SUGAR COOKIES

     "Tell me a funny story about your mom," I asked Larry this morning.

     "Hmm?" he said, not looking up from his book.

     "Something funny about your mom."

     He put his finger on his place in the book and looked at me.  "I don't know any funny stories about my mom."  What he meant, plainly, was "I'm not going to write your blog for you.  If I wanted to write a blog, I'd write a blog."  He resumed reading page 2057 of The Guns at Last Light, a tome about WWII, with an air of exasperation.  You would think I had just done him a favor, as he says the book is deeply disturbing, but he apparently didn't see it that way.

     What brought this on was a really lovely gift that we'd received in the mail from our sister-in-law, Gloria.  This is a kitchen towel on which is laminated a copy of a recipe card in Myrtle's handwriting. 

     Her famous sugar cookies.  

     This gift exactly the sort of thing we can expect from Gloria, as she is endlessly inventive and clever.  She is married to Myrtle's second son, Allan, is a nurse, and the mother of four inventive,  clever, and, I have to say, funny sons and daughters.  My own sons and daughter love these cousins, tell stories about them, and even go so far as to tell me they we should never have moved away from   Minnesota. I'm pretty sure they don't mean that, but you get the idea.

     "But you and your mom were always laughing when you talked on the phone," I persisted.  "She was such a funny mimic, she loved to laugh about the strangeness of people.  Can't you remember anything funny I could say?  What about the time that Charlie dialed 911 on what he thought was a toy phone, and soon the police were knocking on the door? That was funny."

     It was funny:  we were all visiting Minnesota for Grandma Viehl's 90th birthday celebration.  At Gloria's and Allan's home, the grandkids ranging from Charlie, then five, on up or down the age ladder had been playing in the basement, and no one upstairs knew why the police had suddenly arrived.

     "Yes," Larry agreed, "but that's not exactly a story about my mom."

     "What about sneaking booze into the retirement home for the ladies' happy hour?  Liquor wasn't even allowed, was it?  Being a Lutheran home, and all?"

     "It wasn't forbidden, she just was afraid the other residents would disapprove.  Anyway, it wasn't booze, it was wine."

     "Still, it says a little about how feisty she was."

     Larry put his book down and shook his head, looking at our Christmas tree, but seeing the past, perhaps some white Christmas of way-back-when.  He laughed.  "We did have good times," he said.  "The story we always remember is the time Allan threw snowballs at the cars out on Snelling, and hit a truck.  He ran home, with the truck driver right behind him.  Mom had to promise she'd deal with her little delinquent.  Then the time we were shooting our bb guns in the basement and scored one of the jars of pickles she'd canned that summer."

     "I dream about her roast beef and those ethereal dinner rolls," I said.   "If Gloria ever gets her hands on that recipe, I hope she knows what to do with it.  I think she used lard, or something."

     My mother-in-law was a talented musician, a fabulous cook, a great mom.  A woman of her time, she made a complete life in the circle of her church, her family, and friends.  Here is the recipe for her cookies, which I intend to make as soon as I finish this blog.  Hmm.  Uses vegetable oil?  Well, I'll certainly sub out butter for the margarine, but I suppose I'll use what I imagine was corn oil.  Good luck  and Merry Christmas to us all!

SUGAR COOKIES:

1 egg, well beaten

1/2 cup margarine (no!  don't do it!)

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 tsp. salt

2 1/2 cups flour

1/2 tsp. soda 

1/2 tsp. cream of tartar.

Sift dry ingredients.  Cream egg, butter or the dreaded margarine, and sugars.  Add vanilla and dry ingredients.  Roll in balls.  Dip into more granulated sugar on a plate, and press with a glass.  If you can find one with a decorative base, it makes a pretty pattern.  

Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

     

THE PERUVIAN KITCHEN

   
     Who am I to be discussing the food of Peru?  Good point.  But my blog is supposed to be about food, at least some of the time, and I was in Peru for two weeks, ate something every day, took photos, and here we are.

     First, you should know that the food in the large cities is sophisticated, varied, and enjoys a wonderful reputation in the several magazines to which I subscribe.  But guinea pigs?  Seriously?

     Our trip was planned down to the minute, it seemed, including NINE different flights.  I know, who was in charge?  So we were busy little tourists,  and still only saw the southern, high Andean part of the country.  We were lucky to have a guide in the area around Cuzco who was native to one of the communities in the countryside.  He was passionate about his land and her people, so introduced us to the kitchens, markets, and flavors of the centuries-old Peruvian kitchen.  Wow, that sentence sounded like an excerpt from one of those magazines I mentioned.

