The what, when, how much stuff used for each dish
Thankfully, I have a friend with a big roast pan that can support my ten kilo pork leg roast. I plan to slow cook this lovely tomorrow. All day it will heat and bubble and surrender to my table. After our initial devouring, I’ll follow up with leftover porky bits recipes.
The gaz bottle always runs out on Sunday. Sunday the shops are closed and gaz bottles sit behind bars shooting the shit waiting for Monday to roll around. A bottle out on Friday night is rare, but not without its challenges. Four kids in a car equals “no fun.” yeah, you can sit ( if you get the chance ) and dream about trips here or trips there or a quick pop up to the shop, but you are kidding yourself. A Friday night gaz bottle outage proves smooth if you have the back-up bottle. Smooth sailing, girl, nothing but ease and smiles in the foreseeable future. Don’-choo be dragging four kids to the magazine for a bottle of gaz. Let us take a moment to plan. Okay. Now back to cooking.
You can’t see it, but there is a faded Mauviel swoosh scar just to the left of this fresh Mauviel swoosh. Unbelievably, I’ve sizzled in the handle of my favorite Mauviel pot on my forearm for a second time. Brown Note Sausage is to blame. I’m supposed to detail Brown Note Sausage in a later post, but perhaps with all the danger involved, I’ve procrastinated. It’s really simple. Brown the sausage, pull it out, make a sauce with buttah, thyme and onions, stick the sausage back in and put in the oven. After it gets all browny and bubbly, pull it out … this is the tough part … beware! the handle is hot. I know the handle is hot, but for whatever reason ( I’ll blame the children ) I sizzled my forearm. Don’t sizzle your forearm. Someday I’ll write up Brown Note Sausage, but for now, I’ll give you a little inspiration for its name.
The dish is actually yummy and doesn’t elicit a similar response to that of the South Park Brown Noise.
France has some LOVELY lamb. In these parts of the Southwest, it’s quite pricey. I cook for six, so I don’t cook lamb much. When we’re after grass fed meat, we stick to our own beef.
Every once in awhile, the shops advertise New Zealand Lamb for 6 – 7 Euros a kilo. I’m always too late to grab some. But there they were, three lovely lamb roasts. I bought all of them.
I’ve never done a lamb leg roast, but I’ve roasted my share of meat.
Smothered in
duck fat
thyme
salt
pepper
Cooked with garlicy friends and thyme sprigs. I did high oven for about fifteen minutes, then lowered to 200 C for another forty minutes. My oven runs high.
Served with roasted pots, buttery asparagus, smothered in gravy and washed down with a lovely Madiran.
See!? and I even managed to take an after photo. Usually I tuck in and forgo the result shot. I do and I do for you.
To a Seattlite, a sin. To a lady feeding eight in Southwest France, a yummy treat! At eight or ten Euros a kilo, I pick this fat slab of farmed fishy up at the super march. Fry gently in duck fat. Served with slaw, left over rice and some broc-cheese.
K. Gotta flip. Bob appetite.
A most welcome b-day prez!
I’m making brown beef stock. If there is ever a recipe that suits me, it’s the one that let’s stuff sit in a pot for four hours. These instructions suit me well. I have stuff to do, children mind, cows to support. The let-it-bubble recipes are completely in line with my life ( if this is not your life, I highly recommend living your life as though it were ). So we make brown beef stock for future winter soups and lovely sauces supporting yummy meat. As a beef farmer, these are the tasks you must face. What do you do with beef bones after all the meaty bits went to beef curry?
In this beef brun:
Roasted beef bones and bits
Tom purée
Celery
Carrots
Onions
Cloves
Garlic
Red wine
Inspired by Saveur Cooks, Authentic French.
It’s what I was in the mood for. An all-day drive to Barcelone and back made for a lazy next day. Assembling sand-weech was about all I had in me.
In this sandwich:
Cheap supermarket baguette
Lettuce
Tomato
Ham ( sans cuenne )
Mayo
Buttah
Brie
These are the wind power things outside of Narbonne. The sunset last night made them look perty.
Duck confit in the oven, I wonder if these three potatoes will come together. I support the terrine of people who believe that you can gratin ( say that ” grah – ten ” ) darn near anything.
But three, small potatoes? Not likely. But wait, I have mushrooms. I have aromatics. Let’s see what forty minutes covered in thick cream snuggled in an average oven does.
Also added was half of a small onion. The other half would have joined the dish were it not for some butter fingers that failed to catch the little guy after it was halved. Wipe well your fingers after buttering your crock.
In this gratin:
Three small potatoes
Six everyday mushrooms
Two small cloves of garlic
Half a small onion sautéd in duck fat
Some celery also sautéd in duck fat
Pinch of fresh thyme
Salt
Pep
Heavy creme
Butter a small terrine, add the goods and cover in creme. Bake for thirty or forty minutes in a 150C oven.
Have a glass if wine. Chat with your husband or cat or friends. Check. When it’s smoodgie and submits to a poke with a fork … Pull it out and dig in.
Three potatoes were well received. A few more weeks now for the new ones to harvest.
Lunch, at last, arrives at 4:15pm. This may be the best cracker I ever ate. It’s been a busy day on the farm. I will spare you the details. A small veal hanger steak was on offer. I served with some risotto. I’m not a big rice eater, but when life gives you short pearly rice, make risotto. As you introduce the stock to the rock hard rice, you think and drink and ponder. Risotto is a grumpy Italian farmer’s wife invention. A result so yummy, they are encouraged to glue to the stove, holding a no-chase-chase-the-toddler free card. Meanwhile, tired Italian dads run around getting junior off the hay bales, out of the tractor and away from the bulls and lake.
Lunch finished at 4:30. Inhaled by me all by myself without any thought of where junior might be. No time for any food fluffing. This is my lunch, four hours late, by the dishes I didn’t do.
In the ris:
The veal was amazing. I’m very proud to have been part of raising that flavor. On the veal-to-beef flavor spectrum, it was a seven. Closer in beefy flavor with all the tenderness of veal. I hope we can replicate this.
Veal:
Girl On Grill Action 