Slow Food Cooking with Less Fuss, More Flavor (and One Pan!)
This one pan meal is well worth the wait—and it tastes even better the next day.
It's easy to know what's in season and what everybody's cooking if you're plugged into the online food world. Since this is Memorial Day weekend, food blogs, foodie magazine websites, and e-mail in-boxes are overflowing with grilling tips, potluck recipes, picnic ideas, cool refreshing drinks, and ice cream.
So what am I suggesting you do? Turn on the oven and slow roast a leg of lamb for four and a half hours of course. Just because I raise sheep doesn't mean I always follow the flock.
Until we fell in love with grilled lamb legs steaks* a few years ago, I cooked all of our legs of lamb the same way: slathered with a thick layer of an onion and herb mixture similar to the one I put on my Herb Crusted Lamb Spareribs, cooked just until rare, and served as thick slices. This is an entirely different way to prepare leg of lamb, and I've fallen head over heels for it.
Unlike traditional roasted leg of lamb recipes, this one cooks for several hours, but the actual prep work is minimal—and the entire meal uses just one big pan.
With this method, the meat is cooked until extremely well done, but in a really good way. It comes apart with a fork, is sort of 'dry' like barbecue, and the texture is similar to my Slow Cooked Dutch Oven Lamb Shanks or Shoulder Roasts, only with some crunchy edges, which I think are the best part. The cooking time is also fairly flexible—which can come in quite handy—and it's pretty much impossible to overcook.
This recipe is adapted from one I found in Falling Cloudberries, a delightful cookbook written by Tessa Kiros, the London-born daughter of a Finnish mother and a Greek-Cypriot father who grew up in South Africa, traveled and cooked around the world, and now lives in Tuscany with her Italian husband and two daughters.
Full of color photos and friendly stories, this is the kind of book that's fun to sit down and lose yourself in for half an hour, even if you have no intention of cooking anything for the next month.
Frozen whole tomatoes are tossed right in - no need to defrost.
So why am I posting a cozy winter recipe that requires hours of oven time even though for many of us the heat of summer is far from over? Because I've just shared a really easy way to freeze tomatoes—which work beautifully in this recipe—on my kitchen garden blog, along with a lighthearted explanation of why my once much used canning equipment spends most summers gathering dust.
If you're lucky enough to have a tomato glut on your hands right now, you might want to save some for later. Of course if it's already cool enough in your neck of the woods for this kind of hearty fare, feel free to toss in fresh tomatoes instead. Either way, enjoy!
"You're right," Joe said as I dished up this hearty one pot meal last winter, "a lot of our food isn't pretty."
I tend toward homey comfort foods that, while simple to prepare and deeply satisfying, often leave something to be desired in the looks department. This meal was decidedly not beautiful (or photogenic), but it tasted wonderful.
The nicest thing about dutch oven cooking (I love my enameled cast iron dutch ovens) is that if dinner ends up being served a couple of hours later than planned, it will only taste that much better. And the leftovers are delicious. This is slow food at its best.
As always, I urge you to seek out local and organic ingredients; they really do make a difference. Natural, grass-fed lamb raised by small producers is becoming more and more readily available around the U.S., so there's no need to buy frozen lamb that has traveled halfway across the world. Not that I have anything against sheep farmers in New Zealand and Australia.
Browned lamb shoulder roasts - funky looking but tasty.
Each lamb shoulder has two small roasts which are oddly shaped, but—like most of the 'cheaper cuts' of meat—are full of flavor. If you can't find shoulder roasts for sale (sometimes the shoulder is left whole), you can substitute lamb shanks or even lamb sirloin roasts. Just make sure you use something that has bones.
The other ingredients and amounts are flexible when cooking this way, so feel free to adjust them to suit your taste. A few handfuls of sweet red pepper (from the freezer perhaps?) tossed in are very nice. I've also made this with just the onions and garlic (no wine, herbs, or tomatoes) and it's delicious.
Cold weather comfort food that will make your kitchen smell divine.
