[recipe] How to cure a dead lamb
Life teaches that death is the point where we stop to feed on other life and other life starts to feed on us. Just because this is the course of life does not mean we should skip thankfulness for all life that we feed on. I guess if we would be more thankful and thoughtful for our life and all life that dies to feed us, we would quite possibly live more harmonious. That is my basic understanding when I cook.
Humans are distinguished from other life by cooking.
When I decided to prepare lamb in Scotland I first had to find good ingredients. I asked Dave to find the best butcher in the area and when I had his name and address I asked Anthony and Simone (Surace) and Thomas to accompany me. A wonderful day out. I guess someone took some pictures.
Butchers were priests to many gods in our history. To reign the line between life and death should be an act of decency and dignity. With the best butchers this tradition is still alive, if only as a faint background tune. And one can taste the difference.
Cooking can be done in a technical sense or it can be done with purpose. So I caressed both legs of our lamb with fine Italian vinegar to open the pores for salt and spices and I said “thank you, your sacrifice made sense, you are at center stage of our little feast”. Then I grinded the wonderful sea salt harvested from the shores of the Outer Hebrides with some extremely tasty fresh rosemary and garlic (Simone found them) and caressed it again. After the marinade soaked into the meat I added some fine Olive Oil and cooked it slowly for 8 hours in the stove.
The trick is to watch the cooking. The meat shall not get dry or too hot, that is why I used a thermometer to see the innermost temperature not raised beyond 82°C. So you want to use a cover of some kind, some thoughtfully applied aluminium foil will do.
Now you can do it as I did. Hope someone will add some pictures.
Love
Frank
PS: I did not have decent light on me or a tripod not the time to set anything up, so here is the curing process in some strange form:
