I made that!

Don’t judge, but I’m just not really a fan of  St. Patrick’s Day. Maybe because I’m not much of a drinker, or maybe because San Francisco turns into one giant frat house. Probably both. So this year I decided to cook. And I was thinking lamb. My feelings about lamb are mixed (alongside the fact that I have mixed feelings about eating meat in general. Well, except pork maybe). When I lived in Australia it seemed like the only thing I ever ate was lamb cutlets, and I loved it. But since being back, I’ve slowly lost interest in the taste. Now the flavor just seems incredibly intense. So tonight gave lamb another shot. And what better way for lamb to prove itself than a humble Irish stew.

I bought what looked like a very large pile of lamb shoulder meat and threw it in the pot with some cooked onions, garlic, thyme and stock.

I covered the stew and popped it in the oven for an hour, then added some carrots, potatoes, barley & cream. Then it baked for another hour. In the meantime I made a loaf of whole wheat Irish soda bread. Since I was also baking a dessert, I had to borrow my landlord’s oven to get all this baking done. I really like Irish soda bread, possibly because it’s the only bread I do well. Which could be a sad thing, since it doesn’t even have yeast in it, but it’s so yummy!

Shane brought a bunch of Irish cheeses and it was a great starter. And then there was the stew.

Definitely a stew to show off some lambiness. So straightforward, and yet…I still don’t love lamb. My favorite part of the whole dish was how the potatoes and carrots were cooked perfectly, nice and soft, but still had their shape. Does this make me vegetarian? That all I cared about were the vegetables floating around in all that meaty juice? Possibly. But I suspect I would have felt differently if it had been a beef stew.