Dinner Report

The gigot de sept heures (seven hour leg of lamb) did turn out, after all. The lamb is baked in a slow oven, inside a dutch oven filled with fresh vegetables and aromatics and a little white wine, and then sealed with a bread dough grout. The seal wasn't perfect. On further thought, the seal can't be perfect, because if it were you'd build up lots of pressure and your dutch oven would explode. But seven hours lamb turned into six hours of anxiety lest it turn out to be a charred crisp.

There wasn't much liquid left after seven hours, but there was some -- enough to keep the meat moist and very, very tender. There's a ton of garlic in this recipe, and everything blended nicely with a bottle of Vacqueryas.

The lemon pie worked well, too.

If you skip the rasberry coulis, or if you have a blender, the lemon pie qualifies as dorm food -- a dish you can make in a dormitory kitchen. (If you can cook in a dorm, you can cook anywhere) All this pie requires is squeezing some lemons, beating the juice with some sugar, eggs, and cream, pouring it into a baked pie crust (I confess! I confess! I used the refrigerated, rolled-up supermarket pie crust because Cooks' said it was OK. I had permission!) and popping it into the oven. The coulis is just frozen raspberries, a little sugar, a little lemon juice, and a shot of lingonberry liqueur.

We also made a big batch of Linda's glögg!