I just read a BBC website item outlining how archeologists, culinary historians and cuneiform experts have been “working to recreate this dish and three others from the world’s oldest-known recipes. It’s a sort of culinary archaeology that uses tablets from Yale University’s Babylonian Collection to gain a deeper understanding of that culture through the lens of taste.” A fascinating article, so you could make a cuppa or pour a glass of wine and settle down to read it if you have interest in things archeological or culinary. I’m sure modern cuisine across the region contains as many cultural links, as do the myriad of languages spoken by a large portion of the world’s population..
Lamb is a major, if not the major, meat eaten all across around the Mediterranean, north Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. But more than that, you can probably say it’s on the menu wherever sheep are raised – so that includes Iceland and Scandinavia, South Africa, and of course Australia and New Zealand, plus much of rural southern Latin America including Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brasil (I had some divine lamb there in September in Gramado where I was teaching – see earlier posts) When we first started coming to Uruguay, lamb wasn’t available in supermarkets and city restaurants. To eat lamb you had to go out to the country/campo, when until relatively recently it was considered gaucho food – meat cooked and eaten by workers on the estancias/pastoral stations/ranches or farms; because when Uruguayans talk of ‘meat’ they’re talking about beef . However, now it’s on city and country restaurant menus, and available in supermarkets and butcher shops/carnicerias all over. Uruguay is a major producer and exporter of quality wool, up there with Australia, New Zealand, China USA and other producer exporters.
We lived in Denver Colorado for a number of years, and found lamb was not popular in the middle of the country, but popular over in the eastern part, particularly the New England states; but I believe it is now becoming more popular across the USA. We lived in the south east part of the city close to the Denver Tech Centre, and while lamb was not on sale in the local supermarkets, a 20 minute drive would take you to a specialised, gourmet, independent butcher, Tony’s Meats. I’ve just checked and am pleased to see Tony’s is still operating, and their website looks sumptuous. Several times I ordered legs of lamb and cooked Aussie Style Roast Lamb for special occasions, including Christmas. Our family have never really enjoyed turkey, and I only once ever had it divinely cooked, at the home of one of daughter Anna’s early boyfriends where we were invited for Thanksgiving.
Lamb is prepared untold numbers of ways including roasting, grilling, stewing, currying and mincing; with various spices, flavourings, vegetable and grain accompaniments varying according to region and culture. Just now I read it’s gaining appeal in the USA these days, so I’ll keep my eyes open next time we visit to see how it might be appearing in MD, MO and CO. In the true tradition of dishes and family cuisine being passed down, I cook lamb the several ways my mother did, and in this series of posts on lamb I’ll share with you how Mum cooked it and influenced my cooking of lamb, too.
First, the weekly roast was often a leg of lamb. A large leg of lamb was placed upside down in a baking dish with a good dollop of dripping from previous roasts, and put in a hot oven for about 30 minutes while the potatoes, probably onions, and parsnips in season, were peeled and cut to uniform pieces. After that time, these veggie pieces were rolled around in the melted fat, the leg turned over, the oven door closed and the temperature turned down to medium/low.
These days I don’t roast with the dollop of saved dripping!!! I prep the veggies by rolling each piece in some oil before placing in the pan, and don’t do anything to the lamb itself – lamb contains enough fat under the skin and through the meat and this emerges with cooking. so there’s less fat/oil to pour off the meat juices before using them to make the gravy. I happily make gravy using Gravox which is an Australian gravy powder and we usually have a stock of if here in Montevideo. But if it’s run out, I make gravy with either flour or cornflour plus meat juices and the water from the green vegetables added, and a teaspoon or two of vinegar improves the flavour too.
Other vegetables – We often had what I found is called trainsmash, that tomato onion breadcrumb dish I mentioned in one of last year’s Christmas posts. Greens included beans, cauliflower, brussels sprouts in season, and peas, though we never had broccoli – I kind of think Mum might have called it ‘migrant food’ ( she was a bit of a snob) but it might have been that little was grown in Tasmania – I never heard of broccoli until I was a married woman living on the other side of the country. We enjoyed nice baked pumpkin in season.
The traditional English mint sauce was always served with our family’s roast lamb, as it is today. It’s nice with lamb grilled or barbequed, too. Into a ceramic small jug or bowl, put about half a cup of finely chopped freshly picked mint, a teaspoon of sugar and about 1/4 teaspoon of salt, pour over that about half a cup of boiling water and a similar amount of vinegar. Leave the salt out if there are people on no salt, as it can be added on the plate if desired. Leave this to stand so the flavour develops.
Although Mum probably ordered the meat by the pound and probably always the same weight, but depending on the number of eaters, what was bought was always expected to leave plenty of cold meat, too for … well, I’ll write another post for all that – stay tuned.