Braised Lamb on a Saturday

and a very, very long sentence

The boys were home last weekend and the house was full again. I went for a long walk in the park, threw many sticks to our yellow lab then pulled the last of the dying summer plants from our window boxes. The air was wet and warm for November. Pearls of rain clung to our smoke bush leaves, the last of the colour still hanging this late in the fall. I held onto a leaf then let it go. The pearls released like slingshots into the air. 

Inside sneakers and jackets were piled at the door. I could hear boys throughout the house, their feet heavy on the old floorboards. The house smelled like it did when they were little - stew braising in the oven, low and slow, because kids napped and we were home to open the oven door, stir, and slide the pot back in again. Today James was making braised lamb with tamarind and dates, a recipe we used to make back in those low and slow days of early parenthood.

The recipe comes from New Zealand Chef Peter Gordon’s cookbook A World in My Kitchen. Gordon used to own a restaurant called The Sugar Club in London, where the food was infused with unlikely pairings of ingredients from his home and travels, but together, they worked. I used to bicycle past the restaurant everyday on my way to work at Books for Cooks, along the All Saints Road and across to Portobello. It was the raw end of Notting Hill at the time, an edgy destination. But people came anyway; the restaurant was always full. 

There was a café at the back of Books for Cooks where recipes from the books were tested and served for lunch. The best recipes would make it into an annual paperback compilation put together by the owner of the shop. Peter Gordon’s Braised Lamb with Tamarind and Dates made it in that year, with this description in the head note - 

“A very, very tasty dish indeed - tender lamb braised in a dark and glossy sauce bursting with sweet and sour flavours…” It’s true. It is a very, very tasty dish. I had forgotten. 

When I walked into the house last weekend, after the dog walk and the launching of pearls of water into the air and the stepping over the boys’ shoes and coats and the aroma of Peter Gordon’s dish filling the air, I remembered something I had written in a writing class a few years before. We had been prompted to write a memory in one long sentence, to let the words flow without editing, fact checking, overthinking or knowing where the words would take us. I found that (very long) sentence in the recesses of my computer, a memory from a time when life was uncertain, when I used to bicycle past Peter Gordon’s restaurant on the way to work. This is what I wrote -

I whizzed past that restaurant, what is it called, the one with the chef named Peter from New Zealand who made a beef tenderloin dish and served it with pesto, a combination I had never considered before, Peter, I don’t know, but I passed his restaurant every day on my bicycle on the way to work at the cookbook store, where I was happy working, most of the time, because people are happy at a cookbook store, they talk about what they love, what they’re craving, what they’re having for dinner, and I would talk back to them, because I was lonely at first and wanted to share what I loved, what I was craving, what I was having for dinner, and they would listen, and then I would bicycle home at the end of the day, I love my bicycle, and make something we had talked about that day at work, and I’d watch Big Brother on TV, and maybe have a bath, so that day, when I was cruising past Peter whatever’s restaurant, I remember being happy, because I had took a pregnancy test the night before, and there were two lines, it was positive, and suddenly I wasn’t worried about being a shop girl as they’re called in England, I wasn’t worried about not crushing it as a journalist in London, I wasn’t worried about my social life, or the time my husband spent at work, because I would be a mother, I would have a new purpose, one that everyone understood, but the problem with that, with becoming pregnant when you’re not content in life, is that underneath the joy and the glow and the thickening of the uterine walls is a person, me, who is still not content, she is there, hiding, so when I was vacuuming the tiny apartment a few months later, when i had to lay down from the pain in my abdomen, when I sat on the toilet and blood dripped from my insides, when I laid on the bed and read what to expect when you’re expecting, the part on bleeding, when I went to emergency, because I was so uncomfortable, and my husband was there, because it was a sunday and we were together, and the doctor confirmed that I had miscarried, I was left, several weeks later, after convalescing and my mother visiting and making me lentil soup, I was left to bicycle past that restaurant, owned by Peter something or other, and to think about what my next move would be, because babies could come and go, the glow could come and go, and it was up to me to find happiness, it wasn’t the job of the cluster of cells that would grow into a baby. 

Life is different now. There are boys, a dog, our old city, community, family and a garden, just big enough for us. What remains the same is this career, where I continue to lean into food, cravings and what we’re having for dinner.

---

Here’s my version of the Books for Cooks version, inspired by Peter Gordon’s recipe. The original recipe (found here and in Gordon’s A World in My Kitchen, if you find a second-hand copy out there snatch it up) calls for lamb shanks. Lamb shoulder, cut from the bone chopped into chunks, works just as well. 

Braised Lamb with Tamarind and Dates

Serves 4-6

3 tbsp sesame oil

1 kg (2 lbs) lamb shoulder, cut into 4 cm (1 ½ inch) cubes

3 red onions, quartered

12 garlic cloves

300 ml (10 fl oz/ 1 ¼ cups) red wine

3 carrots, grated

1 tbsp tamarind paste

1 tsp finely chopped fresh rosemary

¼ tsp crushed chilli flakes

4 tbsp balsamic vinegar

4 tbsp soy sauce

250ml (8 fl oz/ 1 cups) chicken or vegetable stock

250g (8 oz/ 2 cups) pitted dried dates, roughly chopped

2 tbsp finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Heat the oven to 325F (160C). Warm 1 tbsp of the oil in a big, heavy pan over medium heat. Add the lamb to the pan, cooking until sealed and browned on all sides. You’ll have to do this in batches - if the pan is overcrowded, the lamb will steam and not brown. Scoop out the meat and set aside. 

Warm the remaining oil in the pot. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring until slightly softened, about 3 minutes. Pour in the wine and bring to the boil. Add the carrots, tamarind, rosemary, chilli, vinegar and soy and return the meat to the pot. Add just enough stock so that the level of the liquid is no higher than a few cm’s below the surface of the meat. Put on the lid and put into the oven to stew slowly until tender, about 2 hours. Add the dates, stir well and cook for another 20 minutes. Adjust the seasoning with soy and chilli, scatter with parsley and serve hot with mashed potatoes, rice or couscous. Books for Cooks suggests buttering your couscous and tossing with fresh cilantro and mint. A good idea.