on fucking around and finding out

lamb stew

Been a bit quiet here recently, no? Well: this past Saturday I graduated from my MFA program. I’ve got the embossed diploma cover to prove it!!

This Sunday, Jackson and I came to a different part of Vermont: a house that was once my grandparents’, and is now my aunt’s, and is perhaps the most soothing place in the world to me personally. I walk in the door and my blood pressure drops ten points. I walk in the door and reliably take a three-hour nap.

After three and a half months of eating (delicious!) cafeteria food, I’ve been eager to get cooking again. On Monday, we swung by a nearby butcher shop, hoping to find some inspiration, and left with a pound of sirloin and a lamb collar. My love of lamb has been well-documented here: lamb smash burgers, Turkey and The Wolf lamb necks, Reem Assil’s lamb shoulder. We wanted to buy some shoulder chops or loin chops, to make this old Bon Appétit recipe. But all they had was the collar: better as a roast or a braise.

I was feeling cocky. I’ve braised enough meat (see also: short ribs) to be able to wing it, so wing it we did. There was something beautifully tidy about the collar, which was shrink wrapped like a gift. The next day I released it from its plastic and smeared it with the yogurt marinade from the Bon Appétit recipe (yogurt, garlic, lemon, cumin, coriander, turmeric, s&p). My aunt has one of those bowl covers that look like a shower cap—delightful. I wondered how the yogurt situation would hold up to a braise, but figured it would be fine. The only fight Jackson and I got in this week happened because he accused the fond of being too dark. Backseat cooking, I call it.

After it lived a day in the fridge I took the collar out, wiped off the excess marinade, and seared it to a dark brown in the Dutch oven. (The fond wasn’t too dark!) We chopped some carrots (big pieces) and sliced fat wedges of onion and cooked them in the rendered fat; I wish we’d added a few more pinches of spices here, but no matter. As a psychic told me recently, we should not stew in our regrets: we should only learn from them. We added some wine to the vegetables, cooked it down, and returned the meat to the pan with a box of stock and some water. We could have added more salt here, too. It went into a 300° oven for 4.5 hours. When cocktail hour was over, the lamb was ready.

I boiled some tiny potatoes—I figured we’d serve the shredded meat with the reserved “garlicky yogurt” and some potatoes on the side. But Jackson kept asking, What will we do with the broth? And I ignored him because I had a plan and am stubborn. But then we tasted the broth, which was good and so rich, and it felt rude to exclude it from the dinner table. So first we considered a sort of pot-au-feu treatment—the first time I read about this dish it seemed laboriously adult, but now it made sense: savor the broth, then eat the meat and vegetables. But again: we shredded the meat, and it begged to be back in the broth. Lamb stew it was. It was cloudy out, and not really hot: the weather allowed it. Next week it will be 90 degrees in New York; here, we’re soaking up the last dregs of spring.

featuring Aunt Sarah’s peonies :)

Here is what our table looked like: lamb stew, sprinkled with so many chives from the garden and zinged with a squeeze of lemon. Boiled potatoes crisped in butter, scattered with chive blossoms. GaRLicKy YoGurT on the side. Toast for dipping—we do not fear a double carb. And wine, from the box I always bring to Bennington and forget to drink. I’m used to cooking as a “collaborative” act—I stir, you chop, I bark the orders—but I rarely give up the reins enough to change course so many times during the process. But the lamb asked for it, and the broth was so good. I was brave enough to admit that Jackson had been right. Today, for lunch, we’re having leftovers.