Dinner 2016 (Part 6)

[Thanks for the Crepes]

I love roast lamb too, and I always thought of Australia as sort of a Mecca for lamb enthusiasts. So @sartoric's post kind of disturbed me too.

 

For one thing, sartoric's lamb looks overcooked in the photo for my taste. For another, I have no liking of mutton. It has a strong smell I dislike a lot. Young lamb cooked preferably rare, but acceptable at med rare is a seasonal treat for us. It's usually prohibitively expensive here and comes down to special occasion pricing around Easter and Christmas.

 

I would be very sad to think I would never taste lamb again, and wouldn't let one bad experience deter me. I used to buy ground lamb for burgers that was very fine, and the last time, I got mutton burgers labeled as lamb from the same source I'd been getting them from right along. It was immediately obvious as soon as I started cooking them by the strong smell in the kitchen. The dog enjoyed very rare mutton burgers outside that night because I had to get that smell out of the house. Come to think of it, I've never tried ground lamb again and that experience was around three decades ago. 

[sartoric]

31 minutes ago, Thanks for the Crepes said:

I love roast lamb too, and I always thought of Australia as sort of a Mecca for lamb enthusiasts. So @sartoric's post kind of disturbed me too.

 

For one thing, sartoric's lamb looks overcooked in the photo for my taste. For another, I have no liking of mutton. It has a strong smell I dislike a lot. Young lamb cooked preferably rare, but acceptable at med rare is a seasonal treat for us. It's usually prohibitively expensive here and comes down to special occasion pricing around Easter and Christmas.

 

I would be very sad to think I would never taste lamb again, and wouldn't let one bad experience deter me. I used to buy ground lamb for burgers that was very fine, and the last time, I got mutton burgers labeled as lamb from the same source I'd been getting them from right along. It was immediately obvious as soon as I started cooking them by the strong smell in the kitchen. The dog enjoyed very rare mutton burgers outside that night because I had to get that smell out of the house. Come to think of it, I've never tried ground lamb again and that experience was around three decades ago. 

Well, after wiping the tears of laughter from my eyes, so I can see the keyboard, let me say that lamb will be eaten here again, I just won't do a leg. It wasn't really over cooked (about an hour and a half at 190 C) it just didn't have any pizazz.

 

I like the little cutlets, and and there will be Indian curries and middle eastern style burgers, I could go on.

I don't think we can buy mutton easily here in lamb Mecca. This half leg weighed 1.5 kg, and cost AUD $10 per kilo (or about US $7 last time I looked). Glad your dog enjoyed the burgers ! Dogs are great, they enjoy almost everything !

 

[sartoric]

1 hour ago, liuzhou said:

Oh dear. I love roast lamb. What went wrong?

I'm not sure, see my response to @Thanks for the Crepes.  It was just really really ordinary.  The paste didn't add much in the way of flavour,  Perhaps I would have been better off sticking to an English style traditional roast. Anyway, it lead to at least an hour of analysis between us,  with no other outcome except "that's the last leg". 

Edited July 24, 2016 by sartoric
Remove error (log)

[sartoric]

21 minutes ago, sartoric said:

Well, after wiping the tears of laughter from my eyes, so I can see the keyboard, let me say that lamb will be eaten here again, I just won't do a leg. It wasn't really over cooked (about an hour and a half at 190 C) it just didn't have any pizazz.

 

I like the little cutlets, and and there will be Indian curries and middle eastern style burgers, I could go on.

I don't think we can buy mutton easily here in lamb Mecca. This half leg weighed 1.5 kg, and cost AUD $10 per kilo (or about US $7 last time I looked). Glad your dog enjoyed the burgers ! Dogs are great, they enjoy almost everything !

 

I should add there's about 3 sheep for every person in Australia, 74M sheep, 24M people. I think the country beats everywhere else except New Zealand (7 sheep per person). We have good wool too ! 

[huiray]

A simple dinner.

Call it "kon lo siu ngap meen, 乾撈燒鴨麵" ("dry mixed/tossed roast duck noodles").  :-)   Cantonese roast duck [from Asia Mart]; skinny wonton noodles [Twin Marquis] tossed w/ the bean-based sauce accompanying the sliced duck; ong choy (蕹菜) blanched in the simmering water (after cooking the noodles) w/ some oil added in, dressed w/ a little oyster sauce [LKK]; chopped scallions, white pepper.

[Anna N]

3 hours ago, sartoric said:

I'm not sure, see my response to @Thanks for the Crepes.  It was just really really ordinary.  The paste didn't add much in the way of flavour,  Perhaps I would have been better off sticking to an English style traditional roast. Anyway, it lead to at least an hour of analysis between us,  with no other outcome except "that's the last leg". 