     But let's get the guinea pigs out of the way.  Here they are:

     We found a group (collective name as per the web) of guinea pigs in every home we visited.   I learned, again on the web, that most families in the Andean countryside will have about 20 of the animals, being raised in, or adjacent to, the kitchen.  Approximately 90 percent of the guinea pigs, which are, incidentally, neither pigs, nor from Guinea, are raised at the household level.  They are such an expected part of the indigenous communities that any family who does not raise them is considered either lazy or extremely poor.

     Guinea pigs are high in protein, low in fat, but what do they taste like?

     I thought I was prepared, but never got the chance to try any cuy meat, as these fellows are called in Peru.  I would have, but they were never on offer.  This sample is being "rubbed" with the herb which is actually his diet, and his mouth is stuffed with same.  This seems logical, I guess.  He'll be roasted and inevitably served with potatoes on the side.  (If they'd just snip off those little feet, they might look more like, well, chicken?)

      Edgar, our guide's gringo nom de plume, insisted that the Peruvians are thrifty, never wasting any part of an animal they butcher, and some scenes from a market we visited seem to confirm the idea.  Among the abundance of grains, potatoes, veggies, flowers, we found the following:

     Yum!  Can only imagine that these will be added to the stew pot, teeth to be extracted later.  Note the Inca Cola on the side.  Didn't try any, as it was said to be fatally sweet.  I don't know how typical the following photos may be, but these are scenes from a local (NOT touristic) restaurant.

     We didn't eat at this establishment -- didn't eat locally except once when we were given empanadas from a stall run by one of Edgar's many friends.  After closely questioning the contents of same, we think we were eating cheese, but the little treat could have included alpaca -- which I knowingly tried once in a stuffed pepper.  Check those foodie creds! 

     Look how gorgeous the people are: (friend Ursel in the middle)

     The last group had just performed at a restaurant on the island of Tequille in Lake Titicaca, and the gentleman on the right is Papa Grande, my partner for the dance.  At 13, 500 feet, the dance was a short one!

      From there, back to Lima, back to Miami, back to Portland, where, at 6:30 in the morning, the cold wind is howling.  We've been promised snow, and it seems a long way from the gorgeous colors and sunshine of Peru.

     Note:  thanks to Ellen Banks for the help in manipulating the addition of photos to my blog!  I don't know why the font isn't consistent, but Ellen has gone back to Whitman and isn't here to solve the problem.  Sorry!

ON SWEARING AND CRYING

     Larry had a very bad day last week.  Fishing in Montana with three of his friends, standing by the river in his waders, tying his boots, and his hip went out.  Wouldn't self correct, as it usually does, so there he is.  His friends and the guide have to leverage him into the back of the guide's SUV for the ride to Ennis, a back-road hour away.  Though I haven't experienced it, let's stipulate that a joint out of its socket is pretty excruciating.  And his hip was dislocated for six hours, not to be righted until his arrival in Bozeman, x-rays, a spinal.
     So, he says, he swore.  A lot.  Didn't cry, though this is the man who weeps an Disney movies, weddings, sunsets.  I wasn't there, but I'm familiar with his vocabulary which is solid, mid-western Lutheran in origin.  Thus nothing particularly shocking.  But he felt he had to apologize to the nurses who scissored off his trousers, his favorite flannel fishing shirt, his really good t-shirt, who took his blood pressure and vitals, administered the i-v with its god-sent morphine.
     One such angel told him that they hear it all, that swearing is a form of pain relief, and no apology was necessary.
     Meanwhile, I was having a bad day of my own, involving the pain of watching two people I love struggle, and worrying about Larry, and the insensitivity of the people at Citi Bank who wanted me to confirm my identity before allowing me access to my AT&T credit card info.  Okay, not quite up there with a dislocated hip, but enough, it seems.
     On my way to my training session with Aaron that morning, sweet, empathetic man, I felt the tears coming.  Deep breath.  Get over yourself.  Stop it!  And yet, I cried.  Embarrassing myself and, I'm sure, Aaron as well.
     And so I've been thinking about the difference between swearing and crying.  Why one and not the other?  They both help.  I can keep from swearing, but not from crying.  (Well, how do I know?  I've never dislocated a hip.)  Is this a gender thing?
     Talking to my sisters during our Sunday conversation, I asked them.  "You're lucky," Martha said.  "I can't cry at all."  Wow.  That's almost unbelievable, but believe her I do.  She's had enough to cry about (haven't we all?).  Mary told a story of the time in Berlin when she was on the U-Bahn with Paul, as a child, perhaps with Neils, also.  There were other Americans on the car, and Paul, who was an extraordinarily handsome boy, but who is profoundly autistic, did something that the other women considered funny.  Mary said that she, too, laughed for a moment, but then was sobbing and couldn't stop.  That breaks my heart.
     "Do you still cry sometimes?" I ask her.  "Not often," she says.  Well, it's hard to imagine a reason that reaches the level of that moment on a German train.  Certainly not the events of my Thursday morning!
     Maybe I am lucky?  I swear, too, that's for sure, but not when in pain.  Mostly in annoyance when I break an egg into the refrigerator and have to clean it up, or can't make my computer behave, or have to wait for a technician on the Citi Bank phone line for 10 minutes because they need me to prove I'm me.  My mother's maiden name, should you ever need to know, starts with H.

