If there’s anything in the world better than
cooking and sharing a great meal with good friends who really appreciate food,
I swear I don’t know what it is.Keep your skydiving, your marathon-induced
endorphin rush, your big promotion, your fantasy date with George
Clooney. When you can make a meal that causes people you care about to
literally moan and have to hold on to the counter to avoid falling down, you
can die happy.
Okay, no one actually
gripped the counter, but we did cook a meal Saturday evening that was so
wonderful that the pleasure in my dining room was not only palpable but
lingered for days, like a wonderful aroma. It wasn’t really all that
special a meal in terms of ingredients, but the way that it came together was
interesting, even auspicious. Barclay and I were overdue for a
get-together with our friends Corinna and Peter, having had to cancel plans to
dine out with them last week due to kids’ insanely overblown sports
commitments. (Don’t even get me started on kids and sports. That’s a
subject for another time.) When Corinna and I unexpectedly ran into each
other during the week, we hurried to patch together something.
“Why not cook at home?”
she offered.
“Great – what do you
feel like?”
“Well, I have a couple
of those little cryo-packed lamb racks from Wegmans; since the shelf-life is so
long, I just bought a few last week with no specific plan for them.”
“Amazing! I have
one of the very same lamb racks in my fridge, just waiting for an
excuse. I also have some baby potatoes, and I can make a lemon cake.”
“Perfect! I think
we have some baby bok choy we’d like to use up.”
“Awesome. Bring it
all to our house on Saturday.”
Not only did they bring
the lamb and bok choy, but to our delight they arrived with an excellent bottle
of Cab, a slab of gruyere and some creamy bleu cheese. Kids were
dispatched to the basement to play Wii, the wine was uncorked, and we dove into
preparation.
A word about friends and
food. I do have friends for whom food isn’t really all that
important. To these folks, eating is one of the things you do to survive,
and some foods taste better than others, but that’s the extent of the thought
that goes into the whole proposition. My friends who feel this way are
nice people with many positive and admirable qualities to counterbalance this
unfortunate condition. However, I probably couldn’t be soul mates with
them. It’s too great a chasm to cross, like a born-again Christian
marrying an agnostic. Fortunately, Corinna and Peter are people who feel
about food approximately the way we do, meaning they spend what many would
consider an inordinate amount of time talking about and thinking about their
last and their next meal. I’ve seen Corinna practically brought to tears
by a particularly good baba gannouj. I’ve seen Peter bolt across the room
holding a piece of flatbread with goat cheese and fig, panting, “You’ve got to
taste this. You won’t believe it.” So while we don’t see them as
often as we’d like, I feel a strong affinity for these people.
At Peter’s suggestion,
the bok choy were halved and rolled in olive oil, then fitted into a giant
roasting pan, where they were topped with chopped garlic and shallots, salt and
pepper. Potatoes had received a similar treatment and both pans went in to
roast.
Will someone please open
that second bottle of wine?
We turned our attention
to those adorable little racks of lamb. They weigh just under a pound
apiece, and are sold by Wegman’s already “Frenched”: that is, trimmed of
virtually all fat, with the rib bones scraped clean, so that when they are
roasted and cut apart between the ribs, you are left with a tiny jewel of rosy
meat on a curved bone that is often and aptly called a “lamb lollipop.” What
could be cuter? I slathered them with good Dijon mustard, massaging it in
with my fingers. (Cooking is always sensual. If it’s not, you’re
probably doing something wrong.) I then coated them with a mixture of
panko, chopped fresh rosemary, salt and pepper, held together with olive oil.
After about 25 minutes
of roasting at 400⁰ and 10 minutes of
resting, I cut apart the ribs. Holy cow. Actually, holy sheep. They
were so beautiful. While they rested, I made a sauce in their roasting pan
using shallots, rosemary, wine and beef stock.
The very best part of
cooking is when you and your guests take those first few bites, while your
taste buds are relatively clear and the flavors and textures just explode in
your mouth. The rolling of the eyes. The guttural noises. The
feeling that all the difficulties and pains of life are outweighed by these
moments of such pure sensual beauty. The gratefulness that something you
have to do anyway – eating food – can be a source of so much pleasure. And
most of all, that you have friends with whom you can share this joy.
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