Susan's Slow Cooked Dutch Oven Lamb
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 head of garlic, cloves peeled and chopped
2 pounds yellow or white onions (about 8 small), peeled and thickly sliced
5 pounds lamb shoulder roasts, sirloin roasts (bone-in), or lamb shanks
1 cup red wine (I use Cabernet)
2 Tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
1/2 cup chopped fresh flat leaf Italian parsley
1 pound frozen whole paste tomatoes (or 2 cups good canned plum tomatoes)
Salt & pepper
Chopped fresh parsley for garnish (optional)
Heat oven to 350 degrees.
Heat olive oil in a large dutch oven over medium heat. Sprinkle lamb roasts with salt and pepper and then brown on all sides (in batches if necessary), using tongs to turn the pieces. Watch out—the oil will splatter. Remove lamb and set on a large plate.
Add onions to dutch oven and cook, stirring frequently, until soft and starting to brown, about 5 to 7 minutes.
Make a well in the center of the onions and add the garlic. Cook, stirring so that all the garlic touches the bottom of the pot, 2 to 3 minutes. Mix garlic with onions.
Stir in 1/2 cup of the wine, bring to a boil, and stir up any brown bits on the bottom of the pot.
Stir in the rosemary and parsley.
With slow roasting, the dutch oven does most of the work.
Move the onions to the side and set the lamb roasts on the bottom of the pot. Cover the meat with some of the onions.
Scatter the frozen tomatoes over the meat and pour on the remaining 1/2 cup of red wine. Sprinkle with salt and freshly ground pepper.
Put on the lid and set the pot in the oven. Cook for 2½ to 3 hours (or longer), stirring everything around after the first and second hours. Be careful not to burn yourself.
If the meat hasn't already fallen off the bone, it should easily come away with a fork. Serve up the meat with the onion tomato mixture on the side, or mix it all together into a glorious, sludgy mess. Garnish with more chopped parsley if you want to pretty it up a bit. Add a nice green salad and pass warm slices of bread.
Feel like baking your own bread?
Beyond Easy Beer Bread (ready in under an hour!)
Oatmeal Toasting Bread
Savory Cheese & Scallion Scones
Carrot Herb Rolls (and a beautiful bread book for beginners)
How To Make Your Own Pita Bread & Pita Chips
Love lamb? Here are more of my Less Fuss, More Flavor lamb recipes:
Lamb Burgers with Garlic, Shallots, & Feta on Homemade Rosemary Focaccia
Grilled Lamb Burgers with Roasted Red Pepper, Parsley, & Kalamata Olive Relish from Cooking with Shelburne Farms
Easy Ground Lamb & Feta Stuffed Mushrooms
Onion & Herb Crusted Lamb Spareribs and Grilled Lamb Leg Steaks
Still hungry? You'll find links to all my sweet and savory Less Fuss, More Flavor recipes in the Farmgirl Fare Recipe Index.
© FarmgirlFare.com, the slow cooked foodie farm blog where I was really tempted to wait to post this recipe until I had a chance to take a more appetizing, less embarrassing photo of the finished dish (maybe even one without a big splotch of sauce on the plate), but considering how long it takes me to get around to doing anything (these photos are from February) and how not into food photography I am (partly because my kitchen is always a cluttered mess), I figured it would probably be at least another year or two before that happened, so it was ugly or nothing. But it really does taste great!
This easy rosemary focaccia (recipe here) makes great burger 'buns'
You might think that it would be neat to have a best friend who's writing a cookbook, and I suppose that it would be if you happened to live in the same town—or even in the same state—as she does. But I can tell you from my own misfortune personal experience that having a best friend who is writing a cookbook and lives on the other side of the country is absolutely no fun at all.
Not only does she no longer have time to goof off on the phone have serious discussions about life, the universe, and everything with you because she's perpetually frazzled and frantically scrambling to make yet another deadline, but you can't even go over to her house and help devour the plates and platters of scrumptious food she cooks up every day in the name of work.
Nope, you can only salivate along with everyone else in cyberspace as she taunts you with the offer of a free-for-the-asking gorgeous chocolate cake—that's 'pick-up at my house only' of course.
And then there was the message she left on my answering machine one day saying, "I have buttercream frosting all over my hands and you don't!"
