il secondo: spiedini di involtini di agnello e funghi (lamb and mushroom kebabs)

Before I left on vacation, I meant to write a few posts and have them auto-publish. I didn’t quite manage to make it happen. Then, I thought I would post something while I was gone. Um, no. I also packed hazelnuts and flour to make my cake for the Daring Bakers, which also didn’t happen. But, I had a day and a half in Atlanta before the posting deadline, and my roommate’s boyfriend had a birthday, so I was sure I could and would pull off the cake. Enter, the flu. Needless to say, I didn’t bake anything for my roommate’s boyfriend’s birthday. So, it has been a couple of weeks without a post, and a month without Daring Bakers, which is sad. I wish I could say that this delinquent behavior is behind me. But I have my oral exams for my PhD rapidly approaching, and as a result I have been having trouble sleeping, which means that I have had trouble functioning, which means that I’m looking at a very rough month and a half. So, I will try to get some posts up, but it might be more like once a week. Think good thoughts for me. I will need them.

So, where were we, I believe we had just finished the fish course of my five course Italian dinner. Next up, was a meat course, in this case, lamb. We bought a beautiful piece of lamb tenderloin from Star Provisions and cut it into pieces and then batted those pieces into thin strips. We then coated the lamb with a flavorful rub, threaded our skewers, and threw these on the grill. They were amazingly good, and also pretty easy once the lamb was batted (beaten into thin sheets).

 

Antipasti

When my friend Shannen came to visit me last weekend, we had already spent months talking about what we would cook. The gamut ran from the aforementioned croissants, to another round of homemade pasta, to a particular fried chicken recipe we’ve both wanted to try for a long time. However, when she actually showed up, it was with an early birthday present in tow: Jamie’s Italy. Suddenly, all other cooking plans dissipated and we found ourself building a menu for an Italian five course dinner. Being certifiable, we crafted the menu around noon, spent the afternoon shopping for ingredients, started cooking around 4:30, and actually managed to start eating at 7:30. We were very impressed with ourselves.

The food was fabulous, the wine was plentiful, and the company was amazing. What more can you ask of from an impromptu dinner party? In the next week, I will slowly unfold our menu, course by course. First up was the antipasti course, which involved two dishes. The first was a meat platter, which we crafted from the bountiful selection of Star Provisions. We built the platter around three meats: hot sopressata, bresaola, and pancetta. With the help of the cheese monger, we paired the sopressata and the bresaola with very different pecorinos, and we had our first dish. I believe that the pecorino we used with the sopressata was a pecorino sardo, it was mild and creamy and played well off of the spiciness of the sopressata. With the bresaola we used a classic pecorino romano, sharp and salty, shaved over the meat.

Our second antipasti dish was limoni di amalfi cotti al forno or amalfi baked lemons. We all agreed that this dish was one of the best of the evening. The cheese really picks up a strong lemon flavor and the anchovies melt away, leaving only a feint nuttiness. I had some trepidations about using the anchovies, having had a bad experience in the past. But apparently the key is getting jarred instead of canned, and splurging on higher quality anchovies doesn’t hurt either. Basil, picked fresh from my garden, and organic cherry tomatoes from my CSA finished off the dish nicely.