“Original Thinking Is Lonely.” That’s what the message board on the Baptist church here in Truth or Consequences, NM, says. Hideous, no?

I really don’t think Robert Farrar Capon would approve. But he would love me!

Night IV of the lamb was all about original thinking, as in: Uh, wait, Tamara and Karl are here already? And we don’t have any barley? Or turnips? Oh well.

The base recipe is Lamb Soup with Barley, which he says is sort of like a Scotch broth. Never having made or tasted a Scotch broth (does it go with martinis to make a perfect diet?), I don’t feel like I’m missing out by not making it. Capon suggests a different option–a little chickpeas, some pasta, some garlic, some tomatoes…and then you’ve got something sort of resembling minestrone. Scotch-flavored minestrone.

Anyway, that’s the route I opted for. And then I saw we didn’t have any canned tomatoes in our larder/bathroom (it looks very survivalist in there, with all the canned goods stashed under the towels). So there was this tube of tomato paste that I squeezed in. And we didn’t have any chunky pasta, so I just broke up some fettucine. And we had some cabbage left over from the fried rice the night before, so I put some of that in. Voila-ish.

And you’d be surprised how much meat was still left on that leg of lamb. I’d been hacking very generously the previous three nights, and there was still substantial chunks floating around in every serving of soup.

I also whipped up a little parsley and garlic pesto/pistou to dab on top, and grated some random hard Greek cheese that was sitting in the back of the cheese drawer, and, hey, look, those bread ends have been sitting around since Night II–croutons!

So we ate the soup, and it was good and very, very filling. (It helped that Tamara had cooked up some artichokes beforehand, and I made a teensy-tinesy salad out of leftover radishes, mushrooms and scallions–I think we used everything in the vegetable bin that night, except for the Thai chilis.)

Everyone was tucking in enthusiastically, but I had a brief moment of lamb overload on my first bite. I pushed through.

To be clear, Capon doesn’t suggest you eat all this lamb four nights in a row. He envisions the soup as something you make and freeze for later–you serve it the same day “only in desperation.” Desperation like your friends are coming over, and you’ve only just changed out of your bathrobe, and there’s nothing else to eat–I can relate.

Although I did not at all hew closely to the last recipe, I do feel like I was working in the spirit of it. I respect Capon more than ever because he led me from rigorous browning and stewing and formal technique to random freeform soup that I pulled out of relative thin air. That’s original thinking, and if those Baptists don’t like it, well, I’ve got a book they need to read.

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

This is getting just a little dull because everything went so swimmingly. Night 3 was the night of the Lamb Fried Rice, again using a portion of the already-braised lamb.

Night II’s Lamb-Spinach Casserole (with mayonnaise) is pretty damn Sixties, but something about Lamb Fried Rice is equally throwback. As Peter said, “It’s like eating at Dragon Cantonese on Highway 86,” and for all I know he was referring to a real place from his childhood, but it sounds so archetypal that it doesn’t really matter.

To his credit, Capon does use this recipe as the jumping-off point for nearly eight pages of detail on the art of stir-frying with the proper Chinese technique, as well as where and how to buy a wok (which is italicized, like a foreign word, which is kind of cute). He dispenses such wisdom as “When the dish looks good, it is good” (w/r/t vegetable doneness) and that “if someone comes along and tells you cleanliness is next to godliness, the proper answer is, ‘Yes–next. Right now I’m working on godliness.'” (w/r/t not scrubbing down iron cookware).

He develops this latter theme nicely, suggesting that you can loosen up your family on the cleanliness issue by “accustom[ing] them to a little harmess but definite untidiness in their food. An occasional burned paper match dropped into the gravy will help them relax a bit….A sense of proportion is a saving grace.”

So with this lax attitude, I took a closer look at the recipe, but immediately got all uptight again. I hadn’t realized what preconceptions I had about fried rice. “What, no garlic?” said Peter. “Of course no garlic!” I gasped. Some weird animal part of my brain that hardened at age 10 says no garlic in fried rice. I refused to let Peter tinker, even though he’d been granted cooking rights because stir-frying is his specialty. He got to make some green beans for the side dish, and they were all garlicky, gingery, Sichuan-peppery–all the pent-up flavor that was stymied by retro-bland fried rice.