If your evil pal best friend also happens to be a computer genius and is therefore your own personal tech support, things are even worse.
Even I, computer challenged as I am, know that the new RAM she advised me to buy several months ago (which is now so old it's probably obsolete—or at least available at one-tenth of the price) would probably do a lot more good if it were actually in my computer rather than sitting on top of it.
Besides having to starve not being able to indulge in all of her homemade gourmet goodness, I must also face the sad and frustrating truth that there isn't really any way to pitch in and get this annoying project finished already help her out because I'm a couple of thousand miles away.
Even when she has a frightening run-in with a wasp, to which she is deathly allergic, and ends up spraying a counter full of food (and several hours worth of work) with toxic bug spray, all I can do is feebly try to console her over the phone.
Once in a while, though, there does come an opportunity to save the day lend a long-distance helping hand, like when she calls and says she needs a few step-by-step photos of mixing up some ground lamb for her lamb burger recipe, and her market is totally lambless.
No problem! you assure her as you head out to the covered porch off the kitchen, lift up the lid of one of your giant, ancient, jam packed chest freezers and pluck out a package of grass-fed ground lamb that you just happened to have raised yourself.
And because helping your best friend out of a bind is of course its own reward, having to cook up and consume some lamb burgers that evening for dinner (since you've already gone to the trouble of mixing up the meat—and thankfully haven't had to douse it with bug spray) is just icing on the proverbial cake, especially if she happened to have told you once that lamb burgers on homemade rosemary focaccia 'buns' are delicious.
So I guess having a best friend who's writing a cookbook isn't all bad. Now if only she would call and say she desperately needs a picture of some deep, dark chocolate cake batter—and buttercream frosting of course.
Beth & Susan's Lamb Burgers with Rosemary, Shallots, Garlic, and Feta Cheese
After taking the required photos for Beth, I decided to apply my More, More, More philosophy to her original recipe and mixed some chopped fresh parsley and rosemary from the greenhouse into the meat. Oh, and I also added more shallots and garlic than she told me to, but hopefully she won't be able to tell in the photos.
If I'd had any ripe heirloom tomatoes in the kitchen garden on the day I made these burgers, you can bet they would have been piled high with thick and juicy slices. But since it was still spring, I made due with some freshly picked arugula instead.
As always, I urge you to seek out local and ingredients whenever possible; they really do make a difference. All natural, grass-fed lamb raised by small producers like us is becoming more and more readily available around the U.S., so there's no need to buy frozen lamb that has traveled halfway across the world. Search Local Harvest to find lamb and other food grown close to home.
1 pound ground lamb, preferably all natural and grass-fed
3 ounces feta cheese, crumbled (blue cheese is nice, too)
3 heaping Tablespoons chopped shallots
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped (about 1 heaping Tablespoon)
1 to 2 Tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary leaves
3 heaping Tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
Freshly ground pepper
A sprinkle of salt (the feta is salty so don't overdo it)
Place the ground lamb, feta cheese, shallots, garlic, rosemary, and parsley in a bowl. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, then gently mix until combined—the best way to do this is with your clean hands. Form into 3 or 4 patties.
Place patties on a grill or in a hot skillet (cast iron works beautifully) and cook until brown, about 5 minutes. Flip burgers and cook until desired doneness. Serve between slices of focaccia or your favorite bread or buns.
Love lamb? Here are more of my favorite easy lamb recipes:
Grilled Lamb Burgers with Roasted Red Pepper, Parsley, & Kalamata Olive Relish from Cooking with Shelburne Farms
Easy Ground Lamb & Feta Stuffed Mushrooms
Onion & Herb Crusted Lamb Spareribs and Grilled Lamb Leg Steaks
Slow Roasted Dutch Oven Lamb Shanks or Shoulder Roasts with Tomatoes, Onions, Garlic, and Rosemary
Slow Roasted Greek Style Leg of Lamb with Oregano and Lemon (a one pan dinner with lemony garlic potatoes and Swiss chard)
Still hungry? You'll find links to all my sweet and savory Less Fuss, More Flavor recipes in the Farmgirl Fare Recipe Index.
