the s is for selebrity sightings
the MLS season has begun. Once Beckham arrives, it is a foregone conclusion that the league will be flooded with hollywood hangers-on. TomKat will be regulars at the Galaxy games while other celebrity types will flock to be seen at their home town MLS games.

So before it gets lost in the noise, I just want to note that local popstar...maybe that's too strong....local mini-celebrity, JoJo is a legit Revs fan. Here's a pic from the home opener two weeks ago.



Note the scarf...that's the one sold by the supporter's club, not one of the crappy ones sold inside the stadium. She's wicked hahd core.  2 comments

for the greater good
so I use StatCounter to keep track of the traffic that the blog gets. One of the neat things to see is how people find the blog in the first place.

A majority of the hits do not come from following a link. These are fine folks like you who happen to have the sight bookmarked and just come directly here. And of course I get a bunch of hits from people following the links on the blogs maintained by my friends and family.

What can be fun to see however, are the links that people follow from search engines. By looking at these, you can see which words they searched for and what the results were that lead them here.

Most of the time, these are searches which overlap with my own interests and happen to be stuff I've posted about. Food, sausage and soccer being prominant themes. Then there are some funny ones which don't really seem to make sense, like 'boggle arena', which hit because I used the word boggle (as in boggles the mind) in a post that also mentioned former US National Team coach Bruce Arena. What was that person hoping to find exactly?

And needless to say, very often my blog is not the most relevant or helpful place for the searcher to learn more about what they're interested in. At best, it's at least relevant and not a complete waste of time. Like hits for the recent lamb dinner post. I assume those folks searching for 'boneless leg of lamb' might be happy enough to read how the meal went.

But never has my blog been the best place to find an answer to a question....until NOW! I recently received a visit sent from the results of this search, where one of my blog posts was the only result! That post is the only place online to find out how to correctly pronounce Sesachacha.

So to whomever that was searching, I'm glad you found that post and I hope that the folks you next spoke with about that pond were duly impressed that you could correctly pronounce it's name.  0 comments

lamb redux
just a quick note to mention that I made up some shepard's pie from the leftovers for dinner last night. Sweated some shallot and added in the stock which had been rescued from the roasting pan yesterday. Thickened that with some roux and then mixed in a bunch of chopped lamb. I layed that into a caserole and added corn and peas to my half of the dish and left the other half veggie free for Reen. Topped it with mashed potatoes made from the leftover boiled potatoes and into the oven to heat through and then a quick broil for the top. It might have been the first shepard's pie that I've eaten which wasn't too salty. Man was that tastey.  1 comments

leg o' lamb o' god
we had family down for easter dinner on Sunday. Reen and I enjoyed putting the meal together very much. I searched for and pondered ideas for lamb, and settled on a recipe from Tony Bourdain's Les Halles cookbook, Gigot de Sept Heures. Which is French for 'braised lamb leg'.

I bought a 7 pound, semi-boneless leg o' lamb. The semi-boneless means that it has the femur part in there but not the knee joint, although there is meat from that area. So there's a large single bone for about 3/4 of the length, then a bunch of floppy muscle at the end. While at the grocery, there were also things labeled at 'boneless leg of lamb', but they were much smaller (2-3 pounds) little balls of meat held together by the elastic twine I've seen used on boneless pork shoulders. They had no resemblance to a leg of anything so I'm wondering what part of the animal they are from? If you boned out the piece that I bought and then rolled and tied it, it would still retain a clear leg/cyliner shape.

The first obstacle is that the recipe suggests a dutch oven for this but our large one wasn't quite large enough. I could have rammed it down in there but didn't think that was a good idea. So I picked up a proper roasting pan from the restaurant supply place. While certainly less than an All-Clad pan, it still cost more than the meat itself! Hopefully we'll get a lifetime of use from it.



I set the alarm for 5:30am Sunday and spent a quick 50 minutes putting this thing together. I first trimmed the fat from the top of the leg, which was quite thick in places. The fat is a cross between beef and pork fat. The larger areas were smooth like pork fat, but it also had a tendency to crumble a bit like suet does. I was happy with my trimming job, getting most of the fat and only nicking the meat in two places. From there I rubbed olive oil over the meat and seasoned it with salt and pepper.