But, y’know, it wasn’t all that bad. It did make me a little nostalgic. Though to be my childhood fried rice, there should’ve been more egg (the recipe called for three eggs, for more than three cups of rice), and bean sprouts. Actually, as you’ll see from the original ingredients, bean sprouts are an option “if you have money to burn.” Three decades of Chinese American entrepreneurship has brought the cost of bean sprouts down to the average consumer, apparently, but my corner guy doesn’t have them. I suppose I could’ve gotten canned ones, as suggested in the more detailed recipe on p. 135, but even I have my limits for retro kitsch.

Although I wouldn’t let Peter augment the base recipe (just onions, shredded cabbage, eggs, a drop or two of sherry, cooked rice, the lamb, and soy sauce), we did spice it up with a side of that sweet-hot gooey Korean chili paste–an excellent addition for modern tastes.

We fed four people, rather than eight, but had scads of leftovers, and I hadn’t even used the full complement of rice. Nor did I rely on the plate-of-lettuce trick to fill people up, or dropped any foreign objects in the food to discourage their appetites. And somehow, this preparation was different enough that I wasn’t sick of lamb…yet.

Next post in the series:
1L/8X4 V: Night IV Report, aka “Original Thinking Is Lonely”

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

Did I say live coverage? Well, when I say “live” I mean with a two-day delay… Not to ruin the ending, but as of Sunday, April 23, 2006 at midnight, the Supper of the Lamb was complete, and completely successful.

But let’s roll back the clock to Friday night: We took a little less than half of the meat that was left on the braised leg of lamb (did I mention the braised leg? Back on Night I, while I was doing the mushroom-wine stew on the stovetop, the whole rest of the leg, bone and all, went in a big pot in the oven with some wine and thyme, then into the fridge) and cut it into pieces to use in a spinach casserole.

The recipe said one pound of lamb, but because I actually had a full eight people to feed that night, I got a little nervous and threw in an extra quarter pound. We certainly had enough to go around, and one person even had seconds.

This spinach casserole recipe was interesting for two reasons. First, the text after says, “Any expert on the subject will quickly recognize it (minus the lamb and, of course, the side order of bread) as a low-carbohydrate spinach thing straight out of one of those drinking-man’s diets.”

OK, so my dad and his girlfriend claim there was knowledge of the evils of carbohydrates way back when, before everyone got obsessed with fat, but I’d never read anything to corroborate that before.

And then, what the hell is a “drinking-man’s diet”? Well, thank you, Google: it was a real diet plan, published in 1964. Wow, one more thing I missed by being born too late.

Capon somehow brings all that around with a short lecture on the merits of having not quite enough food: “It does a family good to see a meal wiped out completely before surfeit has destroyed enthusiasm. One of the commonest graces prays that we may be mindful of the needs of others. But faith without works is dead. An occasional entree in short supply puts a few more teeth into the prayer.”

And it turns out this “puts teeth in the prayer” business is, or was, an established phrase–one of our guests said her grandmother used to say it. I think I’ll practice saying it, so by the time I get old it’ll just roll right off the tongue.

Oh, but back to the second intriguing thing about the recipe. It had a secret, soooo-Sixties ingredient. We had a brief bout of guessing, but the answer was never officially revealed. For those who were still curious:

Mayonnaise.

That, combined with a little cheese, a fair amount of butter, a ton of cooked spinach, and the shredded lamb–well, we didn’t really need those extra teeth at all. Slid right down the gullet. Amen, again.

Next posts in the series:
1L/8X4 IV: Night III Report
1L/8X4 V: Night IV Report, aka “Original Thinking Is Lonely”

Previously in the series:
Live coverage: Lamb for Eight Persons Four Times
1L/8X4: The Prologue
1L/8X4: Prep for Night 1
1L/8X4 II(a): Night I Report
1L/8X4 II(b): The Freakin’ Spaetzle

This stuff is a mess. I see why there are dedicated spaetzle makers. You really can’t just rig up something like, say, a slotted spoon or a Mouli grater. Capon loves spaetzle, and suggests it’s much easier to make than noodles. It’s so not.

Spaetzle is apparently German for “little sparrows” or something. I managed to make two-thirds little sparrows, and then, when my arm got tired from squishing the gluey batter through the bottom of our steamer pot, a whole bunch of giant condors–just big globs of dough hurled impatiently into the pot.

The bird blobs were pretty good, though–they had a lot of butter on them. I kind of wish I hadn’t made them, and had stuck with the most austere starch option that Capon gave: toast.

