Curried Lamb Turnovers; Miniature Deep Dish Pizza; Caruso

     I chose the Caruso, because mint is a common accompaniment with lamb.  Now, I wasn't sure what that would do with lamb that was "curried," but I was willing to find out.

CARUSO

1 measure gin

1 measure dry vermouth

1 measure green creme de menthe

Shake all ingredients together in a cocktail shaker and strain into a cocktail glass.

     After work on Wednesday, I had to force myself to be motivated.  I decided to do a sudoku puzzle before I got started to clear my mind of the day's (month's, quarter's, whatever's) ugliness.  It took less than five minutes for me to fall asleep.  I was awoken by kitten teeth embedded into my arm.  Apparently, it wasn't time for sleeping, it was time for paying attention to Pele.  I gave him a vigorous scrunching and forced myself to get up and move into the kitchen.

     Once I had reviewed the recipes, I recalled that there needed to be "roast lamb."  I had found legs of lamb at Wal-Mart, of all places.  I was quite surprised.  They had a large amount of them.  I wondered how many were sacrificed on a regular basis for their legs.  Or, were these just the parts that no one wanted and the rest of the parts were just sold first?

     Anyway, I had never cooked a leg of lamb before.  I was hoping that Jeff was going to be here to enjoy the fruits of my experiment, because lamb is one of his favorite meats.  Alas, he had left me on Monday, not to return until sometime on Thursday, so he would only be able to experience it in pizza form.

     Before I could do anything, though, I had to change two light bulbs that had burnt out in my kitchen.  They had died three days ago, but I was too lazy and unmotivated to change them right away.  I thought I could get away with it for another day, but I couldn't stand it any longer.  Every time I came into the room, I flipped the light switch, trying to get more light in the room.  I grabbed my kitty litter bucket, which had become my flour bucket after a thorough washing and a plastic bag liner.  It also doubles as my kitchen step-stool.  I climbed on top of it and removed the globe covering the two defunct bulbs.  I had the globe in one hand and was reaching into a cupboard with the other hand to get the fresh bulbs I saw in there, when my world came crashing down around me.  Oh wait, no!  It was me that came crashing down around the world!  The lid of the bucket had finally succumbed to the repeated stress of large adults standing on it, and simply gave out.  It was so sudden and shocking that I was no longer in the least bit sleepy.  No, quite the opposite -  wide awake and motivated to lose weight. Or have a drink.  I was glad that the flour was inside a bag inside the bucket, though.  I think that saved my floor from a dust storm and me from having to buy a new 25lb bag of flour.

     My friend, Debi, frequently cooks lamb shank in her pressure cooker.  Once I realized that all of the roasting recipes took upwards of an hour and a half, I decided, I, too, would try my hand at pressure cooking.  The recipe called for cutting the shank into three pieces.  I was not about to do that.  How does one cut through a shank-bone without a bone saw?  I might have tried it if Jeff were here, 9 and 1 already pressed on his phone, ready to add the last digit as soon as I lost one of mine.  However, Wednesday was not that day.  Once I heated up the oil and threw the shank into the pressure cooker to brown on all sides, I realized why the recipe wanted the shank in smaller pieces - so it would fit in the bottom of the pan.  I supposed I could have switched to a larger pressure cooker at that point, since I do have a couple other ones to chose from, but where's the fun in that?
     The browning process was a disaster.  I had heated the oil and forced the shank in there, and then added the garlic.  The shank didn't end up browning, and the garlic was burning.  I feared for the little lamb, so I quickly poured the wine in to keep the garlic from ruining everything. 

     The recipe had also called for two tomatoes, but since my tomato plants are only 2 inches high, it was unlikely that they had any fruits to bear.  I chose to get some freezer points by using a bag of tomatoes from last summer's crop.  Once I cut the bag from the frozen block, I tossed the tomatoes into the pan in one big chunk.  I dumped in some rosemary, salt, and pepper, and sealed the cooker.  It took a little over five minutes for it to come to pressure, at which time, I turned the heat down a to medium-high and set the timer for 20 minutes.

