Comfort Food
african vanielje on Sep 07 2007 at 12:42 pm | Filed under: Lamb, Locavore, Veg, food blogging event
As it’s going local month, and I’m kind of evangelical about going local anyway, I thought we’d go with lamb last night. In South Africa, Karoo lamb is considered the best, and indeed it has a unique flavour due to its diet. Here in Somerset, the best lamb I ever had was one which was reared in the front park under organic conditions. You can’t get much more local than that. We bought a whole lamb straight from the farmer who delivered it to our butcher (it pays to live in a small community sometimes). Our butcher sliced and diced according to my specific instructions and voila, enter nose to tail eating.
We’ve slowly worked our way through it since spring, roasting, pan-frying, barbecuing, leaving the diced bits for Autumn and Winter stews. One of the quickest and most delicious cuts is loin chops. I love these barbecued as all the fat drips out and leaves behind intense flavour and butter soft meat. However, they are also extra easy in the oven. I don’t have an extractor in my kitchen so try to steer away from anything cooked stove top at too high a heat. The day-after smell blankets the whole flat which is not my favourite thing. I have a pretty sensitive nose.
Last night, at the top of a long week with not much left in reserve, I needed something sustaining but not something that was going to be enervating to prepare. A walk up to the kitchen garden at teatime was both refreshing and inspiring. I dug up a forkful of potatoes and picked some garlic. With Dakota munching on a fresh pear from one of the trees, I wondered around, soaking up the late sun and breathing in the scents of growing things. I reminded myself just how lucky we are that we can ’shop’ here instead of in a crowded supermarket, and feeling a little more balanced, we made our way home, picking a small branch of bay from the tree standing sentinel at the garden gate, and snapping a sprig of rosemary from the bush as we passed.
Rosemary is for remembrance, and whenever I pick it I always remember my granny, who loved to garden and who passed on to me a few snippets of her knowledge of the Victorian language of flowers. She also loved to eat. Smiling at the irreverent image of her roly poly cheeked figure that popped into my mind, I acknowledged to myself that the genes run true. I’m a lot taller than she was, thanks to my Eastern European heritage, but the apple cheeks and the love of food is a dead ringer. I constantly marvel at how integral food is to my family. It permeates our lives, our emotions, our memories. And thank goodness it does. I find this familial connection as comforting as I do the food.
With the sometimes mellifluous strains of Dakota practising her piano in the background, I prepared our dinner. Tired as I was, my mother’s voice in my head was telling me to do it with love, or to order pizza. Cooking without love is sacrilege in my mother’s kitchen. I picked quick easy dishes, and gave them my heartfelt attention for the fifteen minutes it took me to prepare. Allowing myself to be soothed by the colours, shapes and smells of tomatoes just off the vine, the soapy freshness of chopped dhania (coriander or cilantro, by any other name it smells as sweet), and the subtle base notes of the rosemary. Once prepped, the dishes were fuss free and I left the potatoes cooking in the oven while the salad flavours softened into each other and the lamb chops infused with rosemary and garlic.
35 minutes, a cup of tea and a peaceful sojourn on the sofa (with the cat and a glass of red wine )later I popped the chops under the grill for the last 15 minutes of cooking time. Dakota laid the table (with my granny’s silverware) while I plated up, and we sat down to dinner. I poured myself another glass of wine and raised it in silent acknowledgement to gran, and to any other ghosts who may or may not have been sitting at my table. The thing is, you never know, because it’s indivisible - family & food. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Tomato, Avocado & Coriander Salad
Oven Baked Loin of Lamb Chops
Potatoes baked in Rosemary Cream
My mouth is watering and your kitchen garden sounds amazing.
My grandmother was also a great gardener and I have a feeling she sits at our table with us, slightly despairing of the state of our poor neglected garden, but approving of us all eating properly, except that if only I’d put a bit of effort into growing some decent parsley it’d be so good for us….
I love your mother’s adage: cook it with love or get pizza. I think that’s been my motto without knowing it.
Your meal sounds lovely, and there’s something very special about having plucked most of it from your own garden. One day, when I grow up, I will do that too.
Goodness I love coming here.
The lamb sounds and looks delicious. I *love* rosemary, and now I’ll always think of your grandmother too….
