"Someone Has To Temper Your Madness"* - A Play In Three Acts.
0 comments Posted by Matthias at 4:26 PMWithin the Homestead
Dramatis Personae
Hannah ..........................................................................................................A delightful girl
Matthias.........................................................................................................A slothful heathen
Yossarian........................................................................................................An alleged cat
Matthias and Hannah are sitting in their bedroom. Hannah is on a chair with her computer on her lap. Matthias is lazing in bed, like the subscriber to the Great Sin Sloth that he is.
HANNAH - "What do you want for lunch?"
MATTHIAS - "Meatballs."
HANNAH - "Well, what do you want for dinner, so that way if we go out, we don't have to go back out for dinner food?"
Matthias sits and thinks for a moment and pokes through the internet, to find a recipe. He finds it on the Food Network Website.
MATTHIAS - "Roasted Lamb Shoulder?"
HANNAH - "OK. That sounds good. So what do you want for lunch?"
MATTHIAS - "Meatballs."
HANNAH - "YOU'RENOTGETTINGMEATBALLSANDLAMBTODAY!!!"
MATTHIAS - Peanut butter and banana sandwich?
HANNAH - Can we have smoothies as well?
MATTHIAS - Of course, my dear.
Exeunt.
Without, In the World of Butchery
Dramatis Personae
George........................................................................................Evidently, a German and butcher
Hannah.....................................................................................Bread-buyer and unmatched beauty
Matthias enters the butcher shop, whereupon the store front it reads, "Greek and American Specialties." He looks in the huge refrigerated case of meats. Everything from chicken and beef to homemade sausages and what appears to be bacon.
GEORGE - "What can I do for you, my friend?"
MATTHIAS - "Do you happen to have lamb shoulder?"
George looks at Matthias with that, "We're a Greek butcher shop. Do we have lamb shoulder. For crying out...it was just EASTER!!!" look. He ambles over to the window and pulls out the shoulder.
GEORGE - "How many you want?"
Matthias looks at the portion of lamb in the man's hands. Given that Matthias is the only meat eater in the household, he notes that this is probably too big for him to eat, but God damn it, he's going to try anyway.
MATTHIAS - "Oh, jeez, just the one!"
George slaps the meat on the scale.
GEORGE - "What are you doing with it?"
MATTHIAS (gleefully) - "I'm gonna roast it tonight!"
GEORGE - "You want me clean it up?"
MATTHIAS (hiding his perplexity) - "Yes, please. That would be great."
George turns around and deftly handles his blades, hammering away at the bone and cutting at the sinews, cleaning up the bits and bobbles that remained on the shoulder.
Enter Hannah.
She is carrying a baguette from the French bakery next door.
MATTHIAS - "Did you get any eclairs?"
HANNAH (wrinkling her nose) - "No, just bread."
George turns back around and hands to them the meat, wrapped in butcher's paper and bagged in two plastic bags, much to Hannah's visible chagrin (remember, this is a play.)
GEORGE - "You are Irish?"
Matthias and Hannah look at each other.
MATTHIAS - "Uh, no. I'm German."
GEORGE - "Where from? In Germany, where from?"
MATTHIAS - "Berlin, I think."
GEORGE - "You have never been there?"
MATTHIAS - "Nope."
GEORGE - "If you go, you see my brother. He owns a restaurant in Heidelberg."
HANNAH - "Ok!"
Exeunt Matthias and Hannah.
And The People, Er, Person Did Feast Upon the Lambs
Dramatis Personae
Matthias......................................................................................................................A glutton
Hannah...........................................................................................................A ravishing vixen
Matthias is eating, lo these four hours hence, his lamb.
MATTHIAS - "Oh my holy sweet Lord. This...this is just about the best thing I ever ate.
HANNAH - "I'm so gl..."
MATTHIAS - "Oh! Mmm! OH my...Hannah. This is...Jeeeeeeeeziz! This is...I can't...
HANNAH - "How's the sauce?"
MATTHIAS (shoveling more food in his mouth) - "Mild. Fatty."
HANNAH (a bit disgusted)- "Fatty?"
MATTHIAS - "That's not a bad thing! Oh."
Various sucking and slurping noises that can only come from a boy in the guise of a man.
END.
*Author's Note: The title for this came from Hannah, as she looked at the ginormous hunk of meat that resided in the glass baking dish I had reserved for the cooking. She asked me if it wouldn't be a good idea to cut it in half. After a moment's consideration (and yes, i did consider NOT cutting it in half), I did so. She said, idly, "Someone has to temper your madness, Sundberg." And thus the title.
