{"id":7590,"date":"2016-03-28T23:57:39","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T23:57:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=7590"},"modified":"2016-03-28T23:57:39","modified_gmt":"2016-03-28T23:57:39","slug":"roast-lamb-shank-with-a-chile-crust-tomato-rapini-turnips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=7590","title":{"rendered":"roast lamb shank with a chile crust; tomato; turnips; rapini"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"lamb_tomato_turnip_rapini\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(the image was shot\u00a0before its\u00a0rich spicy self sauce was added to the lamb)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The little roast had been marinated with a rub of toasted cumin seed and [the equivalent of] two different chile powders, so the sauce for this partial lamb shank, once it had been produced, was unbelievably rich and complex.<\/p>\n

When I first removed the pan from the oven, and the meat from the pan, there were virtually no\u00a0juices visible, and certainly nothing worthy of being called\u00a0a sauce. A\u00a0few\u00a0minutes later however, after I had quickly returned the lamb\u00a0to the oven, I found it had produced a\u00a0rich, spicy sauce, I’ll say ‘automatically’, and it was now\u00a0cooked exactly\u00a0medium-rare.<\/p>\n

The recipe I started with, ‘Roast Leg of Lamb with\u00a0Red Chile Crust<\/a>‘, is from the book, ‘Bobby Flay’s Bold American Food<\/a>‘, but I only realized once I had begun to prepare this little roast that I didn’t actually have most of the ingredients it specified. In fact , Flay asked for 2 chile powders and I didn’t have either.<\/p>\n

I improvised, so wildly that I can’t remember what ended up in the ‘rub’ I used, although I do remembering toasting some cumin seed. The lamb\u00a0turned out\u00a0more than just pretty good.<\/p>\n

My other story is about the problem of determining when something has been cooked \u00e0\u00a0point<\/em>. This was an especially small roast, so it was probably not going to suitable for most roasting procedures, including Bobby Flay’s (he suggested roasting for 15 minutes, at a high temperature, as a way to ‘sear’ his roast, but that would be brutal for a roast\u00a0less than a third the size of the one his recipe was working with. \u00a0 I probably should have seared it very briefly in the pan, but I wasn’t certain that would do anything, since there really weren’t any meat surfaces to sear.\u00a0In the end I just roasted it in\u00a0a ‘moderate’ oven and removed it to rest on a wooden board at the moment I thought<\/em> it had achieved a\u00a0state of perfection.<\/p>\n

At that moment\u00a0however\u00a0there were almost\u00a0no\u00a0juices visible, and certainly nothing that appeared to be a sauce.\u00a0I should have gotten the message then, but it was only when\u00a0I had begun to slice it that I realized that the outer inch or so alone had been cooked as\u00a0I wanted. I quickly returned the lamb to the oven for about 7 or 8 minutes. Removing\u00a0it again, I\u00a0found that\u00a0a genuine rich\u00a0sauce had been rendered from the shank’s juices, and\u00a0the meat\u00a0was now\u00a0cooked exactly\u00a0medium-rare.<\/p>\n