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR -- FRIED RICE

     "Hey, Mom," says my daughter Jenny.  "Have you ever made fried rice?"

     Jenny lives in Seattle with her family, and is a glorious, curious, inventive cook, and when she has a suggestion, I'm all ears.  So she made the following recipe, found somewhere on the great www, doesn't remember where.  I said I'd love to put it on my blog, would she type it up for me.
     "But you have to try it first," she says.
     "Tell me a story about it," I say.  "Our readers like to have stories."
     "Okay," Jenny says,  "I made this on Monday and had some left over the next day.  My friend Ann came over and said she was starved, and was there anything a person could eat in my refrigerator.  Of course, she was already poking around in there, pushing the milk and eggs aside.  She found the fried rice and ate the whole bowl-ful, cold, as is, and loved it."
     "That's a good story," I say.  "But we don't know Ann.  She said she was starved, maybe she'd eat anything.  Did your kids like it?  What about Will?"
     Will is ten years old and currently eating down the house.  But he is a kid, after all.  You know, eats sushi but not broccoli.  Fried rice isn't all that exotic, but?
     "Will loved it," Jenny says.  "Alli did too."
     Okay, that's better info.  Alli is thirteen, bit of a fashionista in her own way, pretty sophisticated and is, at the moment, busy separating herself from all things Mom.  She'd be a tougher critic, so if she liked it, the stuff must be pretty good.  We don't need to ask if husband Tom likes it, he pretty much likes everything that doesn't include fresh tomatoes.
     "I'll give it a try when we get home from Black Butte," I say.  And on the next Tuesday, I did.  We were planning to have fish, so I got some tilapia filets to pan fry, and in ten minutes from start to finish, had dinner on the table.  Larry frying the fish while I made the following (for two people, a third of the recipe)  Loved it! :

JENNY'S FRIED RICE

3 cups cooked rice, chilled*
3 Tbs. peanut oil
2 eggs beaten (for 1/3 recipe, 1 egg)
1/2 cup onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped *
1 1/2 inch fresh peeled ginger* (chop the crap out of it because it's so fibrous)(Jenny's words, not mine)
1/2 cup carrots, small dice
1/2 cup peas
4 scallions
3 Tbs. soy sauce.

Heat 1 Tbs. oil in a large nonstick pan.  Saute onion for a bit and then add carrot, garlic and ginger.  Saute for a bit longer.  Push the veggies to the side and add a little more oil.  Scramble eggs, breaking into small pieces.  Add more oil and add the cooled, cooked rice.  Fry the rice with the veggies and eggs for 2 to 3 minutes.  Add peas and soy sauce and stir fry for one more minute.  Add green onions and serve!

*  I usually make up more rice than we need, and freeze the extra in snack-size baggies, so had some of that on hand for the recipe.  A good idea, by the way -- you should try it!  (Of course, I do have a freezer in the pantry, a luxury not available to every one.  I get that.)

*  Jenny's lazier mom has discovered Gourmet Garden tubes of ginger paste and chunked garlic, which seem to last forever in the refrig.   Yes, the real thing would be better, but if we're talking about a ten minute dinner, not a bad option.

