Lamb - Italian Stew and Spicy Indian Cubes

I never liked lamb. It was one of the first dishes I tried when I started out learning to cook --- in fact, out of Hazan. Surprising, now that I think about it, that it failed --- I think it's the only dish out of Hazan that didn't work for me. It was her lamb stew. I had to go to the kitchen to look up the recipe again, since her book is in the kitchen since I use it regularly. But I haven't looked at this recipe since 2002 or so. So now I see that the reason I chose it was because it had so few ingredients:

Lamb Stew with Vinegar and Green Beans

1 pound fresh green beans, 1/4C olio, 3 pounds (!) lamb shoulder with bone cut into 2" cubes, 1/2C chopped onion, salt, pepper, 1/2C red wine vinegar.

Cut the ends of the beans, heat the oil, brown the lamb, take it out, cook the onion 'til it's golden, put back the lamb, add the salt, pepper and vinegar, boil vinegar for 30 sec while stirring. Add the beans, cover, and simmer for 1.5 hours (!). Add water if necessary.

I might try it again, I remember working on it as when I was a Ph.D. student, I was excited, I decided to learn to cook and decided on learning out of Hazan's Essentials of Classical Italian Cooking and Pepin's Techniques. But I remember that I didn't read the recipe through, I didn't know it would take 2 hours, I'd never prepared green beans. I was working with 3 pounds of smelly lamb! And after all that, when I tasted this lamb stew, it was too gamy. So I avoided cooking lamb since then, though I probably ate it occasionally in North Indian restaurants.

The only time I enjoyed lamb was when this chef visited a friend of ours and made lamb-burgers with mint. They were excellent.

But then I came across Jaffrey's excellent Indian lamb cubes.

Spicy Indian Lamb Cubes

3 tablespoon oil, 1.5" ginger, 4cl fine chopped garlic, 15 curry leaves if you can find them, 1# lamb 1" cubes, 2 teaspoon garam masala, 1 teaspoon ground cumin, .25 teaspoon turmeric, .25 teaspoon pepper, 1 gr chopped chili, .5 teaspoon salt, black pepper, 1.5-2 teaspoon lemon juice

Heat oil in a pan at medium-high. Add ginger, garlic, curry, and stir. Add lamb, cut the heat to medium low. Add the garam masala, ground cumin, turmeric, pepper, chili, salt. Add .75C water, cover the pan, and simmer gently 50min. Then add black pepper, lemon juice and serve it forth.

And they are spicy, not gamy, and delicious.

Sichuanese Dishes without Chinese Ingredients

I've been a fan of Fuschia Dunlop's since I met a couple who lived for a year or so in China. We went over their house and they made a Sichuanese hotpot for us (I think they used Dunlop p347 as a guide, but since they lived there I suppose they might've been doing their own thing,) in a beautifully crafted Chinese copper brazier. The meal was remarkable (this couple also made Ethiopian food for us, and homemade Gouda cheese... both of these were also exquisite.)



Anyway so during the Sichuanese hotpot evening, I asked the wife which Chinese cookbook she recommended, and she recommended Fuschia Dunlop, so I bought it. And I was converted to Sichuanese food, or maybe just Dunlop's food.

Many things aren't exactly fast or easy in Dunlop, but some things are. But I worked on Dunlop and I gained some skills in Chinese food. And one thing is that Chinese food is the most fun food to make of any cuisine, in my opinion.

Now I started learning to cook when I was finishing my Ph.D. at UCLA.. Actually perhaps I had tried a few dishes before that, out of the Moosewood cookbook, which I haven't used for years, if you know what I mean.... So when I decided I wanted to stop eating out all the time and start cooking, I wanted to learn from some time-tested books. And so I bought 2 books, one was Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques, and the other was Marcella Hazan's The Essentials of Classic Italian Cuisine

(I'd been to Italy a number of times and remain a devotee of the country, the cuisine, the people, the architecture, the art, the history, the churches, the ruins, the gelato, the culture, the lifestyle.) Pepin was good, I used him to buy a few tools in the beginning (see my 1st post), and to learn a few basic things.

Marcella Hazan taught me to cook.

Since then I've collected a lot of cookbooks, read what's good and what's bad in cookbooks. Dunlop is a good cookbook, one of the best. Sichuanese cooking isn't hard, but you do need one skill that I didn't have as a beginner --- reading the entire recipe, preparing all the steps in advance, and being ready. You need this skill particularly when you're cooking Sichuanese, because once you're done with the prep, and your stove is on, and the oil is starting to smoke in your wok, everything happens very, very, very quickly. And that's what's fun about it.

So I made a bunch of dishes. Here's a simple, fast easy one, which isn't from Dunlop but was taught to me by the husband from the couple mentioned above.

Chinese Fried Rice

Prepare 1C rice. (I make Thai jasmine rice when I cook Chinese, it's what I find at my Chinese grocery so I suppose it's what they eat there.)

Meanwhile, chop 2 green onions, 1/2" ginger, and 2 cloves garlic. Beat 2 eggs with some salt. Now heat your wok with some peanut oil, superhot, just until it starts smoking. (If you don't have a wok, use a large pan that as much of rice can fit in as possible.) Throw the eggs in, they will fry and cook very quickly, slide them out. Heat some more oil, add ginger, then the rice. Mix and coat the rice with the oil, then cut in the egg, then toss in the green onions, and salt.

Anyway, now, my wife has barred me from making Chinese food because of the melamine thing. Now it's understandable --- but Chinese food is so much fun to make. So I'm going to go through the recipes in Dunlop and list which ones can be made with non-Chinese ingredients. Here's my list so far.

No Chinese Ingredients

• Sea Flavor Noodles p93
  
• Spicy Cold Noodles with Chicken Slivers p96
  
• Mr. Lai's Sticky Rice Balls with Sesame Stuffing p97
• ZHONG dumplings! p102 (these are a culinary masterpiece)
  
• "long" wonton dumplings p104
  
• steamed pork and pumpkin dumplings
  
• steamed pork and cabbage dumplings
  

Yacai Only (Yacai is a Chinese ingredient, but it's only 1)

• Dan Dan Noodles p88,
  
• Mr. Xie Beef Dan Dan Noodles p89,
  
• Yibin Kindling Noodles p91,
  
• Spicy Noodles with Soft Tofu p92
  
• Leaf-wrapped Sticky Rice Dumplings

(I changed Dunlop's titles from using the word glutinous to using the word sticky. The etymology of the word glutinous is that it comes from the word gluten which is related to the word glue. Hence glutinous rice can be thought of as related to gluey rice --- but that's problematic for a different reason, so I went with sticky rice, which is another common translation. But sticky has a different etymology --- people used sticks to 'stick' things to other things...)