 

Lamb is extraordinarily expensive here too ( comparatively speaking)  and not always readily available but I could not imagine life without some lamb.   So I am awfully glad that is not what you meant!  Certainly leg of lamb rarely appears on my menu simply because as a singleton it doesn't make sense.  And lamb is the one meat that I am not keen on cold in anything. 

[scubadoo97]

2 hours ago, sartoric said:

I should add there's about 3 sheep for every person in Australia, 74M sheep, 24M people. I think the country beats everywhere else except New Zealand (7 sheep per person). We have good wool too ! 

 

I know.  My wife was getting boxes of sheep hair from Australia and New Zealand to make felt for felting projects.  Some funky smells when you first open the box for sure 

 

[sartoric]

7 minutes ago, scubadoo97 said:

 

I know.  My wife was getting boxes of sheep hair from Australia and New Zealand to make felt for felting projects.  Some funky smells when you first open the box for sure 

 

At the risk of being off topic, it's called fleece -  

The smell could be from lanolin, the sheeps natural grease and a very good moisturiser. 

[liuzhou]

Many Chinese people, especially here in the south. find the smell of lamb or mutton to be particularly rank. Doesn't stop them queuing up at the lamb/mutton noodle places for breakfast in the morning and lunch at noon, though.

I was once in a lamb hotpot place in town and ordered the lamb liver or kidneys (I forget which). My Chinese companions reeled back in horror, as if I'd ordered ripe goats' turds.

And these are people who eat all manner of oddness.

[huiray]

My experience talking with folks (both Caucasian and not) in the places in the USA where I've worked or lived - i.e. outside of eGullet folks - have generally indicated very few folks like (or even think of) eating or cooking lamb.** Too "gamey"/semi-nasty to them. The default remains beef/chicken, sometimes pork. But lamb - rare. Duck is more common with E/SE Asians, and turkey is beloved by many too - but beef/chicken still dominates. But of course this is old news to folks here.

 

** ETA: One exception might be Muslims and other folks like some South Asians, to whom sheep meat is common. Note I didn't say just "lamb", although in more recent times "lamb" (as imported from Oz and NZ) have become "fashionable". ;-)  P.s.: The term "mutton" in SE Asia (and also widely in S Asia) commonly means GOAT meat, not sheep, although it can also mean sheep - one may have to ask or be aware of the usage in certain sub-cuisines or geographical areas.

Edited July 24, 2016 by huiray (log)

[Shelby]

Lots of  garden veggies were consumed last night.  Zoodles, salad and panko fried eggplant.

 

[BonVivant]

Air-dried mutton is very common in Dali and Lijian (Yunnan province). It's a special kind of rank smell! If you won't eat "normal" mutton then you'd run away from mutton in this part of China.

 

My plate of air-dried mutton. A bit chewy, like beef jerky, probably. It's not so "bad", actually.

 

You see this everywhere in town. Pic above right is the restaurant where I ate the mutton. The restaurant probably didn't see foreigners that often, we could hear a pin drop as we entered the place. Everyone seemed to stop eating at the same time. I pointed at the hanging meat and it was understood.

Edited July 24, 2016 by BonVivant (log)

[IowaDee]

Last week was our county fair.  The beef, pork and sheep producers each had a food stand.  Guess which line was the shortest? Yup the sheep line.  They sell lamb, not sheep and it is so mild that we carry a little container of Penzy's Greek seasonings to kick it up.  This year they tried gyros and they were tasty.  Not sure if this place is ready for something as "exotic" as pita bread.

 Now last year they really colored outside the lines by selling goat burgers.  We liked them but they didn't show up this year.  We get our meat from a local locker and they often have lamb and you can order custom cuts of it.  Not cheap, but I know where every bit of meat they process came from.  Same processor supplies all the meat for all three food stands at the fair.

If we had someone to share it with, I'd like to buy a whole spring lamb and have it butchered. 

Interesting factoid, at one time Davis Co., Iowa  where we live,was the largest sheep producing county in the nation.  We also produced a world champion sheep shearer years ago who was the  consultant for the movie, The Thornbirds for all things sheep related.    And it all went to hell when the coyotes decided there was plenty of lambs for them  

[Okanagancook]

IowaDee, a whole lamb really isn't a lot of meat.  Most are around 45 to 50 lbs in our experience.  We get two lambs a year from a free range organic farm up the valley.  We used to get them whole and cut them up ourselves but that nearby slaughter facility closed and we have to have it cut up and frozen.  But I must say, the butchers do a great job.  The meat is so very tender and not gamey in the least.  