Next posts in the series:
1L/8X4 III: Night II Report
1L/8X4 IV: Night III Report
1L/8X4 V: Night IV Report, aka “Original Thinking Is Lonely”

Previously in the series:
Live coverage: Lamb for Eight Persons Four Times
1L/8X4: The Prologue
1L/8X4: Prep for Night 1
1L/8X4 II(a): Night I Report

It was delicious! But then, how can lamb with mushrooms and wine not be delicious? And it fed eight people (or six, with leftovers). But then, as Peter said, it’s not Night I we’re worried about, it’s Night IV.

Whatever the case, it was a fine excuse for dinner at 11:30pm, which meant both Tamara and Ali could attend.

In the process of cooking, I paid pretty literal heed to the text, but I took some shortcuts in procedure that I realize you only know to do if you already know how to cook. And Capon is, it seems, talking to people who don’t exactly know how to cook, but he’s also making the process of cooking more difficult and time-consuming for them, which isn’t fair. (But then most other cookbooks, which aren’t so nearly as fun to read as his, also do this.)

Here’s what I’m talking about:

The instructions start with peeling and chopping an onion, carrots, garlic, mushrooms, parsley–then putting that all aside and browning the meat.

Well, unless you’re in a McMansion kitchen, where your cutting board is a mile from your stove and you can’t hear your meat sizzling, there is absolutely no reason you shouldn’t start your meat browning immediately. As Capon says, it takes a damn long time.

Once you’ve got your meat going, you can turn to chopping up your vegetables. You really only need to look at the meat every 3 or 4 minutes or so. In fact, having vegetables to chop is the perfect distraction, because you really shouldn’t stir the meat all that much, or else it won’t get nice and browned.

So the meat took about 20 minutes to brown, in a few batches (Capon doesn’t specify doing it in batches, which I would imagine is the only way to get it browned–for all the detail he puts in to why browning is good, he should also toss in the detail that will save you from fucking it up). I had my veg all chopped and ready to go by 15 minutes in, leaving me 5 minutes to stare at the pot and drink my wine.

Then, once all the meat and the veg are piled into the pot you’re actually cooking the stew in, we get on to the deglazing (in which you pour wine or stock into the hot skillet and scrape up all the tasty browny bits). It was then I realized I’d been lured into a literary device.

See, unless you have a crappy-ass stew pot that’s not very heavy (I’ve got a Descoware thing–like Le Creuset, but made in Belgium and occasionally found in thrift stores), there’s no reason to brown the meat in one skillet and transfer it to a fresh pot.

Yes, there’s something satisfying about browning in a cast-iron skillet, but you can just as easily do the browning in the stew pot, scooping out each batch of meat and setting it aside in a bowl. This also means less grease spattering everywhere.

If you do it this way, deglazing is important but not as earth-shatteringly crucial as Capon makes it to be, because if you don’t deglaze perfectly, you’re not losing any of the tasty browned bits–they’re still all there in the same pan. If you want to be thorough, you can swish some wine around in the bowl that was holding the browned meat, to make sure you get all the juicy-juice.

But if you did it this way, then Capon wouldn’t have an excuse to talk about deglazing for a whole page, now would he? I gnashed my teeth a little as a I scraped and heaved, and balanced my cast-iron Dutch oven over the edge of my stew pot and scraped. (Actually, Peter had to do that. My arms are too feeble.)

The final detail of the stew is removing some of the juices and thickening them in a separate pan, then returning the thickened liquid to the pot and letting it all gel. Admittedly, this makes a really nice silky stew, and I’m glad I did it.

But then you’re dirtying up another pan, and creating anxiety that you’re wasting more tasty meat juices. Also, Ali warns, an inadequately cooked roux (the flour-butter slurry you use to thicken the liquid) can cause the worst indigestion ever. In my book, for a mid-week lamb stew, I wouldn’t bother, but then, again, Capon wouldn’t have a chance to discourse on the lovely relationship between fat and flour.

So, is Capon just a hopeless bloviator? No, of course not. Browning and thickening are two essential elements of cooking that deserve long lectures and diatribes. But still, the procedural details are also essential to learning to cook, otherwise cooking seems like a horribly daunting task.

With the browning-first approach, and if I hadn’t made the damn spaetzle (more on this later), this dinner would’ve involved only about 45 minutes of prep, and two hours of sitting around, drinking wine, chit-chatting, and smelling the fragrant air. And I think Capon would approve of that as well.

Next posts in the series:
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”

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

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”

Previously in this series:
Live coverage: Lamb for Eight Persons Four Times

Here’s what we’re working with, direct from page 1 of The Supper of the Lamb:

Let me begin without ceremony.