© FarmgirlFare.com, the burger loving foodie farm blog where Farmgirl Susan shares recipes, stories, & photos from her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.
Stuffed Mushrooms With Homegrown Lamb, Onion, Parsley & Feta
We always eat well when my foodie mother visits the farm. During her most recent stay we were so busy with lambing season (which is still dragging on by the way) most of our homemade meals came straight from the freezer. Last fall, however, we had a chance to do lots of experimenting in the kitchen, and I'm slowly but surely getting some of those new favorite recipes posted. Enjoy!
I'm embarrassed to admit that up until last November I'd never stuffed a mushroom in my life. I now realize this is tragic, and I'm determined to make up for lost time because I've also realized there are a lot of stuffed mushroom recipes out there. I mean, you can stuff a mushroom with just about anything! Who knew? Okay, probably everyone but me.
My late-in-life stuffed mushroom introduction happened purely by chance. After picking my foodie mother up at the airport last fall for her twice yearly visit to the farm, we stopped by Trader Joe's to stock up for our upcoming ten day cooking and eating spree. And there they were: packages of giant 'Stuffer Mushrooms' nudged up against the regular-sized mushrooms and screaming at me. "YOU NEED US! YOU WANT US! TAKE US HOME AND STUFF US!"
Simple Yet Superb: Onion & Herb Crusted Lamb Spareribs
People often ask me if we eat any of the animals we raise. The answer is yes, and I wouldn't have it any other way. You can read more about my philosphy on raising animals for meat in my previous post, Book Review: Cooking With Shelburne Farms & A Recipe For Grilled Lamb Burgers With Roasted Red Pepper, Parsley, & Kalamata Olive Relish. And look for more of my Less Fuss, More Flavor lamb recipes to be posted soon. Well, maybe not soon, but in the near future.
There are lots of people in this country who do not eat lamb. Some of them had very bad experiences with mutton many decades ago, usually while in the military. Others consider lamb too expensive, preferring to plunk down the same amount of hard earned cash for a couple of juicy T-bone steaks rather than some itty bitty loin chops they aren't completely sure what to do with anyway. And, sadly, a surprisingly large number of people have simply never had the opportunity to taste lamb in any way, shape, or form. According to USDA's Economic Research Service, each American eats less than one pound of lamb a year.
The most well known cuts of lamb are the chops and the leg. Roast leg of lamb, the year round Sunday dinner of choice in England for centuries, is sometimes found on formal holiday tables in this country, as is rack of lamb. Both are suitably impressive looking, which no doubt helps to foster the reputation lamb has of being a very fancy dish. Lamb in America has become the champagne of meats, and serving it is often reserved for special occasions. But this reputation - as anyone who has ever had a cozy dish of slow cooked braised lamb shanks will tell you - is undeserved and needs to be abolished (as does that whole ridiculous 'champagne is only for celebrations' nonsense). And I'm not just saying that because I happen to raise and sell lambs. There is much more to a lamb than a couple of roast legs and some chops.
When I was a child, lamb chops made a regular appearance on our family dinner table. My mother broiled them, and they were always served with mint jelly. I don't recall having any other cuts of lamb, though once I moved to a farm and started raising sheep, I discovered that my mother has a deep and abiding love for lamb. During her 10-day visit last fall we ate lamb at least seven times. When I dropped her off at the airport, she had a lamb sandwich in her carry-on and a small insulated container of leftover roast leg of lamb in her suitcase.
We sell our naturally raised, grass-fed lambs directly to local individuals each year in late spring. We deliver the lambs to a nearby family-owned processor, and a week later the customers pick up their frozen meat which has been cut and packaged to their specifications. This butcher didn't have a whole lot of experience processing lambs before I - totally clueless and not real good at picturing things three dimensionally - showed up with my battered copy of Betty Crocker's Cookbook opened to the page titled 'Lamb Retail Cuts: Where They Come From And How To Cook Them.' The last several years have been a learning experience for all of us.