      I had half a recipe of no-yeast crusts in the freezer that were left over from the batch I made for last week's meat pies, so I took those out and put them in the fridge to thaw.  I was going to start working on the "speed-scratch sauce," so I took out a sauce pan and brought the garlic and olive oil over to the stove to be prepared.  When I grabbed the pasta sauce out of the cupboard, I wondered why I would take pre-made pasta sauce and add tomatoes and spices to it to make pasta sauce?  I decided that my chunky garden pasta sauce was going to do just fine on its own without messing with it.  In addition, I could also use some of it for the Miniature deep dish pizzas.  Viola! Two sauces done at once!

     After whipping up the dough for the mini pizzas, I was ready to tackle the lamb.  After the twenty minutes on the heat, I had moved the pan off of the heat and let it sit for ten more minutes.  By then, the pressure was off, and I was able to remove the lid without any scalding. 
     The shank looked completely different than when it had gone in.  The meat had shrunk up to one end of the bone, and it looked like a meat lollipop.  Now that the bone was exposed, I saw how thin it was and considered that maybe cutting through the bone wouldn't have been as hard as I thought.

     I was able to pull most of the meat off of the bone with my fingers.  It was moist and slick, and I couldn't help putting some of it in my mouth.  It was as moist as it looked, and the meat was tender and gamey.  I definitely should have put more salt into the mixture, but that would probably be a moot point once the curry seasoning was added.  I pulled as much meat off as I could and cut some of the rest off of the bone.    I didn't measure it, but I didn't think that I had a full three cups of meat (especially after some of it had fallen into my stomach).  It looked more like two and a quarter - maybe just a little over two cups.  Most of the recipes from the calzone section of this book seemed to make too much filling anyway.

    

     While the lamb was pressurizing, I started in on the dough for the deep dish pizzas.  In my bleary-eyed state, I was mesmerized by the twirling of my dough hook.  It always amazes me that it just does its thing without any help from me and turns a pile of flour with a wet spot into a nice ball of dough.

     Once I had all of the meat shredded and the dough safely tucked into its plastic zipper bag for the night, I was ready to call it a night myself.  I knew I was going to get home a little early on Thursday, because I had a doctor's appointment at 4pm on my side of town, so I was counting on it taking only a few minutes, and I could be home just before five instead of 5:30 (or whenever, depending on how busy the end of my day was).

     Unfortunately, the world was against me.  My appointment took longer than I had intended - actually the appointment itself was as short as I thought it should be, but they didn't call me in until almost 4:30pm.  It made me wonder why they bother with appointment times.  Actually, it didn't.  It just made me crabbier than I already was after a long day at work. 

     My employers, who had sent me a letter earlier in the month that said my last day would be the 31st were now telling me that, not only was that NOT going to be my last day, they wanted me to work all weekend (7am-6pm on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) with no assurances that there would be continued employment following this gruelling weekend.  I had pressed the CFO for answers Thursday morning, and he said that he was going to call a meeting that day.  I reminded him that I had a doctor's appointment and would be leaving at  3:45.  He assured me that the meeting would be long before that. It hadn't happened before I left.  That started the crabbiness before I even got to the doctor's office.

     Then, there were those irritating blue hairs I encountered on the way home.  They were driving 5 miles below the speed limit, side by side in the only two lanes going my direction.  Didn't they know I was in a hurry?  Why did they insist on being in my way?  When I got home, the front screen door was locked from the inside, and I there are no keys (that I know of) to this door.  I had to go around back, unlock the padlock on the fence, and go in through the back door.  It is little aggravations like this that drive people over the edge.

     After I took a few deep breaths, I started in on the dough for the deep dish pizzas.  I squished it into a log that I could easily divide into 6 pieces.  The recipe said to divide it into 8 pieces, but I never did find the pot pie tins.  Pot pies are not something I eat, so I didn't have anything laying around, and wasn't willing to buy the pot pies just to obtain them.  I didn't really have anything similar, so I decided on my oval ramekins or au gratin dishes.  Since they were oblong and seemed to be larger than I imagined a pot pie to be, I decided 6 would be the right amount.  That, and the fact that there were going to be 5 adults and two children, so I figured each adult could have one, and if the kids wanted some, they could split one.

