Cooked: The frenched lamb
“Don’t you think it’s time to christen the stove,” he said.
The brand spanking new, rust-free, pristine white GE, with numbers on the dials and two ovens, one of them self-cleaning, had been standing in the kitchen, admired but not used, for about five days.
The old one — also large, but rusty and wonky and pretty grungy after a long life, had been, thinking positive, pretty exciting to use.
When the numbers on the dials go, setting the oven temp becomes a crap shoot. Without a light in the oven, well, you can’t eyeball what’s going on.
Lambs at Maple Lodge, Wanaka, New Zealand.
And the old stove had what looked like a small chimney protruding up through the back right hot plate. Presumably it was a design feature of its time, but for my purposes, the heat from the oven shot straight out, and I had long given up trying to cook anything that required a semblance of a precise temperature.
Perhaps I should have done what my friend, Meg, kept threatening to do if I wouldn’t. That is, tell the landlady. But it worked, didn’t it? And one shouldn’t just toss old things, should one?
Then finally, one recent night, the trusty stove gave a final small flash and turned cold and dark midway through heating the oven to grill some cheese over some frying eggs that I was thinking I would pop on top of some quinoa that was gently simmering in a pot.
A new stove was subsequently delivered and installed.
To get back to the start of this blog: “I guess we could christen the stove,” I said in answer to his question.
About two hours later he returned from Trader Joe’s.
“Here, I got this,” he said.
SILENCE ON THE LAMB
Roast potatoes, front, and lamb lunch, behind, at Amisfield Winery, New Zealand.
It was one of those frenched lamb rack they have at TJs. French with a small “f”, where they cut away the meat and fat from around the end of the bones. Looks good. Cooks well. Carves easy.
Ready to cook lamb, as in baby sheep.
Just what I’d had a mental debate over on my recent trip to New Zealand where it was spring and the sheep were lambing and the lambs were cavorting in the fields — and then there they were on our plates. And — shut up and eat up, Annie.
I rubbed the surface with some olive oil, sprinkled on some smoked sea salt flakes and popped the in little rack in at 360.
Wow. The dials worked. The oven heated up fast. The light came on. I boiled up a pot of water and dropped in some linguine; scalded some fresh tomatoes and did a quickie toss with garlic, olive oil and and leftover pesto; and made a green salad with crumbled Gorgonzola and a light dressing.
The lamb cooked to perfection. It’s a great stove. Thanks, Mary!
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Fun story. Love your writing style.