Noticed a serious dearth of savory recipes on this blog lately? Yes? Well, I swear to you, I really have been cooking. I’ve made slow-roasted pork and braised short ribs and all sorts of drool-worthy concoctions on my stove top. But they came and went, leaving behind only a bunch of dirty pots and pans, with no photographic evidence of their existence. And what fun is it to wax poetic about a recipe without pictures?
So when I made a lamb navarin this weekend, priority numero uno was snapping a few images before we gobbled all of it up.
To be honest, I didn’t grow up loving lamb. So often I found it gamy and uninteresting, and I can honestly say that I’ve never ordered lamb in a restaurant. I’ve tried bits off other people’s plates, and though sometimes the lamb tasted good — really good — I never felt compelled to order it myself, much less cook a whole meal with it.
Then I started dating a Brit and met all of his international compadres and before I knew it, I was eating lamb at dinner party after dinner party. And you know what? I started to like it.
The thing about lamb — or maybe “my” thing about lamb — is that it’s pretty easy to prepare badly. Cook it just a little too long, and it’s tough and dull and rather sorry looking. But when enough of my friends started cooking it well, I realized how tasty good lamb can be.
So when a newly purchased cookbook arrived at my doorstep last week, and I saw a recipe for lamb navarin (a French lamb stew), I knew what this week’s Sunday Night Dinner would be — and, of course, what I’d be photographing ASAP, so that I could share the recipe with all of you.
