[Sca-cooks] lamb at feast (was: fish at feast)

[Saint Phlip]

I suspect that the problem with lamb is that many people just don't
know how to cook it, so the only lamb many people have had is poorely
cooked, and pretty nasty. Most folks' exposure has been to an
over-cooked roast, where the flavor of the lamb becomes pretty
over-powering, and the texture is like shgoe-leather.

If you look in most modern cookbooks, for some reason, you're told to
cook it to medium-well or well-done, which is precisely the wrong
thing to do. It's a very tender and delicate meat, when cooked
(ideally) to rare or medium rare. However, the longer you cook it, the
more intense the specificly lamb flavor of it becomes, and that can be
a turn-off to people who aren't used to it, just as the flavor of
venison can be.

I love lamb- it's my favorite red meat, but there are ways to make it
inedible by me. I remember not too long ago, someone on this List
prepared some loin lamb chops improperly, and from the description,
_I_ wouldn't have eaten it- and loin lamb chops are my favotite cut.

This year at Pennsic, I boned and butterflied a leg and cooked it over
the fire, and it was tasty enough that the only reason there was any
left was because there just weren't enough of us to eat it all, with
the other food we had ;-)

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 12:19 PM,  <Stanza693 at wmconnect.com> wrote:
> But, what's the problem with serving lamb at feast?  Here in Dragonsspine,
> Mistress Elaina served a lamb dish that was absolutely scrumptious.  It was
> called Tharida of Lamb, IIRC.  I don't think there was much left over to go back
> to the kitchens.  (There was at our table, but ONLY because there were only 4
> of us sitting at a table meant for 8.  We wanted to have room for the last
> course.)  Several people really wanted the recipe, but she has not put it in our
> newsletter that I know of.
>
> I've seen lamb come up in other feasts as well that seemed well received.  Is
> it just because of the greasiness factor?
>
> A sus ordenes,
> Constanza Marina de Huelva

-- 
Saint Phlip

Heat it up
Hit it hard
Repent as necessary.

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notices I have read with pleasure. -Clarence Darrow