I just love how you effortlessly work in tidbits of your family and of love–and I, too, love your mother’s adage. Just like Charlotte, I think that’s been my unstated motto as well .
Lovely post, all around.
Kit, hi. Yep, there’s no doubt I have a bevy of ancestresses watching over me - tut-tutting all the way, I’m sure. I’m not a very good gardener, but I always had my mom’s gardens to wallow in, and now I ma lucky enough to live hwere there is an amazing park with woods, and an organic kitchen garden that we have access to. My grandmother was a very Colonial gardener. She grew up in Kenya & Nyasaland. When she wanted to plant roses she had her gardeners dig a six foot trench and fill it with manure, then she supervised the planting of the rose bushes. Needless to say, her gardens were always unbelievable lush and exotic. I miss her…
charlotte, when I grow up i want to be my mother . She says an awful lot of sensible things. And she’s right, a meal made in haste is fine, but a meal thrown together without love or care is only ash in your mouth. You may as well eat a protein bar or something. Nice to see you here
Sognatrice, I think, like you and charlotte, that you can always tell how people approach their food. In my family it’s a sacrament and a celebration. The one part of the day that brings us all together to give silent thanks for the day, the people and the land that sustains us. That may sound dramatic but is an unspoken thread which runs through all our lives. I come from a long line of pioneering women who left their homes and the lands of their births to make a new home in Africa. They were incredibly strong women and were fierce in their protectiveness of their families. I guess when you leave everything behind you hang on to what you do have, and the tapestry of family life, and love is strongly woven
I find it amazing that so many women and cooks I know have a strong connection with their grandmothers. I have read this many times on other food blogs, enough to believe there is some special bond between grandmothers and granddaughters when it comes to the preparation of food. I, too, often feel my grandmothers presence as I am making certain dishes or doing something in a certain way that they taught me. It always comforts me and makes me smile. As I am writing this, this would make some kind of a good meme, wouldn’t it? Sharing stories, recipes, traditions of our grandmothers…hmmm. Shall we come up with something?
Simple lamb chops like you made are one of my favorite meats. I love them done simply on the grill, or in the oven. I only wish I could buy it locally raised like you can. Most of the lamb available here is from New Zealand!
As always, AV, a beautiful and heartfelt post.
It is so true that much of our love of cooking and baking can be traced back to times spent in the kitchen with our grandmothers. Isn’t that a lovely way to think of and remember them too? As for rosemary, I’m with you…I love it. I enjoy it for its beauty in the garden as much as for its distinctive fresh, vibrant flavor. Cook with love, or order pizza…what a delightful sentiment.
PP, thank you for such a lovely comment. Yes, family traditions are important and I think it would make a good meme. It would have to include mothers though, as it was my mother who taught me everything I know.
Belinda, thanks for taking time out from your horses. I love that sentiment too, especially as I hate ordering pizza. I ALWAYS think I can make it much better…
A wonderful post! I love lamb and I tend to eat it in moderation during the colder months of the year. But last week a friend wanted me to cook lamb in the middle of a heat wave we were having here in Southern California. I indeed cooked it and enjoyed the heck out of it! I love your writings about your Grandmother and your mention of herbs.
thanks Rebecca. Good healthy food always seems to be tangled up with family and memories, doesn’t it. My grandmother and mother both always kept extensive herb gardens, so fresh herbs are a big part of my culinary repertoire.
As always…
lovely. You and Marie and Valli always supply me with a needed break, like picking up a good book and a cup of tea when I need it most..
Thank you.
Marye, you are most welcome. TH efeeling is mutual, and I often pop over to your side of the pond for a cup of tea and a meander as well.
OMG youake that lamb sound fantastic… I reallymiss my Karoo lamb with its madly herby taste. Last night I felt in dire need of comforting (surrounded by friends going through awful and life-changing traumas at the moment) - so I did pan-fried boerewors with a caramelised onion gravy on a ton of mash. Everything including the towels in the bathroom now smell like boerewors… But who’s complaining
I never knew my maternal grandmother - she died when my mom was only 8 years old. And my dad’s mom never lived in the same town as us. She did teach me to play checkers though…
Btw, your e-mail address is not accepting my messages. Trying to send details for Saturday but keep getting bouncebacks?