I ask lots of questions, and they do their best to accommodate me. Can you tell me the exact time to deliver the lambs so they don't have to wait around being nervous and stressed? Yes. Can you hang the dressed meat using this special technique so it ends up even more tender? Yes. Can you hang it for several days longer than you usually do? Yes. Can you make us some lamb salami with seasonings I provide and without any nitrates? Yes. Do you know how to cut a rack of lamb? No, but we'll figure it out.
Easy Summer Supper: Grilled Lamb Leg Steaks & Garden Veggies
Last year, after talking with a new customer who mentioned that he and his wife don't cook roasts ("We're grill people!"), I asked our butcher if he thought it would work to cut the legs into steaks instead of leaving them whole. Yes! Since we probably use our outdoor propane grill 300 nights a year, we decided we would have the legs on one our own lambs sliced into 1-1/4 inch steaks (the same thickness we get our chops). We love roast leg of lamb, and we love having all the leftovers for sandwiches, but we just don't end up cooking them that often, especially during the warmer months.
We grilled two test steaks for six minutes a side and served them up alongside some sauteed veggies from the organic kitchen garden. I took one bite and stared down at my plate as a big grin spread across my face. "It's like eating an enormous boneless lamb chop!" (The legs are actually bone-in, but you barely notice the little piece in each steak.)
When I called the butcher the next day to ask if he could cut up meat that's already frozen, without skipping a beat he said, "You want me to cut up the other legs you have in your freezer, right?" Yes. Leg steaks are now hands-down my favorite cut of lamb.
Nobody's perfect of course, and butchers do make mistakes from time to time. Unfortunately when you're doing custom processing, there isn't a whole lot that can be done once you've messed up somebody's meat. Take, for instance, the time a friend of mine went to pick up her fat hog and found that the two whole hams she'd ordered (and had special plans for) had both been sliced into steaks. It isn't as if they could just be glued back together.
Last year one of our customers was truly distraught when she realized that her two racks of lamb spareribs were nowhere to be found. They'd inadvertantly been turned into stew meat, an understandable oversight since according to the butcher almost nobody ever wants the ribs. Unfortunately they just happened to be this woman's favorite cut, and she'd been looking forward to eating them for months.
It isn't easy to find whole racks of lamb spareribs (which come from the breast) for sale, but this overlooked cut is worth seeking out, and they shouldn't be very expensive when you find them. Check with a good butcher or try searching at Local Harvest for a lamb producer in your area.
As always - and especially during these times of more and more scary recalls - I urge you to pay attention to where your food comes from and under what conditions it was raised. Do you want to eat animals that have been given growth hormones and antibiotics? Or spend their lives crammed into a filthy feedlot eating GMO corn?
Lambs that are allowed to graze freely on pastures, exercising and gaining weight slowly, are happy, healthy animals. Their lean meat is better tasting and better for you than lambs quickly fattened up on grain in commercial feedlots. Studies show that grass-fed meat is lower in fat and higher in omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. It also contains as much as 500 times the amount of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a compound substance and essential fatty acid necessary for optimal health, as conventional animals fed grains and feed.
One lamb has two racks of spareribs. Ours weigh between 1-1/2 to 2 pounds each. The ribs don't have a lot of meat on them, but they're very tasty. Two whole racks should serve four people, though after a hard day of working around the farm, my lamb loving mother can polish off nearly an entire rack by herself. I roast the racks whole and then cut them up before serving. Eating lamb ribs is a messy but thoroughly enjoyable experience.
Just A Few Minutes Of Prep & They're Ready For The Oven
Onion & Herb Crusted Lamb Spareribs
This is the same way I prepare a whole leg of lamb for roasting. You simply slather on a thick layer of the onion and herb mixture and pop it in the oven. Both the leg and ribs will taste even better if you allow the meat sit for several hours once you've spread the topping on (set it in the fridge if it's going to be more than two hours). You can cook the ribs for as little as an hour, but two hours makes the topping nice and crisp and the meat more tender. You could probably slow cook them at a lower temperature for even longer.
Onion flakes are marvelous little things that I toss into all sorts of stuff. I see them selling in the bulk herb sections of natural food stores for a ridiculous $15 to $18 per pound, but for years I've been ordering them - along with all kinds of other top quality herbs and spices at wholesale prices -for $3.10 a pound from AmeriHerb in Iowa. The minimum order is just one pound of anything, and they only charge you their actual shipping costs. You can read more about AmeriHerb and why I love them so much in my previous post, Onion Flakes & Things For Cakes.
