Whisk me away

During the week, I live in Chinatown, where it smells like cheap perfume, grease, and fish, and I work in Midtown, where sour air from the subway grates waft up from the streets to mingle with the dirty smell of diesel fuel. I therefore smell something like a hooker on an industrial fishing vessel by the end of the day. The only respite from the smells of the city is not offered by my apartment itself, which was inhabited for the previous nine months or so by a group of six girls who allowed their white bathrooms to turn a slimy shade of brown and a crust of god-only-knows-what to accumulate on the floor around the refrigerator/sink/stove. But rather, the only times lovely smells are floating around my head are when I’m in the shower or at the stove. And since this is not a blog about personal hygiene, we shall not, at present, go into my bathing routines and rituals.

This weekend I spent the better part of my Sunday traipsing around downtown, hitting, I’m sure, every used book store south of 14th Street in search of a book I found in Venice, decided not to buy, and have since been unable to locate. Go figure. I was enfolded in the smells of old paper and leather and dusty wood all day and it couldn’t have been a more welcome change. Although my search for Girl, 20 by Kingsley Amis was largely unsuccessful, I did stumble upon one of those “They don’t make ‘em like they used to!” cookbooks about regional French cooking. Its huge…and has full page pictures…and over 300 recipes…and they all incorporate butter, bacon, animal fat of some variety (usually lard or goose fat), and/or cream…and everything looks delicious (except for that pigs-feet and tripe recipe I couldn’t quite wrap my head around). I spent my evening multi-tasking, watching Iron Chef: Battle Parmiggiano while post-it marking every recipe I intend to make in my new cookbook. It was bliss. Except it would have been nice to see Batali get his ass handed to him for once…but that’s another post. So expect a slew of French inspired recipes in the next couple weeks along with some Risotto recipes I intend to adapt from a Jaime Oliver cookbook I almost but didn’t buy.

In the meantime, upon my friend Amanda’s suggestion, I’m going to post a recipe I concocted and executed last week, which I’m calling Lamb Bolognese. I’ve started replacing beef with lamb when I can, because it is leaner than beef and more easily digested (any of you who have taken a break from beef only to return to it with an evening spent in the bathroom will appreciate this).

It’s an easy straightforward recipe and the results are really delicious…the lamb holds its own against all of the other ingredients and gives it an excellent flavor that is immediately discernable from the flavor you’d get using beef and also detectably less greasy. It’s a richly flavored and delicious sauce, but not too heavy and is just as good the next day, brought to work in a brown-bag or reheated for dinner part deux. I made it with Penne, which was the only thing I had in the cupboard and which I truly despise. I’d make this again with tagliatelle, linguine, fettucine, or even pappardele.

Lamb Bolognese
Serves 4
1 tblspn olive oil
½ - ¾ lb ground lamb
½ large brown onion
1 cup cremini or Portobello mushrooms, caps only, cleaned and sliced
1 tblspn fresh rosemary or ½ tblspn dried rosemary
½ tspn fresh thyme or ¼ tspn dried thyme
1/3 cup red wine
1 can of diced tomatoes
8 oz tomato puree (not flavored!)
½ tspn salt
¼ tspn ground black pepper

1. Heat olive oil in large saucepan over medium-high heat
2. Fill pot with water and bring to a boil, cook pasta and set aside.
3. Add lamb when oil is heated and brown
4. Remove browned lamb to bowl and drain off all but a little bit of the fat
5. Add onions and mushrooms to pan, reducing heat to medium and stirring frequently until onions are soft and translucent and the mushrooms have been reduced and softened
6. Add rosemary and thyme and let toast gently until fragrant, only about 30 seconds
7. Add lamb back to pan and pour in red wine and bring to a boil, scraping bottom of pan
8. Reduce red wine by half before adding the tomatoes and puree along with salt and pepper
9. Bring mixture to a boil and then reduce heat to simmer. Cover with a lid and let cook, stirring occasionally for 30 min.
10. Remove lid and let cook with lid off for another 15 min – as liquid evaporates, the sauce will thicken and the flavors will intensify.
11. Pour sauce over pasta, grate parmeggiano reggiano over the top and enjoy!