Stew of Lamb
This is a Babylonian recipe for, wait for it, lamb stew. This recipe faced resistance. I don’t much care for lamb. I find it gamey and greasy. I absolutely loathe the ancient six-fingered Babylonian priests that have saddled us with 360 degree circles; dozens, grosses, and myriads; 12-hour time; 60 minute hours; and assorted other base-12 disasters that we cannot drop into the abyss of history where they belong.
The first two hurdles were ingredients.
Who uses barley flour? I do weird experiments, so I checked the flour stock: Almond, Rice, Rye, Masaca, Semolina, 00 Durham, bread, cake, and all-purpose. No barley. I couldn’t find it locally. I (The Laird, really) looked from Walmart to the local hippy store, Bread Root. Go Amazon!
Persian shallots. Max had this one covered.
Persian shallots: These are often dried and can be rehydrated in a bowl of water after a half hour. Their flavor is more akin to strong garlic than a shallot.
That – and the fact that I will never use these, again – being the case, I used extra garlic and extra leek.
lamb, cut into large, bite-size pieces
In the freezer, I happened to have ground lamb, which needed to be used. I made meat balls, but not little meat loafs; just the ground lamb formed into balls.
The thickener and garnish are crackers made from the barley flour. If I hadn’t already been a convert to measuring by weight, this would have done it.
The flour was vacuum packed by a very high-vacuum pump. It was as solid as a rock. After weighing, it was easy enough to break up the chunks with a whisk (I didn’t bother sifting it), but trying to measure with cups would have required another bowl to de-chunk it before measuring.
Thank you for this, Max:
Form it into cakes several inches across and as thin as possible without them falling apart, about 1/4 inch thick.
“as thin as possible” would have been much thinner than a quarter inch. It’s not difficult dough to work with – but I just came off of making peanut butter shortbread, which is ridiculously crumbly.
25 minutes at 425 resulted in very toasty crackers. I think even Mr. Dark Crust Lagerstrom would have thought them overdone. I thought them just the edible side of burned, so I pressed on.
While those baked then cooled, I placed everything else:
The garlic is supposed to be mortar-and-pestled into a paste. Who even has a mortar-and-pestle? I do, but it was a gift that I rarely use. I gave up before accomplishing “paste”. It was paste-ish, but still quite chunky. It seemed to be sufficient.
The stew turned out fine, after about 20 minutes more than recommended simmering got it to a stew, as opposed to soup, consistency. Most people would probably call it “good” – I just don’t care for lamb. The sauce is amazing. I’m already planning on stealing that, perhaps with sourdough replacing the barley.
One down; 64 to go. At one a week, that’s over a year. What have I gotten myself into?
Yes, I’ve realized I need an as-served picture for each post.
Marked Up 