Abbreviated Roasted Lamb Shoulder
Recipe abbreviated from Food Network and Jamie Oliver
I think it should be noted that I did not use 2.2 lbs of lamb and it was finished in 3 hours instead of the prescribed 4. I would guess that I had about a pound of it, and nearly all of that is left in the fridge for mutton sammiches. Shut up. I know what mutton is. I just like saying it. To the recipe:
For the lamb:
1 (2.2-pound) shoulder of lamb
Olive oil
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 large bunch fresh rosemary
1 bulb garlic, unpeeled, broken into cloves
For the sauce:
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
2 cups good-quality hot chicken or vegetable stock
2 heaped tablespoons capers, soaked, drained and chopped
1 large bunch fresh mint, leaves picked
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
For the lamb:
Preheat your oven to full whack, (450 to 500 degrees F).
Slash the fat side of the lamb all over with a sharp knife. Lay half the sprigs of rosemary and half the garlic cloves on the bottom of a high-sided roasting pan, rub the lamb all over with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Place it in the pan on top of the rosemary and garlic, and put the rest of the rosemary and garlic on top of the lamb. Tightly cover the tray with aluminum foil and place in the oven. Turn the oven down immediately to 325 degrees F and cook for 4 hours - it's done if you can pull the meat apart easily with 2 forks.
For the sauce:
Remove the lamb from the oven and place it on a chopping board. Cover it with foil, then a kitchen towel, and leave it to rest. Pour away most of the fat from the roasting pan, discarding any bits of rosemary. Put the pan on the stovetop over medium heat and mix in the flour. Add the stock, stirring and scraping all the sticky goodness off the bottom of the pan. You won't need gallons of gravy, just a couple of flavorsome spoonfuls for each serving. Add the capers, turn the heat down and simmer for a few minutes.
Finely chop the mint and add it to the sauce with the red wine vinegar at the last minute then pour into a pitcher.
Of Necessity and Invention; Of Skewers and Veggie-Type Things...
0 comments Posted by Matthias at 5:54 PMIt was a bright and sunny day.
The birds were chirping and The Band was playing on the Patented Bathroom Sound System (before you get all "Ooo and Ahh!" on us, the Patented Bathroom Sound System is a couple of old desktop computer speakers from 1999 and an iPod) and Hannah asked me, if I was hungry and wanted lunch. Well, with the day being so nice, what else would I want to do?
"Well, what do we have in there?"
"Two carrots, celery, some fennel and some hummus. I think we have some tzatziki in there and maybe some pizza sauce. Oh and cream you whipped the other day."
"No soup?"
"Just that yellow pea soup from the other night."
"Eh."
"Yeah."
"Well, what do you want for supper? Then we can go out, get lunch and supper stuff."
This took us upstairs into the kitchen and into the hands of that British gent, Jamie Oliver. We flipped through the two books of his that we own and nothing looked good. Oh, don't get me wrong, shit looks great (I'm looking in your direction, Roasted Chicken Breast Wrapped in Pancetta with Leeks and Thyme) but it wasn't nailing us right in the tummies. Finally after threatening to not eat lunch at all and perhaps take a nap or launch a mad scientist-like assault on the world governments (not plausible, evidently), we settled on a gouda-and-pickled-jalepeno quesadilla for me and a veggie wrap for Hannah.
"All I'm saying is, I'll settle for this veggie wrap if you do something extraordinary for dinner."
Given that a quesadilla is little more than a Mexican grilled cheese sandwich and I LOVE grilled cheese, I agreed.
This, of course, put the pressure on me. Come up with something amazing, or, you scrawny little punk, there will be hell to pay, as I just suffered through a wrap consisting solely of root veg and feta. You botch this and call for pea burgers and I not only will leave you that moment, but I will also take the cat. AND my cake skills.
GASP
Citrus Spiced Kebabs
for the marinade:
6 Navel oranges
1 tbsp good honey
1/2 shallot, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp coriander seeds, bashed up
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (more or less to taste)
about 7 mint leaves, chopped
Salt & Pepper
for the kebabs themselves:
1 red pepper
1 green cubanella pepper
5 mushrooms, halved
1 zucchini, sliced into thick 1/4 in. coins
4 cloves garlic, halved
1 medium red onion, cut into eighths
1 chicken breast, cut into fingers
extra materials:
skewers, wooden or metal
If you are using the wooden skewers, let them soak in water, for about a half an hour or so, as you are prepping everything. This way, they won't burn when you put them in the oven.
Squeeze 4 of the oranges into a bowl. Add everything you need for the marinade, mix up and set in the refrigerator for 10 minutes, to let the flavors mellow.
Heat the oven to 400 degrees, F.
Meanwhile, cut up the veggies and the chicken. Poke the skewers through the meat and veggies in whatever order you want. Doesn't matter. Have fun with it. Place into a glass baking dish, drizzle the marinade/sauce over the kebabs. Once you have placed your kebabs into the baking dish, squeeze the juice of the remaining two oranges over your skewers. It will add just a hint more acid and a bit more liquid for cooking.
Bake in the oven for 30 minutes; 20 minutes covered in aluminum foil, and ten minutes uncovered.
Serve over rice (we used basmati).
Enjoy. Our kitty Yossarian sure did.
