Previously in the series:
Live coverage: Lamb for Eight Persons Four Times
1L/8X4: The Prologue

Compared to Robert Farrar Capon, Jamie Oliver, aka the Naked Chef, is sober as a judge and precise and anal as a baker.

After getting those pesky ingredients out of the way on pp. 1-3, Capon finally gets back to the lamb-supper details on p. 28 — after some significant meditations on the beauty and symbolism of the onion, as well as some general words of wisdom on thrifty feeding of crowds, the most essential of which is Never feed anyone a whole anything and the sneakiest of which is to always put mushrooms in things, so that your children won’t eat them, and then you’ll have more for yourself.

Anyhoo, here’s what I’ll be doing with the leg of lamb tonight:

For the first [installment], a stew will be made of the chops cut from the upper end of the leg. The reason for suggesting that you cut them off yourself [see p. 1] is that the butcher will normally not be quite generous enough. Something very like one third of the leg should go into the stew.

Peter went out to get the lamb this afternoon–he, for once, had remembered, while I had completely forgotten this essential bit of shopping. For the record, 12 pounds for $35. Astoria is a fine place to be in the springtime.

Just to give you the long view, here’s what’s going to happen for Nights 2, 3 and 4:

The other two thirds of the leg will then be browned and braised…. Once cooked, it will be completely dismantled, and the meat divided into three portions (two generous and one skimpy), and stored for the subsequent meals. Finally, the bones will be returned to the stock pot, where they will either strengthen the first soup or make a second de novo. In any case, your lamb will provide you long company–and not a minute of it boring.

Heh. Guess I don’t need Peter anymore, then.

On then with the recipe.

Well, it’s not that easy, friends, because of course there are many digressions. For the sake of your attention span and my typing fingers, I will simply summarize–although you are missing many lovely insights and turns of phrase:

Chop up several onions. Slice a carrot thinly. Chop up some garlic cloves–fewer than six, which to me sounds like 1969 talking, but I’m just following orders this time. (Actually, there’s a nice digression here about smacking garlic cloves with the side of a cleaver–or heavy knife–to get the skins off, and then again to really mess ’em up. Good skill if you don’t already know it. In fact, I rarely use it, and was very pleased. Tragically, Capon mentions all this in order to convince readers not to use garlic powder–ooh, the bad old days!) Cut up some mushrooms, less than a pound (save the stems for stock). Chop some parsley.

In passing, we learn that sharp knives will not beat the soul out of your parsley, and that you don’t need to wash mushrooms unless you got scared about “the germ theory” in school.

Then you cut up all the meat from the chops, and make sure you’re using a generous portion of the leg meat. And then you brown the bejesus out of all the meat and whatever bone scraps you might have. Brown. Brown. Brown. Don’t worry about drying out the meat–you’ll remoisten it with wine, or, more precisely, “your meat’s lost soul will be replaced by a second and better one.” Amen.

So then you brown all the veggies, and transfer it all into a stew pot. And then you deglaze the bejesus out of the skillet you browned everything in, and put all that liquid in the stew pot, and you let it simmer for a while. “A while” I guess means as long as it takes to read the next 65 pages or so. Because then you get there, and there’s a bit about making a roux and thickening up the stew at the end. And that’s it.

And that’™s about as precise a recipe as you get. Oh, wait: one tablespoon each butter and flour for every cup of the liquid–that’s the rule for thickening.

But that’s okay, you don’t need any more precise guidance, because you’ve got wine: “A gallon of good California red in the kitchen closet will do more for your cooking than all the books in the world.”

Can I get an ayyy-MEN!

Next posts in the series:
1L/8X4 II(a): Night I Report
1L/8X4 II(b): The Freakin’ Spaetzle
1L/8X4 III: Night II Report
1L/8X4 IV: Night III Report
1L/8X4 V: Night IV Report, aka “Original Thinking Is Lonely”