Julia's First 'Second Wednesday'

My grandfather, Cecil Cyril Shore, immigrated to Seattle from California's San Joaquin valley with his wife and three daughters while my mother was still in high school. She and her two sisters all married local boys and each had three children of her own which made nine of us first cousins who grew up here. Of the nine of us, seven still live here and have produced fourteen additional Shores and more of the next generation are arriving all the time. Everyone who cares to attend is invited to dinner at my mom and dad's house on the second Wednesday of each month. I make my famous spaghetti, Mom makes her famous green salad with seafood and garlic bread (see 9/29/9 blog)and we all sit around, drink wine, eat too much and then commence to bragging and lying.

But now I'm cooking Julia for a year, so spaghetti and is out and legs are in. She has several 'masters' that involve cooking whole legs and even though The Main Eater can hold his own against all comers in the eating category he can't eat a whole leg. Well, except chicken, but not a lamb or pig, so I am recruiting Shores, who also count many legendary eaters among their ranks. Their first assignment came last Wednesday when they took on Roast Leg of Lamb, Potatoes Dauphinoise and Braised Endive.

I am trying very hard to be better organized for these events, so I made a list of each task, when it needed to begin and then joyfully crossed them off as they were accomplished. Nevertheless, as dinner hour approached and things were, as usual, not complete, I began to despair. That's when I met Ian Stone. He is a friend of my daughter Alyss, and since it was her birthday she had invited a few brave friends to mingle with the hoards of Shores that evening.

The problem I ran into was actually not of my making. I blame Julia. She said that a 7-8 pound leg of lamb should roast at 350 degrees 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours and then rest for 20 minutes before carving, meaning it should go into the oven at 5:00, which it did. Well it looked like a heap of meat to get done in that amount of time to me, but who am I to argue with her? It turns out that I should have because dinner had been promised for 7:00 PM and the main event wasn't ready to exit the oven until 8:00, which put dinner on the table at 8:30. Again.

I ran into a similar situation with the Potatoes Dauphinoise (French for scalloped potatoes). She gives specific instructions for using Yukon Gold potatoes, slicing them 1/8" thick, putting them into a casserole 1 1/2" - 2" deep and adding boiling milk to 3/4 of the way to the top of the dish (also salt, pepper, butter and pureed garlic) before baking them for 25 minutes at 425 degrees. They were done just when the lamb was done, which was about an hour after they were supposed to be done. And, sad to say, they might not have been worth the wait.

The Braised Endive is made with Belgian Endive, which appears on your grocer's shelves as dainty pale-green oblong heads, usually covered by a blanket. That is not to protect them from the cold but because exposure to light makes them develop a bitter flavor. In fact they are grown in the dark much the same as commercial mushrooms are grown. But despite the fact that they are a delicate type of lettuce, Julia braises them in water, salt, lemon juice and (of course) butter, for 1 1/2 - 2 hours. As she so often does, she starts the recipe by having the cook bring the dish to a boil on top of the stove. I was then directed to wait for the liquid to reduce by half, cover it with buttered wax paper and put it in the oven at 325 degrees for the remainder of the cooking time, or in this case, until the liquid was evaporated. They were delicious.

But back to the lamb. In addition to roasting the leg Julia also recommends making a sauce by stewing the bones for a few hours with garlic, onion, rosemary, celery, parsley, chicken broth and French vermouth. When the lamb came out of the oven I invited Ian to taste the sauce and make some suggestions. It turns out that his family owned the Captain Whidby restaurant on Whidby Island for 3 generations and that he cooked his first Thanksgiving dinner when he was just twelve years old! In other words he knows his way around a sauce. So he suggests salt, pepper, and vermouth and dumping the whole mess into the roasting pan to absorb the remaining goodness from the roast and accompanying vegetables and then straining it all through a sieve and just like that a wonderful sauce was born. He then proceeded to carve the roast, pronounce the potates done, and the next thing I knew people were eating. Thank you Ian.

The Bottom Line:
Roast Leg of Lamb & Sauce-Thumbs Up
Potatoes Dauphinoise-Thumbs Down
Braised Endive-Thumbs Up