Spoon-Tender Lamb in Pomegranate sauce, with Garlic, Dates,Golden Raisins, Carrots, and Dried Apricots

I have wanted to cook slow-braised or "Seven Hour Lamb" since I read Melissa Clark's recipe in the New York Times. But leg of lamb is expensive, and I have had trouble finding the three pound cuts I used to see. Publix had only five to six pounders this week, all for over $40. I stopped at the Belle Meade Kroger, hoping for something smaller. More big legs, but wonder of wonders, all wore the "Manager's Special" label and were marked down to $26. I bought two, since lamb is my beef. As a friend of mine would say- I will be "eating on it" for a year.

I cooked one leg right away, but only after hacking and prying and sawing it in two, for I had no Dutch oven large enough to braise six pounds of meat. One half I slow braised, the other half I cut into chunks and soaked in red wine for twenty-four hours before using it in stew. My second six pound leg is packed into my increasingly full and dangerous freezer. A pork loin hurtled out at me last week during a frozen food avalanche and almost broke my foot. Every time I open the freezer door I have to retreat.

The recipes I had looked at all called for wine. But I decided to use a 15 oz can of chicken broth mixed with two tablespoons of pomegranate molasses. Pomegranate juice would have been too sweet. And instead of using potatoes, I kept the carrot and added a handful of dried apricots cut in half, half a dozen chopped dried dates, and half a cup of golden raisins. I also added a medium yellow onion, sauteed to golden and sweet.

I dried the lamb leg half, then seared it on all sides in olive oil in a big skillet. I seasoned it with sea salt and a dusting of cumin. Then I put it in a dutch oven. I surrounded it with the vegetables and fruit, added a tad more salt, then poured in the broth. I added a tablespoon of honey and five peeled whole cloves of garlic. I put the cover on the dutch oven and put it in the oven at 300 degrees. I knew 7 hours would be too long . Clark's recipe had warned me. My lamb was done at two and a half hours.

And yes, I checked it frequently. And yes, it was tender enough to cut through with a spoon. I paired it with couscous . And I used some of the braising liquid from the dutch oven to cook the couscous in- .

A delicious dish, though perhaps too exotic for the young or the provincial.It should feed four.


Here are the ingredients:

2-2 1/2 lb lamb leg

15 oz chicken broth

1 medium yellow onion, dice and sauteed in olive oil

5 cloves of garlic, peeled

1 large carrot, peeled and diced.

6 dates, chopped.

8-12 dried apricots, cut in half.

2 tbs Pomegranate molasses.

1 tablespoon of honey.

1 teaspoon cumin- half sprinkled on lamb, half added to braising liquid.

1/2 cup golden raisins (Sultanas)

Olive oil for searing lamb and cooking the onion.

Sea salt to taste. Add a dash to onions when you are sauteeing them. Add to taste in braising liquid.

One last word- should you have a dutch oven large enough to fit a six pound leg- double the ingredients. But I would urge that you not abandon it for seven hours in the oven. Four hours should be enough.

A Cookbook from Another World

When I opened Silvena Rowe's "Purple Citrus and Sweet Perfume", I felt as though I had stumbled into strangeness. Had I found a guide to the Bed and Breakfast Inns along the canals of Mars, I would not have been more startled. Picture after picture, recipe after recipe- mysterious, yet at the same time familiar. Here was the cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean and here were the foods of the Bible and antiquity. Pomegranate seeds.Figs. Phyllo. Pistachios. We all know these-

But the herbs and spices? Sumac. Black Nigella seeds. Za'atar and Aleppo Pepper? I had never heard of them. Nor had I encountered Kataifi, a shredded dough. And what could I use as substitutions, since I doubted I could find sumac in Nashville. Had I spent over thirty dollars for a beautiful, but useless cookbook?

I suppose I could have ordered Nigella seeds online, but I have become leery of this, since I had my credit card number hijacked earlier this summer. I decided to look around at K&S World Market in the Middle East aisle. I looked over the spice jars, and found the Aleppo pepper and the Nigella seeds. But there were no bottles of sumac. It was only on my next visit that I decided to look outside the jar. And found a one pound bag of sumac.The wonders kept on. I found a bag of Za"atar, an herb mixture,at the Belle Meade Publix. And on Monday, back at K&S, a box of Kataifi, in the freezer section. A woman in line ahead of me gasped when she saw my box of dough."Oh, my God, where did you find that? "

I think we had both underestimated Nashville and its immigrant community. Thousands of Kurds live here . They were not going to give up the taste of their far away homeland for barbecue and fried green tomatoes. Nashville is a world city now, and Silvena Rowe's recipes are not impossible here. I will be making her Basil and Kadaifi Wrapped Shrimp this weekend. And I am going to roast tomatoes today and flavor them with Za"atar and sea-salt.

And below are two photos of treasures from K&S.

Our Wild Hydrangea

Anyone who has grown the cultivated Hydrangeas knows how thirsty they are. Dry spells do not improve them. Yet here in Tennessee we can find Hydrangea arborescens clinging to dry limestone ledges and enduring this state's summer droughts. Our other native hydrangea is the more garden worthy Oak Leaf Hydrangea. I have seen it in gardens all over the state, but never have I seen it in the wild. I grew the double-flowered cultivar "Snowflake" in my old garden, and I gave it to my neighbor when I moved.

Click on these photos for a better view.

