I have lamb. A wee little roast that is perfect for one person.
So tonight I shall:
- Run home from work and put the lamb on a broiler pan.
- Cut into meat and insert garlic cloves.
- Lay rosemary on top.
- Lay fatback on top crossing the rosemary (because the roast has had the natural fat trimmed off).
- Roast it in the oven at 300 degrees for 40 minutes per lb or so.
Then tomorrow, I shall:
- Cut off all the good meat leftovers from the roast (and the lamb leftovers I stole from my parents) and turn it into curry.
- Then the rest (bones, etc.) gets turned into lamb stock.
ETA: So here is the lamb follow up
I’ve been having a stale kind of smell in my house the past couple days and had been unable to place it… well, it was the lamb. But I had plans for that lamb! So I trimmed off the most questionable bits and covered the meat with salt. About 15 minutes later, when the salt was a bit damp around the edges, I rinsed off the salt and patted the lamb dry… still smelled a little questionable, but much better… so I trimmed a couple more small bits… and prepared as planned. Only… with a slightly longer cooking time, and I did not take it out of the oven until it’s juices ran completely clear. As of now, I am not poisoned at all… and it was very tasty. Leftovers are in the fridge for curry.
ETAA: Here’s an explanation of why I have started posting about food
I grew up in a 50s kind of household — meat and potatoes. Our definition of vegetable was the box from green giant that you pop in the microwave for five minutes and stir halfway through… in fact, these days my father will only eat the sugar snap peas from there because the other vegetables are too… healthy.
So I have moved out on my own. I can now eat anything I want. Some things I can figure out with books, but my cookbook budget it limited. I also use allrecipes.com fairly frequently — they have an advanced search feature where you can search by ingredients. I have found the answers to some questions that have been bothering me for a while: for instance, the difference between a parsnip and a parsley root and what both their relationships are to parsley. But some answers I have not found yet: like what exactly is that vegetable, at my produce truck, that looks like a long seedless cucumber (only with a slightly lighter-colored skin) but has this fuzzy mass inside instead. So this is me exploring.
What don’t I know? I know basic ways to make vegetables, but I am looking for more exciting ones. I don’t know authentic approaches to ethnic cuisines. I don’t know (and am intimidated about learning) how to cook fish, bake, or even make most desserts. I’ll figure it out.