I never measure out quantities when I make this; I just start with at least a couple of big handfuls of onion flakes and go from there. As long as there's enough olive oil to hold everything together and enough paste to make a thick layer, you really can't go wrong with this combination of ingredients, especially if your herbs are freshly picked. Simply adjust the amounts of everything to suit your tastes.
2 whole racks of lamb spareribs (about 3 to 4 pounds)
Onion flakes
Chopped fresh garlic
Chopped fresh rosemary
Chopped fresh thyme
Chopped fresh basil
Chopped fresh parsley (I use lots)
Dijon mustard (not too much)
Nice salt & pepper
Extra-virgin olive oil
Spread spareribs in a large roasting pan.* Combine remaining ingredients in a small bowl to form a thick paste. Using your fingers, spread it all over the ribs. Cook, uncovered, at 325 degrees for 1 to 2 hours. Using a sharp knife, carefully cut each rack into individual ribs. Pile on a platter and serve with plenty of cloth napkins and a bowl for the bones.
Leftover ribs can be reheated in the oven or toaster/convection oven the next day for lunch. Or if you're pressed for time because your mother, disguised as a starving farm worker, is sure she will pass out from hunger before they're ready, you can gently reheat them in the microwave.
* Our lamb ribs come with a couple of separate end pieces that won't fit in my big new roasting pan (how did I survive so long without one of these?), so on a whim I slathered them with Soy Vay Veri Veri Teriyaki Sauce that I bought at Trader Joe's and cooked them in a separate small dish. Yum. Then I tried marinating two entire racks in the stuff overnight. Double yum. So if you can't get a hold of some nice fresh herbs for this recipe, here's another easy and tasty option.
This is my contribution to Grow Your Own, a wonderful monthly food blogging event hosted at Andrea's Recipes that celebrates the foods we grow or raise ourselves and the dishes we make using our homegrown products. This month's roundup will be posted at Andrea's Recipes in a day or two. Want to join in the Grow Your Own fun? Find out how here.
Still hungry?
You'll find links to all of my Less Fuss, More Flavor recipes in the sidebar of the Farmgirl Fare homepage.
© 2008 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where Farmgirl Susan shares stories and photos of her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres - and we all eat very, very well.
Handmade burgers on homemade buns
It was a blind date. All I had was a name—and the deep down feeling that this time it was going to be something special. And from the moment we met, I knew that we were destined to spend the rest of our lives together.
It was immediately apparent that we share the same likes and dislikes, the same dreams and desires, the same unabashed devotion to naturally raising sheep. I felt connected as I never had before. Right from the start it was as if we were reading each others' thoughts.
If Cooking With Shelburne Farms: Food And Stories From Vermont had been a person instead of a publication, I have no doubt that our first meeting would have ended at an all-night wedding chapel in Vegas.
That's how in love I am with this wonderful new book.
I knew fate had brought us together when the first page I randomly opened to was a chapter called Caring for the Flock. It perfectly expressed how I feel about raising animals for meat:
"The Shelburne Farms' Children's Farmyard is an educational farm within the working farm, where visitors can milk a cow or goat, collect eggs, and learn how to carefully pick up a chicken, feed the animals, and maybe even witness a sow or a ewe giving birth. The natural cycle of a farm also, undeniably, includes the other end of life. A poster on the wall of the Farmyard carefully explains the life of a Shelburne Farms lamb and finishes with a photograph of a beautifully plated dish from the Inn.
