of the time in France) and you know that she hasn't Anglicized her recipes for non-French residents. For one thing, Deseine doesn't stint on alcohol.  Gigot d'agneau à la cuillère calls for a litre of white and an optional glass of cognac.

Here's how it looks ready to go in the oven.

    You start by boning a leg of lamb with a very sharp knife and a great deal of care. Watch YouTube videos of how to do this by all means but note that it's not quite as simple as it looks. Fortunately all scrags and tags will get hidden inside once you tie the lamb into a tidy-ish bundle. Next you stud the meat liberally with slivers of garlic before you brown it on all sides. In go the chopped onions, shallots, carrots celery, bay leaves, sprigs of rosemary and thyme, wine and cognac. The pot goes in the oven for seven hours and that, my friends, is it. Take a look at it halfway through if you like to check that the wine level hasn't dropped too far, and top up with water or chicken stock if need be.
     You can indeed cut this deeply flavoured lamb apart with a spoon, buttery mashed potatoes sop up the jus, and leftovers of both, as we found out last night, make a stupendously good shepherd's pie.

The Transhumance: Part 2--A Long Lunch

Slid under windshield wipers at recent local markets, the leaflets promoting the transhumance listed a 15 euro lamb lunch to which we were asked to bring our own plates, cutlery and wine glasses, collectively known as couverts.

We forgot all of them. 

But, when there's a huge vide grenier in progress, you buy what you need. One friend scored an entire set of Laguiole cutlery for 10 euros. I found four gold-decorated plates for two. Someone else picked up five blanquette glasses. 

Inside a huge tent, tables were already set with paper cloths. Random sheep decorations hung from the ceiling. Outside, barely visible through the smoke, men manned charcoal barbecues in a manly way, flipping a dozen lamb chops at a time.

But first came a plate of charcuterie (see picture) including the nutty, chewy, ruby-coloured ham. Then, around came a big bowl of parslied potatoes speckled with large chunks of garlic and the first of the platters of grilled lamb. We got through several, all of it good, cooked medium-rare. Next came wedges of cheese and, finally, profiteroles and coffee. 

One thing we love about these long communal meals is how everyone is included. Little kids, teens, young couples, middle-aged people, old people, really old people, no one is marginalized as they might be in some countries. That, to me, is what community is all about.

Volunteers, usually older ladies, do all the work--and they do a splendid job, moving speedily back and forth bringing fresh baskets of bread, more bowls of potatoes, another platter of lamb chops and yet another carafe of wine.

Because wine was involved too, and lots of singing and dancing.

See next post.