American Cucina Povera

Nurses keep strange hours. I was up early this morning and at Kroger at 4am.
I needed trash bags and laundry soap. And a package of 100 watt bulbs. I took the scenic route through the produce aisles and saw that one red bell pepper would set me back $2.50.

Yet, there was something edible I could buy for 19 cents. Hundreds of packages of Ramen noodles bundled into a bin in the center of the aisle. With the Wednesday senior discount, the aged poor could shave off another two cents. If they gave up coffee and vegetables and meat they could eat three squares at under 70 cents a day. Governor Rick Perry's Social Security diet. I have mentioned in the past that poor single mothers I work with pour pickle juice on the noodles to get their kids to eat them.

We are the new Techno-peasants, and White Castle burgers, ramen noodles, and 50 cent cups of macaroni and cheese are our cucina povera, though the only cooking involved is turning on the microwave. Unless NES has turned off our electricity.

If we had any sense we would buy rice and dried beans and polenta and tortillas and eat as well as the have nots in third world countries. But we do not.

As a postscript, I will mention that I bought 4 red bell peppers today for $2.50 at K&S World Market, whose clientele are the immigrants who came here with hope. They know what to do with squash and tortillas and some queso. Maybe we should learn from them.

Summer Vegetable Custard

I had planned to cook all last weekend, but shifts came open at my second job, and I had to opt for the money. This left eggplants, banana and bell peppers, and three kinds of squash marooned in my refrigerator. I had to do something with them Tuesday before they underwent the Big Shrivel. I planned to cook them up separately. I would freeze them for later.

I put two 7 inch regular eggplants in a baking dish and roasted them at 375 for an hour. This gave me 1 1/2 cups of pulp. I ground up 3 five inch zucchini and 2 small yellow squash in my food processor. Then in went 3 sweet banana peppers and 1 large red pepper, all ground to just this side of a puree. I thought I would saute them. And then I realized that I had the makings of a Ratatouille custard. I sauteed a medium yellow onion in olive oil, and sweated it with sea salt. When it was golden it joined the other vegetables in a big mixing bowl. And then I added 1 cup of diced fire roasted canned tomatoes. I put in some more sea salt to taste and a dash or two of Italian seasoning. And 4 minced cloves of garlic. I grated up a cup of Romano cheese and added it. This was the last chance to taste and adjust before I beat in 6 eggs. I put the custard into a 9 inch ungreased Pyrex baking dish. I baked it at 375 for a little over an hour, but keep your eye on this. As soon as the center is set and a test fork comes out clean, this custard is done.

I took this dish in to work to repay a couple I worked with who had taken me out to dinner. They are adventurous eaters, and I knew they would love it. They did. But a young, new nurse was not so sure. She hated eggplant, she said. But she decided to try the custard.

"This is great" was her verdict, "This is off the chain. I can''t even taste the eggplant".

Well of course she could. She had no experience in tasting eggplant used well.

This was a fine dish. A quiche without a crust A custard, if you prefer. We ate it up to the last molecule.

Autumn's Lonely Star.

It is overcast this evening, but if the clouds break I may go outside to where the apartment lights dim to see if I can see Fomalhaut the Lonely, one of the astrology's four royal stars. It rises alone, and sets alone, and I start looking for it in late August, knowing it is the harbinger of fall and more temperate weather.

Once people walked outside at night and looked up. Now they stay indoors and look down. The sky of stars is a land lost to us. Once it was the home of great serpents, of heroes and their hunting dogs, of pole-stars that guided us.It was the great ever- changing river of seasons and time. But now it is the darkness we endure passing from lighted place to lighted place.

Had I a grandchild, I would take her outside to see Orion, and the Twins. I would buy her "The Friendly Stars" by Martha Evans Martin and Donald Howard Menzel, if I could find it. My copy came to Nashville with me when I moved here 30 years ago. I have owned it since I was sixteen. Dover Books published it.

Happy the child who turns over stones to look for salamanders. Who wants to know the name of each wildflower. And I hope he is out there some clear autumn night standing behind his new telescope, looking for Fomalhaut.

A Cooper's Hawk at the Bird Feeder.

My upstairs to- the- right neighbor at these apartments has a plastic cylindrical bird feeder outside his window on a tree branch. He refills it by pulling it inside with a hooked pole. He is protective of the house finches and titmice that come, and I heard him one morning giving the maintenance man an earful about a cat that hid in the foundation shrubs under his feeder. Cats come and go here. We had a feral colony about a year ago, but they have all disappeared. But now my neighbor's feeder has a new threat.

Put up a feeder and the sharp-eyed Cooper's Hawks will find it. They eat songbirds, and they explode out of nowhere. I had one almost hit me once as I was going out to my old vegetable garden. Hell-bent is a good word to describe them, and I have read that some die through recklessness. I have seen one in the trees around here in the early mornings, and this morning as I came home from work, one flew out of my neighbor's feeder tree. He did not go far, but landed on the iron stairway rail on the landing of my apartment. He carried nothing in his claws, nor was he likely to in the near future. He saw me, and then the bluejays saw him. His cover was blown.

I doubt he would fly under my porch to my feeder for a meal, but that does not make my porch safer. Big, leafy trees abound. And there will be other mornings and more mourning doves, and a careless towhee or two. We read about animals and birds that resent the closeness of humans and avoid us. But there are many who thrive as camp-followers. Raccoons, possums, skunks, coyotes, and Cooper's Hawks.