LAMB FOR EIGHT PERSONS FOUR TIMES

In addition to one iron pot, two sharp knives, and four heads of lettuce, you will need the following:

FOR THE WHOLE
1 leg of lamb (The largest the market will provide. If you are no good with a kitchen saw, have the chops and the shank cut through. Do not, however, let the butcher cut it up. If he does, you will lose eight servings and half the fun.)

FOR THE PARTS
I (A)
Olive oil (olive oil)
Garlic (fresh)
Onions, carrots, mushrooms, and parsley
Salt, pepper (freshly ground), bay leaf, marjoram
Stock (any kind but ham; water only in desperation)
Wine (dry red–domestic or imported–as decent as possible)
Broad noodles (or spaetzle, potatoes, rice, or toast)

I (B)
Olive oil (again)
Garlic
Onions
Salt, pepper (keep the mill handy), and thyme (judiciously). Oregano is also possible, but it is a little too emphatic when you get to III.
Wine (dry white–even French Vermouth–but not Sherry. Save that. Or drink it while you cook.)

II
Spinach (a lot)
Cheese (grated: Parmesan or Cheddar; or perhaps Feta–anything with a little sharpness and snap)
Mayonnaise (not dietetic and not sweet)
Sherry (only a drop, but Spanish)
Bread (homemade; two loaves) and butter (or margarine, if you must)

III
Oil (peanut oil, if you have any; otherwise, olive)
3 eggs
Onions
Shredded cabbage (bean sprouts, if you have money to burn)
Sherry (if you have any left)
Stock (as before, but only a little)
Rice (cooked, but not precooked)
Soy sauce (domestic only in desperation)

IV
Onions, carrots, celery, turnip
Oil, fat, or butter
Barley (or chick-peas or dried beans–or all three)
Water
Salt, pepper, and parsley (rosemary?)
(Macaroni and shredded cabbage are also possible. A couple of tomatoes give a nice color.)

If prepared correctly, it is all delicious.

Everything in parens is Capon’s, not mine. But what do you know, it’s exactly what I might write. Except the part about margarine — that’s not permissible under any circumstances. This is a product of 1969, after all, and fortunately Capon roundly condemns the oleo elsewhere in the book.

Next posts in the series:
1L/8X4: Prep for Night 1
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”

For at least a year I’ve been meaning to write a heartfelt ode to The Supper of the Lamb, the best book about food I’ve ever read.

Robert Farrar Capon is the author, and he happens to be an Episcopal minister. (Or happened? I’m not even sure he’s alive. This book was published in 1969.) I am as surprised as you that I so love a book by a man of God.

But when somebody writes, in the course of discussing what kitchen implements are necessary (only a few) and which are not, “A woman with cleaver in mid-swing is no mere woman,” I can’t help but like the guy. And then there’s the whole interlude about why God loves you if you drink wine, and why boring people who carp about nutrition should never be invited to dinner. And this all paves the way to, I’m not kidding, me getting all teary-eyed on the subway when he talks about the beautiful treasure God has given us in the form of this world’s bounty. There’s also an amazing description of making strudel.

I know you’re not yet convinced you should read this book. I’m doing a horrible job of describing it. So how about this review on Amazon.com?

I grew up around Bob Capon. My father is also an Episcopal priest, and our families often got together to break bread…. Capon was one of the first “crazy” people I ever met. (I was around 9 years old.) I am a better person for it.

A “crazy” author. Strudel. Cleavers. Wine.

Oh, and of course the premise of the whole book: Lamb for Eight Persons Four Times.

This “recipe” is the basis for Capon’s meditation on the difference between “festal” and “ferial” dining, and how there’s great nobility in the day-to-day, thrifty cooking that we do, and should do more of, than the special-occasion dinners that break the bank and are just used to impress people.

To this end, he suggests a way to use a single leg of lamb to make dinner for eight people four whole times. Lots of wine and garlic are involved, and one dinner is a Chinese stir-fry, which is pretty adventurous for 1969. The whole leg-of-lamb strategy is drawn out over the course of the book, in between a million digressions.

Still, as much as I love this book and find myself nodding in utter rapture every time I read just a sentence or two, I’m still a wee bit skeptical of the whole premise of the 1 lamb / 8 X 4.

Which is why I’m going to use the minor lull in my schedule next week to put Capon’s recipes to the test, starting on Wednesday or Thursday. Along with the lamb, I need seven dinner guests four times, so speak up now, folks. For anyone who can’t make it, I really recommend you buy the book and follow along at home.

Can I get an amen?

Next posts in the series:
1L/8X4: The Prologue
1L/8X4: Prep for Night 1
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”