 

alli ederer

will ederer

A GOLF STORY

Good afternoon, Sports Fans

     I'd like you to meet my husband, Larry.  A perfectly lovely man, who loves golf.  I mean it, he LOVES golf.  He started going out to the Como Park Municipal course in his St. Paul neighborhood when he was seven or eight years old with his little brother Al, or buddy Mike.  They'd sneak onto the course on those long, humid summer nights, when the sprinklers were on and the mosquitos thick, swinging their dad's clubs.
     Later, before he was old enough to drive to a real summer job at the paint factory where his dad worked, Larry took up caddying for a living.  Scrawny, lanky, sometimes hauling double, watching the weekend duffers, he learned how to think a round.  And when he got his first car, he, Mike, and Al would drive over to the football stadium at the U where, in the season of snow, a driving range was set up inside, beneath the bleachers.  Under the watch of Gopher coach Les Bolstad, he took up playing leftie, and the future was set
     Didn't play for the U, he tells me, not good enough.  Maybe, but having to work his way through college, these probably wasn't enough time in any case.  But he still lived near Como Park Muni, could still go out after dark with, by then, his own leftie clubs.
     Life happened.  He got married to me, strapped on the suit and tie and went to work managing other people's money, first for IDS, then Columbia Management out here in Portland, where we settled and raised our family.  Kind of a numbers guy, which would, later, prove to be a problem.
     He still got out a fair amount to the club in Tualatin, which he joined along with his friend Robb.  Got a good handicap, shot in the high seventies, low eighties.  Being in Portland, the two could go out all year round, sometimes negotiating a frost delay, enduring all but the most driving rain.  Mudders, you could say.
     And the years rolled on.  Kids left home.  We moved into town.  He joined the wonderful new Pumpkin Ridge golf club.  Robb, too.  A real golf club, no swimming pool for the wife and kiddies, and if there's a men's poker game, I don't know about it.  You'd have to ask someone else.  No silly day when women couldn't be on the premises.
     So I began to take up the game a little.  Me, I grew up in the country, no golf course for miles around.  Dad didn't play the game.  I never watched it on TV.  Therefore, an absolute tabula rosa.  I took a few lessons.  Went out to the course a few times at odd hours when my beginner's play wouldn't slow the foursome behind us.  We began to go to golf destinations on our vacations.  I learned how to manage my emotions when we were paired with strangers, that is, not to cry and kick my golf bag and so on.  And gradually I came to enjoy this infuriating, addictive game, although not really until I freed myself from the tyranny of the score card.  Just live in the moment, nothing behind or ahead of this one shot.  So I'm happy, leave me alone.
     Larry retired from his years of watching the ebb and flow of other people's money.  Now free to play as much golf as he liked, his scores perversely, began to climb.  Mid-eighties.  Okay, not that good, but.  High eighties.  Low n-n-n- well, you know.  Something must be done.  That's when he began charting, I believe it's called in the money profession.  Soon he began taking so much time between holes recording data that he forgot to notice the blackberries, ripe for picking, along the sixth, carpet of fallen apples on the tenth.  The rain.  Or not.
     "What on earth?" his wife would ask, as he noted the distance of the drive, greens in regulation, how many chips, how many putts, brand of ball used.  A system of pusses and minuses augmented the whole numeric thicket on the card.  "Why?"
     "So I'll know what to work on."
     "Ah.  You'll look at all these old cards and . . ."
     "Of course not.  I record the data on my computer."
     And work he did.  Hours.  On chipping, which had now been statistically proven to be the worst offender.  But his chipping did not improve, and his gloom expanded to fill our entire house, the garden, the neighborhood.
     At this point in the story, let me introduce Aaron.  He's our personal trainer and, I think, our friend.  He loves golf, too.  He and Larry talk golf.  Aaron devises special exercises.  They do not help.
     Aaron and I put our heads together and create a strategy.  Next time Larry and I golf together we will play a sort of scramble-type format wherein we both drive, then hit each other's ball alternately all the way to the green.  The theory is that he will not be able to record any meaningful numbers, although he will certainly try.
     To our mutual surprise, this proved to be fun.  If he had to blast a long iron from the sand where I'd put my drive, that was okay.  If his drive wandered into the rough?  Oh well, not his problem.  Suddenly we were laughing.  He could chip just fine, if it were my ball that had failed to make the green in regulation.
     We played that way all summer.  Robb was off in Montana, so I was the temporary BFF, the golf buddy.  And there must have been something about pulling my irons out of the fire, as he put it, which relieved the pressure of all those numeric evaluations to which he'd been subjecting himself.  He couldn't post a score for weeks, but he was making wonderful shots.  The kind that amazed those strangers we got paired with.  In fact, I got better, too.  Weird.
     I don't know how this story ends.  Fall is in the air, and Larry has gone to Spokane for a few days -- the rump sessions of a guys' tournament held every spring.  He'll have to keep score.  I hope he notices the pumpkins turning orange in the field, the rows of corn, the autumn sun.  We'll see.