I added one large chopped onion and 5 chopped carrots to the bottom of the pan, placed the meat on top, then added a bottle of white wine, 32oz of beef broth, 15-20 cloves of garlic and some parsley, thyme, bay leaf and rosemary bound up in cheesecloth.

I covered the pan tightly with heavy tin foil, trying for a good seal all around and then placed it into a 300 degree oven. And here's what came out seven hours later.



The top surface was a shade dry, but the desired effect of meat falling off the bone was achieved in spades. I was reminded of the pork butts that dad and I have made during the past year. The meat fell apart and was served like that, rather than in slices, which would have been impossible. The interior meat itself wasn't dried out per se, but also wasn't moist and unctuous like the pork butts were. It was somewhere in between. Some pieces were quite great while others seemed a bit dry.

We served this with simple boiled potatoes, asparagus, challa bread, kielbasa, and salad. The lamb was accompanied by simple mint sauce as well as an apricot/chipotle syrup.

So some notes:
the recipe does not suggest browning the meat prior to the braise, which is a bit odd. But seeing as I was tired and have never browned a huge chunk of meat with my oven broiler, I decided to pass. I think this would be a good step to include in the future.

the recipe does suggest studding the leg with slivers of garlic. With the sauces planned, I didn't feel this was necessary.

the recipe calls for only 1 cup of wine to serve as the braising liquid. My bottle of wine and the stock totaled just over 7 cups of liquid, although it still covered only the bottom inch or so of the meat. I'd guess that about 1/2 of that liquid was left in the pan when it was finished, so I'm glad I added extra. It is also some of the best tasting broth I've ever been responsible for making. The recipe asks you to make a flour/water dough and seal the lid of the dutch oven closed with that, but even still, 1 cup seems like too little liquid to me.

Final thoughts:
In general I'm not sold on the whole braised meats thing. Cooking something until it's 'falling off the bone' is not a goal in and of itself. The texture of these meats is not always devine and they are often fairly bland by themselves. What these dishes do offer is a chance to make an amazing sauce from the braising liquid.

At this point in my cooking education, I'd say leave the braise for meats which can't be cooked any other way. With this leg of lamb, I kept wishing it were charred outside and medium rare and pink inside. That's what meat is all about in my book.


Here's a pic of the lovely table that Reen set. We finally put our wedding china and silverware to use which was nice.
 4 comments

having a ball
Fiona had sent Andrew one of those super bouncy balls a while back. On one side it had the black and white pattern of a soccer ball while the other side was clear. Suspended in the middle is a little plastic soccer player and set in the background is a photo from a real soccer match.





Of course I was curious about what players those are in the photo. So I got in touch with my network of soccer nerds and in very short order I learned that the guy in White is David Platt (captain of the English national team at the time of the photo), the guy grabbing him is Ronald Koeman from Holland and the guy who you can see behind them both is Jan Wouters.

In fact, this specific play is quite famous. Would you like to hear more about it? Really!? Alright then.

Rotterdam, Holland, October 13, 1993

England have struggled for results in a difficult qualifying group and at least a tie is needed against the Dutch to have a chance to book a ticket to the USA for World Cup 1994. The first half is an even affair with neither side taking control and the score is 0-0 at halftime.

Early in the second-half, David Platt finally breaks free and looks to be in on goal alone. In a last gasp effort, Dutch defender Ronald Koeman cynically pulls down the English captain. The rules are clear on the punishment required for such a foul: red card. However, the Dutchman is only shown a yellow. To add further insult, the German referee appears ready to award the penalty kick, only to decide at the last moment that the ball should be placed outside the box.

"It was worth a red card," admitted Koeman, while maintaining that the offense was committed outside of the penalty area. "I tore at Platt and unbalanced him and was clever enough to stand up outside the area."

And then it was Koeman, the man who should have been in the dressing-room, who popped up at the other end of the pitch not ten minutes later, to chip in a free-kick which gave Holland the lead. Six minutes later Dennis Bergkamp beat David Seaman with a low shot from outside the penalty area to wrap up the game and virtually end England's World Cup life.




So if you were curious why England didn't appear in the 1994 World Cup, that's a big part of the story. Thanks Fiona, for this great lesson in soccer history!  1 comments