Rack of Lamb, Dried Apricot, Prunes and Garlic Tagine

Cooking Time: 6 1/2 hours, 280 degrees, covered.

Preparation/Process:

Place pat-dried meat in an olive oiled iron skillet and sprinkle both sides with rock sea salt, fresh-cracked black peppers and dried mint. Drizzle olive oil to lather, and add a pinch of red chili flakes. Arrange a mix of dried fruits, pickled red baby eggplants, pitted Sicilian green olives, a head of garlic on the lamb, and pack down hard to press meat. Add more oil around, then sprinkle dried chives herb and bay leaves (crush them) and cumin seeds on top, salt and pepper; and cover tight with foil (two layers) - and stick on the higher rack in the oven for the specified amount of time.

While tagine is slow-cooking forever, in a medium size sauce pan put a cup of stone ground polenta grits (artisanal producer Wild Hive, preferably), plus 4 cups of water, a pinch of salt, a swirl of olive oil - and leave uncovered on the stove; no heat (just allow the warm aromatic emanation from the oven to soak the grains melting tender). 
  
At the sixth hour, cook polenta: under low heat, stir grits, add half a stick of unsalted butter, two more swirls of olive oil (by the way, try to find Frantoi Cutrera's elemental Frescolio), salt and pepper - stir passionately for 20 minutes. Turn off heat. Then finely grate Grana Padano cheese over the grits, folding over twice, and repeat. Salt and oil to taste. Texture should be creamy yet clumping like mashed.

Take tagine skillet out of the oven, and uncover a Mediterranean "Genie's" decadent orchard and pasture food! (6 1/2 hours keeps the baby skin meat surprisingly attached to the bone!)

To serve:  cut rack of lamb in half (if you could distinguish it from the macerated-charred-moist fruits)  and place on white bistro plate, and spoon over the tagine reduction/sweet herbarium ragout and all! (By the way, you can mash the whole head of garlic and sauce it down with the fruits; make sure to spoon over to the meat the essential oils extracted from this miraculous vintner-farmer marinade; you will note that I didn't use any red wine during the slow-cooking: the lamb is that blood!)

Don't forget the polenta, and the briny peperoncinis on the side.

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Green Sour Plum, Green Squash, Converted Rice, Normandy Brie and Amish Gongonzola Spicy Egg Shakshuka

PROCESS: (Traditionally, tomatoes and onions are used. But I don't have those, so I substituted plums and squash, respectively.)

Cut up the flesh of the fruit on four sides and toss in the pan with olive oil; simmer them down covered until breaking soft. Add squash, salt around, then add up fresh-ground cumin seeds, black pepper and red chili flakes (mortar and pestle them together) - cover again. After five minutes, add cooked rice -stir- and a generous powdering of sweet paprika. Drop crumbles of the two cheese around the pan, leaving the center open for the fresh egg. Salt the egg, a couple of alternating pinches of dried chives and mint, a little more black pepper and red chili flakes - then swirl around hot chili oil, twice, then olive oil, once. Bake for 7 minutes. Take it out. Done.

Cut up like pie, and serve warm (with *beans salad; see recipe below).      

Side:
*Cannellini Beans-Cucumbers-Dried Cranberry Salad

How to prepare: Half moon the cukes and in a large bowl add the beans and dried fruit. Dress with your own basic zingy vinaigrette.

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Whole Wheat Berries, Brown Rice, Salted Herring, Pickled Turnip Mustard Cheese, Chives Omelet Bowl

PROCESS:

Cook grains together, when cooked set aside, keep warm. In a small bowl, pour *homemade vinegar and add strips of the fish (buy herring from a specialty food store, like Sahadi's in Brooklyn) and stir in a teaspoon of good wine mustard; set aside in fridge. Now cook the eggs - butter/olive oil pan, lowest heat, add chives and Herb de Provence, a dash of brown sugar; then fold in salted, peppered (black and chili) beaten eggs, and stir gently to spread, wait to puff, lift and pancake the other side, less than five mintues total cooking time. To assemble the dish: In a Japanese earthenware bowl, spoon berries-rice, then the crumbles of **turnip cheese, the herring, hot chili oil (icing the fish), the vinegar-mustard marinade juice, and finally the omelet. Stick a big, long spoon.

*VINEGAR:
In a medium sauce pan, boil in plain water for about 10 minutes 3 dried preserved lemons (deeply score skin so when cooking bleeds) and 6 fresh green sour plums. Set aside to cool on the counter; then transfer to a large mason jar (the whole thing), and add a few sprigs of Italian parsley, cover tight. Keep in fridge. When using, strain through a sieve. Adjust to taste.

**PICKLED CHEESE
Dice up pickled red turnips and green pitted Sicilian olives like a bunch of herbs. Butter and oil small sauce pan, lowest heat, add "herbs," then 3 different kinds of cheese (anything you want available in your fridge; in my case I used Fenugreek Gouda, Paillot de Chevre and Gorgonzola), salt and pepper a little, stirring constantly, until fondued. Set aside to cool, and refrigerate to form.      

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About the Blog "Cook-i.e."

"COOK-i.e." (pronounced cook-I. E., saying the letters) is a term I coined (hopefully it's original; I didn't check a list of blog site names related to the "foodie" culture) so, referentially: I'm a home cook-foodie entwined - a foodie who can cook - thus the onomatopoeic name of my blog, writing from Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY. (I'm originally from Portland, Oregon!)

I'm developing-designing-archiving my current and past home recipes and food-making processes to "cultivate" my food-writing skills, as this field is new to me, albeit I have a background in teaching creative writing and poetry. More important: I'm eyeing on my future return to home Oregon and opening a restaurant on my (and my partner's) small, fallowing land-farm in the wine country surrounded by cherry, pear and almond trees, and next door to a bio-dynamic viticulturist winemaker neighbors, their namesake winery, Carlo and Julian. (Behind our farm is their pinot noir grape sprawling vineyard.)

Here in New York is where I'm getting my "ingredients" to this future life, where one day I will grow and raise my own food, where interdependently would I be living with my land and animals, and writing.

You are all invited when that day comes...

In the mean time, New York is the perfect place to dream about my terrestrial life kitchen. I can't reach it without New York in my basket.

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