Spring Lamb and Flageolets

At 4am this morning I was wide awake in bed running through mental images of a kitchen task I dread over most others: cutting carrots and celery into perfect little squares for the classic mirepoix. I've never had much success with this. I mean, how do those chefs turn cylindrical objects into perfectly uniform matchsticks, from whence comes those perfect little squares? I can only surmise that the samples they show us in photographs are what's left over after discarding the less than perfect ends and edges. Actually, I've seen it done and they just cut away the sides of a carrot, leaving a perfectly squared shape that can then be cut into neat slices. It's not that I don't know how it's supposed to be done, or that I don't have a good knife. I just can't do it that perfectly and I refuse to waste the trimmings. Alas.

After an hour of mentally running through this, I got up, had my coffee, played a couple of Mah Jongg games and finally gave it up. I hadn't planned to prepare the recipe this early, but really, it was the only way to stop those mental games. As with most things in life, I found that the doing wasn't nearly as hard as the worrying. Maybe all that mental practice helped. At any rate, I ended up with a product that if not perfect, was close enough for me. The onion and garlic were easy.

This whole thing started down in Napa when I bought all those wonderful Rancho Gordo beans. I think I told you that I chose them based on color as much as anything, although with these gorgeous flageolet beans I have to admit that I was equally drawn by their fame as the base of that difficult but delicious French classic, Cassoulet. I wasn't ready to attack that again, but still, I knew there must be other uses that would be equally good. I found this recipe on the Rancho Gordo website, but since it wasn't spring and I didn't have a source of natural local lamb, I opted to look for something else. Long story short, I ended up ordering the Rancho Gordo bean cookbook, Heirloom Beans because I am right now a bit obsessed. These beans are expensive, relatively, but not as expensive as other forms of good protein, and I want to build a good repertoire for the various varieties. Last week down in Eureka the natural foods store had some perfect bone-in local lamb leg chops and I jumped at the chance to use the flageolets. Last night I put the beans on to soak and took the lamb out of the freezer. I was committed. Hence the early morning mental activity.

First step was to brown those lamb chops in olive oil. Julia would have been proud of me as I meticulously mopped the moisture away, using the rare paper towel. They look wonderful and smelled even better. But my friends, this is $15 worth of local natural lamb, so it damned well better smell good and taste even better! So much for this being an economy recipe. Did I mention I was obsessed? In actuality, when you add that $15 to the $5.50 for the beans and divide by 6, which is the number of servings in the recipe, the cost per serving is just under $3.00, which isn't all that bad. I just cringe at that $15!

Then those veggies hit the oil and browned bits and ohhhhhhh -- I can't even begin to describe the aromas that filled my kitchen! I hated to put a stop to it, but eventually all those browned bits were scraped up and it was time to add the beans, their soaking liquid, and the browned lamb to the pot. Then wait.

All this was before breakfast of course, and after all those good aromas I was practically frothing at the mouth for something to satisfy my tummy. Somehow, my blueberry-cottage cheese smoothie didn't quite fit the bill emotionally after all that, but it filled the tummy.

The stew is meant to be served with Fay's Relish, which is mostly cilantro, along with garlic, shallot, lemon zest and juice, and olive oil.

As I said -- mostly cilantro.

Here it is, the finished product. Perfectly cooked, flavor-filled-delicious and yes, the relish adds a lot of dimension and layers. Since it's only about 10:15 it's a bit early for lunch so I only had a taste. Now I need to figure out how to divvy up and freeze 5 servings of the relish to go with the 5 servings of the beans. Not a bad problem to have.  On the other hand, I'm beginning to doubt that all of them will make it to the freezer.