DIET

True Confession:  Every now and again I step off the scale, groan, determine that the time has come again when I have to turn to Jenny Craig.  I know, but it worked before, once, for a while.  And nothing else has stopped the forward march of poundage.  Not my conviction that I know how to eat properly, scarcely, appropriately, because apparently I don't.

The center I once patronized having closed, JC offered me the option to have Jenny-at-Home.  No ghastly visit during which to be weighed, no lectures, no questions.  It did mean a weekly phone chat with a friendly counsellor, which, though the woman assigned to me seems perfectly pleasant, funny, kind, was still a moment to be dreaded.  And every two weeks came a large styrofoam box of frozen and otherwise packaged food stuff.  More-or-less food, that is.  I quickly learned, again, which "food" I could tolerate, which I could not.

Life, of course, continued to get in the way.  I'd have house guests.  I'd be a guest of some other house. There were dinner invitations, trips, impossible temptations.  Like the time when Larry, thrown into the kitchen to feed himself, created a grilled chicken dish with roasted potato salad.  Okay, just one bite of the salad, but I had to eat that chicken, I had to.

Now it has been some 5-6 weeks.  Larry is out of town for 5 days and I have had nothing but Jenny Craig for those 5 days.  No alcohol.  And here's the thing.  I do not feel good.  I mean it.  Bad stomach.  Headache, and I never get headaches.  Phycho thoughts.  I have a freezer-full of "food" to chew through, and I by God will, though I will not order more.  I've "lost" 6 pounds or so.

And, this being August, it's pickle season.  Yesterday my kitchen buddy and I went to The Pumpkin Patch out on Sauvie Island to get our cukes.  This place is a huge old barn with bins and bins of newly harvested everything you can imagine in August, which in Oregon, is so bountiful you have to take a moment and just be grateful.  Seriously.  Fresh peaches.  Pears, tomatoes, green beans, melons, apples, and 10 and 25 pound bags of cucumbers.  We couldn't resist one bag of tiny cukes, they are just so cute!   I like this place better than the Farmers Market downtown, not sure why except that it is in the country and there is growing corn all around and the river is just over the berm and there are just the right number of people.

For lunch we stopped at the Dockside which Vik wanted me to see as the paradigm of a Larry spot.  Old tavern with the locals there in their faded gimme-caps, sassy waitresses, menus that have been velveted by the many hands looking for their favorite sandwich.  Jenny Craig be damned and I ordered a cajun burger with chips.  And laughed to see Vik struggle to contain all the add-ons she'd requested on her burger.

At home, we washed the cukes and laid them on towels to dry.  Into the refrig and Tuesday evening they'll get brined and processed on Wednesday.  Vik left and I contemplated dinner.  Some damn frozen thing, but I made a really good salad and had all the blueberries I could eat for dessert.  And then I was overwhelmed with longing for soup.  My own soup.  I had a surplus of celery and one baking potato and some onions.  In the freezer are blocks of chicken broth I've made, frozen, and bagged.  Bay leaves in a pot on the deck.  Cream, gorgeous cream in the refrig, which really had to be used now.  I made the soup and left it in the pan overnight to mellow and this morning, used the stick blender to make it nice and chunky.  Salt and pepper.  It's so easy, and it's in 2 jars in the freezer now, a promise I will keep when that stupid JC "food" is gone.

I don't know the moral to this story, except to say that it is surely good, once in a while, to be really, truly hungry.  To understand the importance of national food policy, to re-read Michael Pollen, to care.  And to appreciate the life time I've been able to enjoy in the kitchen preparing real, honest food for my family.