It is true that lambs are about as cute as food gets, and that makes some people uncomfortable, but, 'we raise animals for human consumption here,' says Sam Smith plainly, a farmer and educator at Shelburne Farms. 'People need to recognize where their food is coming from.' "
It is most important to Sam—and to Shelburne Farms—that the flock be managed to the highest environmental and humane standards, leaving the animals on pasture and the lambs with their mothers as long as possible. 'I raise them in the best way that I can, and I try to educate people,' Sam says. 'You can't force people to do anything, but you can educate them. And I think the farmyard is probably the best place in the world to educate people about what they're eating.' "
Shelburne Farms is a 1,400-acre nonprofit environmental education center, working farm, Inn, and National Historic Landmark on Lake Champlain in Shelburne, Vermont. As part of its mission to cultivate a conservation ethic, Shelburne Farms is a dedicated supporter of local agriculture and is itself a creator of sustainably produced food, including their award-winning Farmhouse Cheddar Cheese.
Cooking With Shelburne Farms is, in turn, a celebration of Vermont-grown food, and also of the farmers, cheesemakers, foragers, hunters and fishermen, and maple sugarmakers who cultivate, harvest, or craft it.
The book contains stories from farmers and other food producers along with more than 100 recipes featuring nine iconic Vermont ingredients: Milk and Cheese, Maple, Early Spring and Summer Greens, Lamb, Wild Mushrooms, Game and Fish, Pork, Root-Cellar Vegetables, and Apples. The dishes deliver rustic flavors with a "fresh, comfortable cooking approach."
And while the ingredients and recipes are grounded in Vermont, authors Melissa Pasanen and Shelburne Farms Chef Rick Gencarelli offer variation suggestions to "encourage those of you in other parts of the country to make similar connections in your communities and develop your own sense of place through the food you cook and eat."
Recipes range from the everyday—Sausage Rolls and Deviled Ham & Cheddar Spread—to the extraordinary: Roast Duck Legs with Sour Cherry Sauce and Sage & Garlic Pan-Roasted Quail. Classic dishes are given fresh twists, and unexpected ingredients are paired in contemporary ways.
Crispy Pork Chops with Lemon Parsley Sauce takes a traditional schnitzel preparation and spices it up with coriander and cumin. Lasagne is made with mushrooms, kale and blue cheese, and buttermilk is combined with juicy plums to create a beautiful blushing sherbert.
The recipes are well written and easy to follow. Each one offers a "Before You Start" paragraph that gives helpful advice on everything from sourcing the best ingredients to making substitutions, and the Prepare-Ahead Tips make preparation even easier. The sections of sumptuous, full-color photos will no doubt have you drooling all over your beautiful new cookbook.
Cooking With Shelburne Farms (Hardcover, 296 pages, 2007 Viking Studio, $34.95) would make a very special gift for anyone who loves cooking and food. Ask for it at your local bookstore or order online from order online from Amazon.com for $23.07 with free shipping. April 2012 Update: Used copies are available from amazon for as little as $1.68.
My short list of recipes to try includes Shepherd's Pie with Caramelized Onions & Cheddar Smash; Mexican Venison Chili made with cinnamon & chocolate; Smoked Cheddar Crackers and Tomato-Cheddar soup; Maple-Roasted Butternut Squash Puree; and Chocolate-Sour Cream Cake with Bittersweet Chocolate Frosting, which, the authors warn, is "not a cake for children."
In the meantime, I've already made the scrumptious Grilled Lamb Burgers With Red Pepper, Parsley, and Kalamata Olive Relish three times. Last week I made them for my foodie mom who's been visiting from California, and I don't think she stopped moaning with pleasure until her burger was gone.
As always, I urge you to seek out local and organic ingredients; they really do make a difference.
Fresh from our farm
Grilled Lamb Burgers with Roasted Red Pepper, Parsley, and Kalamata Olive Relish
from Cooking With Shelburne Farms [My notes in brackets]
Serves 4
Authors' Notes On Lamb:
We recommend searching out local lamb that has been raised on pasture. Although people often think of lamb at two ends of a spectrum—either very delicate or quite strong and gamey—most lamb raised today has sweet, earthy, and light gamy notes. If the flavors are too strong, most likely the lamb is not as fresh as it should be.
We have found that ground lamb is especially variable, and because it will often have a fairly high level of fat, it can develop strong flavors. If you have access to a good butcher counter, it is always best to ask for your lamb to be ground fresh to order. The leanest (and priciest) ground lamb will be from the leg, but a well-trimmed shoulder is often your best bet. Good ground lamb can also come from the neck or a well-trimmed breast.
