Lamb (Dan Barber's Call to Arms)

Last night in bed, right before turning the lights off, I was trying to get through the last bits of the Sunday New York Times. On the last page of the Week in Review lay this op-ed, and it caused several thoughts to rattle around my head and keep me up for an extra hour. Especially this last paragraph:

Leave our agricultural future to chefs and anyone who takes food and cooking seriously. We never bought into the “bigger is better” mantra, not because it left us too dependent on oil, but because it never produced anything really good to eat. Truly great cooking — not faddish 1.5-pound rib-eye steaks with butter sauce, but food that has evolved from the world’s thriving peasant cuisines — is based on the correspondence of good farming to a healthy environment and good nutrition. It’s never been any other way, and we should be grateful. The future belongs to the gourmet.

Holy crap! This is why I'm in culinary school. This is my call to arms.


In the morning, Chef M ran down the facts of lamb, the animal we would be fabricating today to finish our intensive section on butchering. Lambs are small animals, most served up as 1-2 year old Yearlings, never over 90 lbs an animal. The primal cuts are similar to veal, another small 4-legged cattle animal.

Before getting to play with our meat, we took large single-handled pots and put them over high heat; then, we brought 2 pounds of good quality 84%-fat butter to a boil. Both the fat and water in the butter boiled, but only the water evaporated and escaped. First big bubbles, but after a few minutes the bubbles became much smaller and denser, and milk solids started to congeal on the surface. We then poured the butter through a cheese cloth to cool. Other methods involve skimming the butter as its boiling to rid of solids, but with these larger quantities, straining through cloth was a time saver.

While we boiled the butter, Chef M showed us the proper use of our wet stones to sharpen our blades. As with the steels, the blade is applied at about a 20% angle and gently stroked across its surface from tip to bolster. The blades left little gray lines where it rubbed against the stone -- this was the actual metal removed from the blade.

The rest of the day was spent taking apart three large cuts of meat. The first was a leg of lamb, which involved butchering the top, bottom, and eye rounds as well as the shank and the little bits hanging on from the loin primal (particularly the tiny tenderloin tip and a piece of sirloin). As Chef M was describing each cut, he compared them to the muscles of the human leg -- quadriceps, glutes, etc. More than a little creepy when you think about how human physiology shares so much with all mammals.

The shoulder was a big boxy cut, with a t-shaped plate of bone running through the middle that had to be dug and scraped out with a knife. The third and final piece was a rack of ribs, on which we were shown classic preparation techniques to "french"
the bones for a crown roast. Chef M said it took him a solid 5 years to get this technique down. After a couple of minutes, the meat and fat warm up enough to make removing the membranes and meat around the bone-tips very difficult.

Time was tight and nothing was prepped to be eaten. Tomorrow, we move into sauces. Chef M promised us that our lambs and ducks and bacons of various stripes will be coming back to us later in the week to put our sauces to use.

ADDENDA:
This morning, my scale told me I'm 229. I guess c-school hasn't gotten the best of my waist-line yet. Meeting with Ilsa tomorrow, tried to get a few extra veggies in so I don't feel like a total loser. Seems last two times I've gone for the veggies, I've either fried them with bacon or doused them with clarified butter. I guess I don't make a very good hippie.

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, 2 pancakes, .75 bowls, hunger 4/5
Buttermilk puffy pillows out of the freezer, really good.

AM SNACK: 11:45am, small piece of french bread, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 12:30pm, curry ramen soup, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
Noodle soup at Rai Rai Ken on a rainy Monday. Really hit the spot.

PM SNACK: 3:45am, vanilla ice cream, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Busy doing laundry and chores. Needed to make the rest of the batter before it turned, and figured better to eat dessert now than after dinner, close to sleep time.

DINNER: 6:30pm, broiled salmon fillet prepared with fresh lemon juice, sea salt, herbs de Provence, and clarified butter, blanched broccoli with shallots, garlic and clarified butter, organic kimchi, small baby spinach salad with ranch dressing, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5
Slapped together this meal on the fly when B got home from work, the fish was pretty good. Clarified butter makes everything taste awesome, unsurprisingly. The kimchi from the farmer's market was nice n' kicky.

EVENING SNACK: 7:30pm, veggie booty, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Weird, kinda like a sugar craving, but not for something sweet, but for a starch...