KUMQUATS

Here's how it happens:
Peter has a kumquat tree at the edge of his patio in Altadena, and I fall in love with the little tree, decorated with citrus-y sunshine -- a thousand ripe mini-oranges -- and we don't have kumquats growing in Oregon.  Peter and his kids oblige me, suddenly I have bags-full, and I take pounds of them home after Andrew's high-school graduation festivities.
But I don't know what to do with bags-full of kumquats.
Seems you can just eat them, rind and all, but my supply won't last until next October when we might possibly have worked our way through the bounty.
So, on to the web.  Ah.  Kumquat salsa.  This is delicious.  Doesn't make a dent.  So, marmalade?  It's a bit tedious, this recipe, as you have to get the seeds out, thumb off the flesh, put seeds and flesh in a cheesecloth bag, slice the rind into slivers, and cook the whole with a lot of sugar for a long time until it turns, magically, into jam.  And I mean only two or three tiny half-pints per hours of labor.
Delicious.  But . . . I cook up some of the fruit with an orange I had on hand and use the result to decorate a custard pie.  A very good idea.
Then, a phone call from Charlie, who would like me to send him a bottle of Hot Lips Cherry soda that he will give as an end-of-year gift to a favorite teacher.  (Sometimes, you just don't ask.)  In return, Charlie says, he will pick more kumquats for me.   Who can resist Charlie?  And soon the soda is on the way and I receive another several pounds of this erst-while mysterious fruit.
I give some to Vik, and am inspired when she returns a jar of kumquat-olive oil-rosemary-garlic condiment.  Hmm.  How about preserved kumquats ala preserved lemons?
A trip to the coast and a discovery of a cooking shop in Nye Beach, where we find a cookbook called A Month in Marakesh, with pages of preserved lemon recipes.  Couldn't resist, and we came home to play with a new cuisine.  (New to us, not, of course, actually new!)  And so we find Mechoui Lamb.  Looks fabulous.  Larry will execute.  Soon the smell of a paste called Smen is maddening us, but the lamb takes 3 hours to cook.  Fine, we'll go for a walk.
The Terwilliger is beautiful in this season, and we are gone for an hour and a half while the lamb is roasting.  Come home to, well, the technical term is shoe leather, but that's overworked.  What?  Well, we were making but a half the recipe, forgot to calibrate the time in the oven correspondingly.  So.  We chopped the stuff, made a quick yoghurt-cuke sauce, chopped lettuce and tomatoes and put the lot into the pita bread we'd purchased to go with the Mechoui.  Good enough, but . . .
We'll try again with the second half of the lamb now waiting for us in the freezer.  But here's the recipe for you:  (Don't be afraid, it's really, really good.  I think.)

MECHOUI LAMB  serves 6-8  from A Month in Marakesh

3 lb. lamb shoulder/leg
7 1/2 oz cold water

Smen paste:
6 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
2 oz fresh ginger, peeled and chopped  ( but I love those tubes of Gourmet Garden flavors instead)
1 TBS ground ginger
1 TBS ground cumin
1 TBS ground coriander
2 tsp. chili powder
2 tsp. paprika
1/2 bunch flat-leaf parsley
1/2 bunch cilantro, roughly chopped (of course I leave that out!)
3 1/2 oz butter, softened
sea salt
freshly gound black pepper

Crushed Roast Potatoes and Tomatoes (we never got this far, unfortunately, but you should try it)
2 lb. baby potatoes
5 tomatoes, some halved and some quartered
1 1/3 cup bolack olives, pitted
sea salt
2 TBS ex. virgin olive oil, for drizzling.

For Smen paste:  place all ingredients in food processor.  Season with salt and pepper and blend to a fine paste.  Transfer to a bowl.

Slash lamb with sharp knife and rub the Smen paste all over lamb.  Place lamb in a large bowl, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 2 hours.

Par-boil potatoes in saucepan of salted, boiling water.  Drain and roughly crush with a fork.  Combine potatoes, tomatoes and olives in a bowl.  Season with sea salt and drizzle with oil.

Remove lamb from refrig and allow to come to room temp.  Preheat oven to 430 degrees.  Transfer the lamb and any remaining Smen paste to a roasting pan, pour water around the lamb and roast in preheated oven for 20 minutes.

Turn oven down to 350 and roast for 3 more hours, (or not, of course, if you're not making the whole recipe!) basting occasionally until meat is tender.  Make sure the water does not boil dry, if so, add a bit more.  Scatter crushed potatoes, tomatoes and oil around the lamb 45 minutes before you take it out of the oven.

Remove lamb from oven and let rest, covered with foil, 15 minutes.

That's it.  Serve it up.

It surely took me longer to type this recipe than it did for us to prepare it!  But where, you may ask, are the preserved kumquats?  Still in the jar.  I did make up a batch and they look very beautiful.  Maybe soon I'll try another middle-Eastern recipe that can use them, and then let you know.  And that mix of cooked kumquat and orange in the refrigerator -- I chop tablespoons of it an add it to salads.  Kumquats are the gift that just keeps on giving!