     Once I had them in somewhat of an oval shape, I stretched them and laid them into their oval white beds.  The sides of the dishes were very slick and upright, so I wasn't able to get the crust to stay along the edge.  My hope was that in the rising, the dough would reach the top of the dish.

     While those were resting, I went to work on the filling for the turnovers.  I started with my "speed-scratch" sauce and added parsley.  The parsley, in my opinion doesn't really add much flavor to a dish, especially if it is added before cooking, but it does brighten the look of whatever it goes into.

     I had purchased fresh mint from Cub, which just killed me, because mint overtakes my yard in the summer.  I cannot get rid of the stuff, but it hadn't come up yet, and I needed it now.  I didn't look at the label before I threw the package away, but this was like no other mint I had seen before.  It was wispy, the leaves were round instead of spiked, and they grew on the stem differently than my back yard mint.  It looked more like watercress to me.

Mint from Cub

Normal Mint

     If it didn't smell minty, I would have believed that the package was mislabeled.  Technically, it was, because it didn't list grass as part of the ingredients, and that was definitely in there, too.

     I decided to leave that part out of the turnovers.
     After the mint went into the bowl, I added my 2½ cups of lamb.  It wasn't finely minced.  That seemed like a lot of work, and I did want there to be some texture, a little bit of chew, to the meat.  The lamb was so tender, it was falling apart anyway.

     I piled on the garlic.  The recipe called for two cloves, minced.  I put in two heaping teaspoons of the pre-chopped, jarred garlic.  Okay, maybe I put in three or four.  My theory is: you can never have too much garlic.

     The jalapeno that I purchased from Cub was huge.  I wasn't sure whether or not to keep the seeds or leave them out.  I knew that the kids weren't even going to try this dish, and Roger was hit or miss.  I decided to take out half of the seeds, just in case.

     After I added the green onions, cumin, and curry powder, it was time to stir things up.

     Rolling out the dough, especially this pie-type dough that the turnovers called for, was becoming Jennifer's specialty.  I didn't want to stand in the way of that, so I gave her the task of rolling and filling the turnovers while I worked on the mini pizzas.

     She was able to get all of the filling into the dough, pinch it, and still remembered to brush it with the melted butter.

     For the pizzas, I only used some of the optional ingredients.  I put on onions, peppers, and olives.  My pizza sauce was the same "speed-scratch" sauce that I used for the lamb.  I put the cheese over these items, sprinkled it with oregano and granulated garlic.  I skipped the Parmesan step, because I didn't have any.

     Once everything was in the oven, we turned our attention to the Caruso.  Jennifer built the drinks, and we all took a sip.  It was VERY minty and very green.  I wanted mint, and I got it.  I think the three of us were all over the map in rating the drink.  Jennifer loved it.  Pam hated it, and I thought it was okay, it just needed much less mint and (of course) more gin.

   Jonah and Gracie spent this time trying to master flying Jeff's remote controlled helicopter.  I think the goal was to master the technique and torture the cat with it.  Or each other.  Or both.

     I got my wish with the mini pizzas.  The crust certainly did fill the pan.  The cheese was browned nicely, and all of the "toppings" were nestled in nicely with the cheese and the doughy crust.  They were beautiful!

     The turnovers, however, weren't as pretty.  They were a delicious golden brown color, but the seals had popped open. The stuffing was leaking out of them, and they looked like dying cartoon clams.

     They had wonderful flavor, though.  The crust was crisp and buttery.  The filling had a building heat that was more of a suggestion than an actual heat.  It was meaty and flavorful, and I could taste the brightness that the green onions and mint had added to the equation.
     The mini pizzas were fabulous, too!  They reminded me of my childhood, when Pam used to make these giant, doughy pizzas in a 9x12 pan, and there was more bread than toppings.  The dough was soft, and the toppings shone through their cheesy blankets in perfect harmony.  This was the pizza that comes to mind when the word "pizza" is mentioned.  It was true comfort food, and it was just what I needed.