LAMB BROWN SAUCE
A lamb brown sauce is made much like a regular brown sauce with several small but key differences. First, you begin with a lamb stock, which is made just like veal stock, substituting lamb shanks for veal bones, and white wine for red wine. I also add two extra heads of garlic and one small bunch of fresh rosemary.
1. The next difference is that although you prepare lamb brown sauce by the (veal) brown sauce recipe, you substitute white wine for the red wine, and add two sprigs of rosemary.
2. The first time I tasted Frangelico liqueur, I remembered with an instant and visceral clarity the flavor of the cones that held ice cream in the small drug store in Diamond Lake, Illinois, where my father took us when I was about six or seven. It was so evocative I seemed transported to my childhood for a moment. Having grown up in the rural America of the fifties and sixties, I ate my share of junk. I'll even confess to having sipped soft drinks through a strawberry licorice straw!! Somehow, the tumult and insult I inflicted on my palate did not destroy me. I think childhood indulgences and cravings for flavors are most evident in our approach to desserts. Here adults, willingly and wantonly, lay down restraint and subtlety and plunge with giddy abandon into the treasures of chocolate, sugar, vanilla, meringue, and richly flavored creams. It is not unusual to see people blush with desire when they order something sweet and sinfully deUcious from the menu! The talented Ms. Susan Porter, who has worked with me over the years, has made the major contributions to this chapter. To say she knows how to cook is like saying Gene Kelly knows how to dance. She is a natural, self-taught, and gifted baker. We put in long hours in the kitchen, and the holidays mean even more work, yet Sue has the ability to make it look nearly effortless. But I've seen others work her position, myself included, so I know how truly good she is. The most amazing thing to me is her gift with puff pastry. You are often warned not to attempt this dough on a humid day. Well, in the tropics, they're impossible to avoid! I think she may be like one of those Indian swamis, and can lower the temperature of her hands at will.
3. I feel the dessert course is best when it is almost miniature, but dangerously intense, or has some savory element worked into it. Sue offers some alternatives to the overkill that sweet desserts can sometimes be. I might like to end a good meal with a thin slice of cheesecake with strawberries, but Sue adds a dimension by soaking the berries in twenty-five-year-old Italian balsamic vinegar. I call such offerings "adult desserts." I like the menus to have a balance of desserts, with choices for the adult or the child within.
4. Although we normally associate desserts with the end of a meal, sometimes I like to have an apple tart with ginger caramel and some strong coffee before work on a Saturday morning ... or a vanilla and hazelnut cookie with some Chardonnay as a snack while playing cards on a stormy Sunday afternoon. Desserts need not necessarily be confined to the final scene. Sue's magic will be revealed in this chapter, and I hope you will view this category more broadly.