You just can't beat freshly ground meat
[Susan's note: For these burgers, we used the grinder attachment on our KitchenAid stand mixer to turn some of our own grass-fed lamb stew meat into freshly ground burger. If you're a burger lover, there's simply no comparison to freshly ground meat,whether you do it yourself or have your butcher do it for you.]
Before You Start:
We allow for a 6-ounce burger because even lean ground lamb will shrink quite a bit on the grill. If you don't have time to grill or broil the peppers yourself, the jarred roasted red peppers often found in the Italian sections of well-stocked supermarkets make a fine substitute; just make sure not to buy the marinated kind and to pat them dry before using.
If you can't cook the burgers on a grill, use a good, heavy frying pan, preferably a ridged grill pan, on the stove; lamb burgers can cause dangerous flare-ups in a broiler. [I used my grill pan the last time I made them, and it worked great.]
For the relish:
[A word of warning: If you're the type of person who nibbles while you're cooking and tends to devour condiments as if they're side dishes, this recipe will not serve 4 people. It served me, with a little bit leftover, but it can easily be doubled. This marvelous stuff is truly addictive.
I felt that it was crying out to be paired with some juicy garden tomatoes, either chopped and mixed into the relish or served sliced on the burger alongside it. It would taste just as wonderful on a beef or turkey or even pork burgers, and I plan to use it as a base for all sorts of salads next summer. You could even toss it with pasta.]
Adapted from the original recipe:
1 cup coarsely chopped red bell peppers that have been grilled or broiled until charred and then skinned and seeded (see Tip below) [I used red and golden peppers from my garden and charred them over a gas stove burner. The flavor was out of this world and definitely worth the few minutes of extra work.]
1/2 cup coarsely chopped, pitted, vinegar-marinated black olives, such as kalamata
1/2 cup coarsely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
2 teaspoons white balsamic vinegar [they called for lemon juice]
2 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon finely minced garlic [my addition, optional]
Coarse kosher salt to taste [I used semi-coarse mineral salt]
For the burgers:
1½ pounds lean ground lamb
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper [I omitted]
2 Tablespoons finely minced garlic [doubled from 1 Tablespoon]
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt [I used semi-coarse mineral salt]
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1. Prepare a barbecue grill to cook on medium-high heat.
2. Prepare the relish: In a small serving bowl, stir together the peppers, olives, parsley, vinegar, olive oil, and salt. [This tastes even better if made several hours ahead or the night before.]
3. Prepare the burgers: In a large bowl, gently mix together the ground lamb, parsley, red pepper, garlic, salt, and black pepper. Form the mixture into four burgers, flatten them to about 3/4 inch thick, and gently press your thumb in the center of each one to help them cook evenly.
4. Grill or panfry the burgers carefully for about 3 to 4 minutes per side for medium-rare. Be forewarned that the fat in lamb can cause flare-ups. Serve the burgers on really good, lightly grilled soft buns, topped with the relish. [I put mayonnaise on mine. Aioli would be tasty, too.]
Tip: After grilling or broiling the peppers, put them in a bowl and cover it tightly with plastic wrap. Leave the peppers for bout 8 to 10 minutes and the skin will be much easier to remove. [Resist the urge to rinse the peppers under running water, as you'll end up sending much of the flavor down the drain. Don't worry if there are black specks of skin remaining on the peppers; they taste delicious. Click here for a great tutorial by my foodie friend Elise on how to roast peppers over a gas flame.]
Excerpts and recipes are from Cooking with Shelburne Farms by Melissa Pasanen with Rick Gencarelli and reproduced with permission from the publisher. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 by Melissa Pasanen and Shelburne Farms. Article and photos © 2007 FarmgirlFare.com, the well fed foodie farm blog where Farmgirl Susan shares stories & photos of her crazy country life on 240 remote acres.
This recipe is adapted from one I found in Falling Cloudberries, a delightful cookbook written by Tessa Kiros, the London-born daughter of a Finnish mother and a Greek-Cypriot father who grew up in South Africa, traveled and cooked around the world, and now lives in Tuscany with her Italian husband and two daughters.