Can't imagine the smell of those drying lamb!

[liuzhou]

The lamb/sheep/goat confusion is very common. I came across the same in places as far apart as India and Jamaica.

 

Every 12 years in China, there is a huge argument as to whether, in English, it's the year of the sheep (ram) or the year of the goat.  The confusion in China is largely linguistic. In everyday Mandarin Chinese, sheep and goat are the same - 羊 (yáng). It is, of course, possible to differentiate, but people seldom do. Goat is more accurately 山羊 (shān yáng) - literally "mountain sheep" and lamb is either 羔羊 (gāo yáng) or 小羊 (xiǎo yáng). Just to further confuse things these two terms also apply to goat "kids", so we have to go to 羔 山 羊 (gāo shān yáng) etc. No one other than veterinarians ever do.

All that said, lamb/mutton skewers from Xinjiang in China's far west are popular everywhere, as are lamb/mutton noodles. Goats aren't that common in China.

 

[liuzhou]

Still freezer clearing in time for the great annual defrost and scrub down, I found some pork tenderloin. Made sticks.

 

Marinated cubed pork with olive oil, lemon, salt and chili flakes. Strung on skewers with yellow bell pepper, cherry tomatoes and onion wedges, all liberally doused with the chili oil from the marinade. Then, tuck in the toaster oven. Didn't get the char I would have liked, but they tasted fine. Served with rice.

 

The image shows the first half of what I ate.

 

[IowaDee]

Here's a trick to knowing what belongs to the sheep family and what belongs to the goat family.  All sheep have downward tails, like the letter "p" in their names.  Goats have upstanding tails like the letter "t" in their names.  Now just hope the question comes up in a trivia game!

[rotuts]

I love lamb rare.  I don't like lamb fat at all.

 

therefore  SV after a very careful trimming of say a boned out leg  ( removing tendons, fat etc )  

 

cut into largish chunks  and butterfly.  add a little seasoning  but no salt   tie up and individually bag

 

SV  130.1  for 24 or so

 

eventually makes great sandwiches sliced thin.

[kayb]

Andiesenji and I, along with anyone else who spent any time in Western Kentucky, will remember mutton barbecue.

 

I thought it was horrible. And I confess to being one of those who doesn't care for lamb, unless it's highly spiced. Don't care for the "barnyard" taste. And I grew up eating, and still eat, all kinds of wild game.

 

I also much prefer wild duck over farmed duck.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I too recall leg of lamb can be rubbery.  Though I realize it depends which muscle:  the big, sort of roundish one is rubbery, if that helps.  Anyhow I haven't cooked leg of lamb in years.

 

For me it's either shank or shoulder (for a braise) or rib.  In fact at the moment I have rib chops in the refrigerator, one of which will probably be tonight's dinner.

 

[ElainaA]

The night before my wedding my soon-to-be in-laws took my parents, me and my soon-to-be-husband out to dinner. I ordered lamb. My future MIL said "You're not really going  to eat that are you?" I said "Well, yes." It sort of defined our future relationship.

[ElainaA]

Simple dinner: Grilled pork tenderloin with spicy tomato jam, local corn and salad. I stopped at a different corn stand and this corn was only ok. I should stick to the usual place. They have good corn. (Butter and sugar - as far as I know silver queen is not available anywhere around here.)

 

 

Edited July 24, 2016 by ElainaA (log)

[Taveren]

On July 21, 2016 at 10:23 PM, kayb said:

A take on fish and chips, with peas: breaded cod filet (frozen, breaded, from Schwans; I was underwhelmed and won't order again); new potatoes, halved, tossed in olive oil, salted, CSO for 40 minutes, followed by steam-baked cod for 10. Cole slaw (not my usual jail slaw, though I used the rest of the head of cabbage for a batch of that) and English pea salad, which should have had chopped bacon except I forgot to cook any.

Did I read this correctly?  You used a moist cooking method to cook breaded fish?

[kayb]

13 minutes ago, Taveren said:

Did I read this correctly?  You used a moist cooking method to cook breaded fish?

 

Yes. Probably should have used convection, but it was good.

 

[blue_dolphin]

36 minutes ago, Taveren said:

 

On July 21, 2016 at 8:23 PM, kayb said:

A take on fish and chips, with peas: breaded cod filet (frozen, breaded, from Schwans;

Quote

Did I read this correctly?  You used a moist cooking method to cook breaded fish?

 

The Cuisinart steam oven steam-bake function at 425 generally does a beautiful job with frozen breaded items of any sort, fish included. You can get a crispy, nicely browned exterior without over-drying.