Email to myself 28 July 2011

I cook when I am stressed.  The process seems to clear my head and if I choose a complex technique I can lose myself in the process and eat the result.

Yesterday I used up some of the lamb shanks that have been sitting in the freezer with a great result and two excellent meals. As a result I had to dust off the pasta machine which is always a pleasure.

We are about to start laming again and in six months time there will be little woolly creatures to go into the freezer again and it is always better to use up the old before starting the new.  I try not to equate these appealing little things to the slow roasted lamb shoulder with beans and tomatoes that we ate with some friends for lunch last week.

 I was a vegetarian for many years but now I seem to have recovered and I tell myself that we are breeding the lambs for just this purpose.

The joys of living in the country bring some unexpected pleasures.  Yesterday I had lunch out of the garden.  A couple of tomatoes and a handful of peas from the green house, a chopped potato left from the end of the season boiled with the first of this seasons leeks and some of the new perpetual spinach which is growing like topsy in spite of the weather.

I get so much pleasure from the garden and feel such a failure when a crop flops.  I have not mastered carrots yet but I intend to try harder this spring.  My peas and broad beans are doing well and beginning to cling hopefully to the trellis that has been set for them.  The asparagus has been transplanted into its new permanent bed and I have added sand and watered with sea weed that has been soaking for the past six months.  Asparagus was once a sea vegetable and a relation to samphire which you find growing along the beach and marshy areas in deserted areas.  I once picked it in one of the estuaries in the Coromandal, boiled it lightly and served it with the scallops that one of the group had dived for just hours before, accompanied by hollandaise sauce.

I love scallops and so many people cook them badly or rather overcook them.  I remember becoming very bossy on the boat and insisting that I cooked them on a very hot pan for just 20 seconds on each side.  The cabin filled up with smoke and every on coughed and spluttered but agreed that they were the best scallops that they had ever eaten. So sweet so soft and almost raw in the middle.

Last year I had a wonderful crop of runner beans and I blanched and froze them for the winter and we are now eating them with quickly boiled from frozen with almonds browned in butter.

The lamb shanks that I cooked yesterday and  that we ate last night with pumpkin had has been waiting in storage for we long winter ahead.  The left over shanks were put in the fridge over night and the solidified fat removed and the meat taken from its bones.  The flesh is silky and breaks into fat chunks to be folded through fresh pasta with chilli and parsley for tonight’s dinner.

Green tomatoes are deliciously sweet, sharp and crunchy – they act as a refreshing foil against the lamb. Ask your butcher to butterfly the lamb for you. 1 medium leg of  lamb
60ml extra virgin olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 green tomatoes
30ml/1oz olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
freshly ground black pepper

For the chilli oil

2 long red chillies
80mls extra virgin olive oil
a pinch of salt

Place the lamb in a bowl and pour over the olive oil. Massage the meat gently with your hands. Season and set aside, while you get the barbecue ready.

Slice the chilies in half lengthwise and scrape out the seeds. Slice into long, thin strips and then finely across so that you have small neat dice. Place in a bowl and add a pinch of salt. Pour over the olive oil.

Once your barbecue is hot, lay the lamb on top. Cook for 10 minutes on one side and then for a further 10 to 12 minutes on the other. To serve, slice the tomatoes into pinwheels. Slice the lamb, layering the  tomatoes and lamb alternately. Spoon over the chilli oil and serve.

Lamb shanks

Fresh pasta

1 ½ cups of high grade or 00 flour

2 egg yolks

1 tablespoon olive oil

Water to the feel

½ teaspoon salt

Throw it all into the food process or and mix until it forms a clump. Nead a little and devide up into managable chunks which will go through the pasta maker which you have firmly clamped to the bench.  (I have lost my clamps so the husband has to hold it to the bench until I have finished).

Green bean with almonds browned in butter.

Shoulder of lamb with white beans