A Great Cold-Weather Recipe

I know that I am long overdue for posting a recipe. So here is one that Scooter and I used to make dinner for us last night (and leftovers for a few days). It's perfect for the dip in the weather we had last week. The original recipe comes from a cookbook titled Cooking With Beer; the recipes do a good job of proving that beer is good for more than just drinking. If you're in the mood for warm food for cold weather, try this Irish Lamb Stew.

What you'll need:
3/4 c. all-purpose flour
3 lbs. of boneless lamb stew meat OR 3 1/2 to 4 lbs. small chunks of lamb meat, bone-in
3 Tbs. vegetable oil (I prefer olive oil)
1 medium onion, chopped
1 15-oz. can stout (we used Guinness, which worked perfectly)
1 Tbs. brown sugar
1 tsp. dried thyme
1 Tbs. Worcester sauce
1 lb. small new potatoes, washed and quartered
1 lb. carrots (a 1 lb. bag of baby carrots already peeled and washed saves time)
1/2 c. water
1 c. frozen peas
1/4 c. chopped fresh Italian parsley
salt and pepper to taste

What you'll need to do:
1. Wash the lamb and pat dry. In a medium mixing bowl, add the flour, 1 tsp of salt, and 1/4 tsp of pepper. Quickly mix together; dredge each piece of lamb in the flour mixture and shake off any excess flour.
2. In a medium dutch oven, heat the vegetable oil over medium heat. Brown the pieces of lamb on all sides; work in batches so as to not crowd the meat. Set browned meat aside.
3. Add 1/4 to 1/2 c of the stout and the chopped onions to the dutch oven to de-glaze the bottom. Scrape up any browned bits and let cook for about 10 minutes until onions are well-softened. Add the lamb back to the dutch oven, as well as the remaining stout, brown sugar, thyme, Worcester sauce, and salt and pepper to taste. If necessary. add enough water to just cover the lamb. Bring the liquid to a steady simmer, then cover and let cook for about 1 1/2 hours. Lamb should be tender.
4. Add the potatoes and carrots and the 1/2 c of water. Again, bring the liquid to simmering and let cook for about 30 minutes until carrots and potatoes are tender.
5. Add the frozen peas and parsley, and stir everything together. Let cook for another 5 to 10 minutes. Serve hot with a fresh loaf of rustic bread and a full-bodied red wine.

To me, this is comfort food. A nice hot stew on a cold day tastes incredible. I don't know how the temperature can affect flavor, but I swear that it does. And I'm not kidding about the bread and wine. A thick slice of bread can help soak up the last bit of juices from the stew, and the wine will compliment the flavor of the lamb nicely. (Listen to me sounding like I actually know something about wine! I don't know much, but I'm starting to learn what flavors go well together.) I hope you get the chance to enjoy this recipe sometime this winter--maybe with a hot apple pie for dessert!

What's in a name?

I know that this is ever so slightly off-topic, but it is something I was mulling over as I was munching on breakfast this morning. I'm currently reading Stardust by Neil Gaiman (who is, by the way, an incredible storyteller), and I got to thinking about some of the themes in the book--and by the way, forgive me if I use the wrong terminology as it's been quite awhile since I took an English literature class. And I started mentally exploring the idea that there really are no truly unique themes in books nowadays.

In Stardust, we come across several themes: that of the realm of Faerie (a word which has several spellings), a young man who believes himself in love with a young lady, and a quest for an item. The realm of Faerie--or Fairy, Fairie, Faery, or simply Fae--is a concept that has been around for centuries, even before Shakespeare wrote his Faerie-bespelled characters into A Midsummer Night's Dream. The theme of the young lovers goes back centuries as well, and was incorporated into the myths and legends around the world. Cupid and Psyche from Ancient Rome, Savitri and Satyavan from Hindu legend, and Osiris and Isis from Ancient Egypt are only a few of the stories that blossomed in long-ago times and centered around a love match. Quests are just as old: the Holy Grail, the Golden Fleece, and Gilgamesh's quest for eternal life, just to name a few.

After exploring these themes in Stardust, I wondered how some of the other books I've recently read would perform. The Elemental Masters series by Mercedes Lackey? Yep, it has a strong theme of magic and casters--both of which go back many centuries and existed in many forms in cultures around the world. In Native American culture, the caster was the medicine man. In European fairy tales, they were witches and sorcerers. In the British Isles, they were the Druids. In Egypt they were the priests, given power by their many gods. OK, what about something outside of the fantasy genre? In The Blue Bistro, we see yet again a strong theme of love, but this time with the challenge of love lost and regained--not unlike the Grimm's version of Rapunzel and tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon.

So what does this mean? This whole exploration put me in mind of my senior thesis I wrote as part of my undergraduate degree. It was a discussion on the idea of cultural memory and how things from our human history don't go away because our culture "remembers" them, and we continue to recognize them on some level as a result. The themes that I've explored here in a way seem to support this idea of cultural memory, but takes it even further. They are reflections of the human experience and while the stories and legends I've mentioned here most likely didn't happen the way the tale goes, they are a part of our cultural memory and part of our cultural roots, and we identify with these themes every time they surface. For us, these themes hold a certain truth and a clue to what it means to be us, to exist, to suffer, to love. Authors will continue to find different ways to explore the same themes over and over, borrowing from our cultural memory of the distant past, and our interest will not disappear.

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P.S. Bonus points to someone that can tell me where the title of this post comes from.