The Dinner Party
There had been several back-and-forth conversations, from the time Tim first called, and somehow, by now, there were going to be anywhere from four to eight people coming over to dinner, that is how these things go, although the exact number was, as yet, indefinite.
When I got to the back where the meat was kept I saw a large half-leg of lamb. It was on sale, $2.29 a pound, the lower half of a leg of lamb, about 6 pounds, 15 dollars' worth. I decided to buy the leg of lamb. Two big chickens would have cost the same. A chicken, here, was often risky. For one thing, I was anti-Perdue. Despite the packaging and ad campaigns, those birds had never tasted very good to me. But usually that was the only brand available, though sometimes there was a store brand that I had never had much luck with either. The whole birds almost always cooked up either tough, or greasy, or tasteless. I thought I would decide what to do with the lamb when I got home. In the dairy section I found a packet of flour tortillas (the store didn't carry nan and I didn't care for pita) and a big container of yogurt. I had to get a few other items as well, not for the dinner. The bill came to $63, which was quite shocking.
I sort of thought I would combine a couple of different recipes, one from the Silver Palate Cookbook and another from Ismail Merchant's first cookbook. I sliced up the potatoes and a bunch of onions and salted them with some sea salt and I threw these into the bottom of a roasting pan. Then I washed and threw in the tiny jewel tomatoes, and then I decided, what the hell, and I sliced and put the mushrooms in too. I have a food processor, so I took some cloves of garlic and a big piece of peeled fresh ginger and I put it in the food processor along with a few cloves, some whole peppercorns, half the juice from a lemon and three of the Scotch bonnet peppers (which I was too lazy to deseed). The mess was so spicy that when I opened the top of the food processor I started to sneeze. So I put plastic baggies over my hands and smeared the mix on the leg of lamb, which I had washed, and put the leg on a rack that I then put on top of all the sliced potatoes and onions.
The leg of lamb still looked a little bare to me, but I had one of those pretty containers containing "herbes de Provence," so I grabbed a big handful of that and sprinkled the bald areas on the lamb. A fair amount fell over the potatoes and onions below.
The oven was preheated to 450. I put the whole roasting pan with the vegetables and the lamb on the rack in the oven. Then I decided to make some lentils, again a sort of imitation of the dal made by Ismail Merchant and Cyrus Jhabvala. I knew probably it wasn't what they would have done, but I didn't care. I threw a little piece of chopped ginger and some garlic in a pot with olive oil and then added a chopped-up onion and some whole cardamom, and then while it was frying I added about eight whole peppercorns and five whole cloves and in my hand I dumped about a teaspoon of garam masala, turmeric, red pepper flakes and, by accident, about six teaspoons of cumin.
I put this in the pot and stirred so that the spices had a chance to brown along with the onions. If I had had bay leaves I would have added a few of these, or a couple of sticks of cinnamon and sometimes I like to chop up a couple of chipotle peppers from a can and add them with a little bit of the juice.
None of this was right, exactly, and also the order was all wrong. I knew that if Jhab had been in my kitchen he would have been telling me this wasn't the way to make dal. However, it always came out okay, not authentic, but American-Eastern-European-Indian dal, according to me.
While this was all frying I opened and washed a bag of Goya lentils and then I added these to the pot and stirred it.
I added a can of chicken broth, though I could have used vegetable broth, if any genuine vegetarian friends were coming. But there weren't. Then the contents of a giant can of whole stewed tomatoes, one of those 28-ounce cans. It still didn't look like enough liquid to me, so I poured in a glass of water. Sometimes in Indian cooking, in a recipe book, there are requirements to use all different kinds of obscure things, which you use once and then the recipe doesn't come out right and for the next 17 years a nearly full jar or packet of something peculiar sits in the back of the cabinet. What I like about mock-Indian cuisine was that a) I can use whatever is handy b) I throw in quantities of things at random and c) I make sure never to invite Indian people to my faux-Indian meals.
What was most amazing about the cooking of Ismail Merchant and Cyrus Jhabvala was that they would go into a kitchen, mess around for 10 minutes and leave. Two or three hours later, the announcement would come, "The food is ready," and onto giant platters the most amazing meal was delivered. I am not that kind of cook. On the other hand, this was the sort of meal I could fling together.
By now it was almost a half hour later, so I turned down the oven to 400. I let the lentils boil and turned them down to simmer and hacked off the bottoms of the asparagus, which I was just going to steam, or at least cook by throwing into an inch of boiling water and covering. I figured, let the asparagus be plain, everything else was going to be rich.
Then Willow and Tim got home and also the carpenter arrived and I had to sit with Willow while she did her homework and by the time I remembered to go in the kitchen the lentils were a little dry, so I added another glass of water. They were still a tiny bit chewy, so I kept them cooking, low.
Some guests started to arrive and the lentils were done and the lamb had been in the oven for one hour and 40 minutes; in retrospect I would have cooked everything for two. I turned off the oven and then I remembered I had bought some tortillas so I wrapped them up in aluminum foil and put them in the oven, which I turned back on, only at a lower temperature, and I steamed the asparagus.
Then I tried to make everything look nice by dumping the potatoes and onions and tomatoes and mushrooms into a clear bowl and the other things into serving dishes and the lamb onto a cutting board.
It was incredible-looking, with a nice black crust of herbs and spices. The lentils were tender but not mushy, each had kept its form. And the roasted potatoes had gotten nicely browned and blended with the slices of soft onion and tiny tangy tomatoes.
I had done brilliantly. It was all vaguely Persian or at least mysterious; was all juicy and delicious with a rare garlicky, gingery scent. Tim was in charge of carving the roast?it didn't matter, because it had been cooked perfectly, but the leg of lamb wasn't really such a great cut of meat, the shank bottom end, or else it wasn't exactly the best leg of lamb because there was a lot of fat that Tim had to remove. Nevertheless, as I say, it didn't matter, the garlic and ginger cut the grease and the lamb-ness of it. Normally I can't taste my own cooking, it has no appeal to me, but this was wonderful, with the warm tortillas and the smooth rich lentils and the crusty pink lamb, garlicky and spicy but not too spicy, and the potatoes and onions that, from being roasted under the lamb, had all the flavoring that the meat had. I hadn't added white wine or any liquid, I was glad of this, it hadn't needed it?I think it would have made the potatoes soggy, though the Silver Palate Cookbook had suggested otherwise?and I had thought initially of mixing all the spices with yogurt before rubbing it on the lamb, but I was glad I hadn't done this either, because the dryness of the mix had made the surface of the lamb nicely charred. And there was mango chutney from a jar I served and some homemade cranberry sauce.
The only thing I would have done differently was use the yogurt to make cucumber raita by chopping a lot of peeled cucumbers, adding salt, black pepper and a spoonful of sugar, but there wasn't time. And for dessert I served tangerines, but it would have been nice to have some chocolates or really good cookies. One friend had brought some Francis Ford Coppola red wine, which made everyone feel like a movie star.
I think, though, that I could either cook or be a hostess, but the combination of two roles in one evening is too much for me. If I could choose one of the two, I'd stay in the kitchen. But not for the cleanup.