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Switzerland: Capretto alla Locarnese (Potroasted Kid or Lamb in Herbs, Cream and Wine)

In those central European countries where people raise goats for dairy purposes, spring is the time when a lot of tender young milk-fed kid starts turning up in the local butcher shops. This is because about half the kids born each spring are male, and no dairy herd really needs more than one billy goat to keep things ticking along.

The southern Swiss canton of Ticino, where Locarno is situated, has as many herds of dairy goats as anyplace else in the country. Possibly there are even more, as the milder climate on the southern side of the Alps means the mountain herds will find more good grazing at the higher altitudes than they might elsewhere in Switzerland (and earlier in the year, too). This recipe was very likely devised as a local response to the yearly problem of how to deal with the springtime surplus of kid. And for times of the year when kid isn't in the local butcher -- or for those who don't care for the idea of kid whether they can find any or not -- this recipe is perfectly delicious with good lamb.

The technique of long slow simmering in wine and herbs is one that turns up in other Ticinese dishes, especially some involving rabbit. The addition of the cream at the end of the recipe produces a beautifully rich sauce, fragrant with sage and (a little unusually) mint and cinnamon, possibly speaking of some passing influence from further south and east in the Mediterranean regions. As for the rum, it may have been an ingredient from the beginning, or may have slipped into the recipe as a substitution for grappa in the days before that unique spirit was easy to obtain outside of Switzerland.

Click on "read more" for the recipe.

Ireland: Dingle Pies (March 11, 2008)

The word fairings starts to turn up in English around the mid-1600's. It means something you buy at a fair -- sometimes as a present for someone else -- and specifically, food bought at a fair. In Ireland, these regional fairs -- which started out as periodic horse and cattle markets and expanded into general excuses for meeting and celebration -- were normally tied to the great holidays of the old Irish calendar, or to the major feasts of the Christian religious calendar that supplanted it.

One such holiday was Lammas Day, August 1st. ("Lammas" is a worn-down version of the Old English word hlaefmaesse, "loaf-feast": this festival, celebrating the grain harvest, is closely tied to the ancient Celtic summer / harvest festival of Lughnasagh.) Among many Irish Lammas fairs, one of the most famous was the one held in or near Dingle during the first week or ten days in August. People would flock to the Kingdom of Kerry from miles around to buy and sell their cows, horses and other goods, and to eat and drink and have a good time. The Dingle fair was particularly famous, and is still remembered in folksongs like the one about Red-Haired Mary. Other Lammas fairs in the area had such curious traditions as making a goat King of the Fair (this tradition is still carried on yearly at the Puck Fair in Killorglin, Co. Kerry, just south of the Dingle peninsula -- click here for the Google map), and they also still carry on the Dingle Fair's old tradition of serving fairings like the Dingle pie.

Once made with mutton, Dingle pies are now usually made with lamb. They're small individual pies that could easily be bought from a stall and carried around the fair while you had a look at the cattle or thought about where you might stop for your next pint.

Click on "read more" for the recipe.

Ireland: Irish Stew

While most foods in Ireland are likely to excite only moderate levels of controversy, people can get really excitable over Irish stew.

(It should be mentioned here that in Ireland it's not usually referred to as "Irish stew", but as "lamb stew".)

It seems possible to get into an argument about nearly anything about lamb stew (except the potatoes). Some folks will complain that you shouldn't really be using lamb to make it at all, but mutton (in other words, the meat from mature sheep, one to three years old, rather than from sheep less than a year old). Fortunately, after a downswing in its popularity, in many places it's becoming possible to find good mutton again if you're willing to look a little.

Other people will get all steamed up about the actual cut of lamb you should be using. Many people insist it should be one of the cheap cuts that requires long, slow cooking, like shin or "scrag end". Others say you should use better cuts, lamb chops from the neck or shoulder, or just plain old chopped up "stewing lamb" bought from the butcher, normally offcuts from the leg or round. You also get people who insist that, whatever the cut of meat involved, the real business of the stew is in the spicing, and that all modern or "fancy" spices should be excluded -- meaning that (in this school of thought) the only spicery proper for a lamb stew is salt, pepper and parsley.

But the liveliest arguments tend to start up over the issue of the presence or absence of carrots...

Ireland: Irish Stew

While most foods in Ireland are likely to excite only moderate levels of controversy, people can get really excitable over Irish stew.

(It should be mentioned here that in Ireland it's not usually referred to as "Irish stew", but as "lamb stew".)

It seems possible to get into an argument about nearly anything about lamb stew (except the potatoes). Some folks will complain that you shouldn't really be using lamb to make it at all, but mutton (in other words, the meat from mature sheep, one to three years old, rather than from sheep less than a year old). Fortunately, after a downswing in its popularity, in many places it's becoming possible to find good mutton again if you're willing to look a little.

Other people will get all steamed up about the actual cut of lamb you should be using. Many people insist it should be one of the cheap cuts that requires long, slow cooking, like shin or "scrag end". Others say you should use better cuts, lamb chops from the neck or shoulder, or just plain old chopped up "stewing lamb" bought from the butcher, normally offcuts from the leg or round. You also get people who insist that, whatever the cut of meat involved, the real business of the stew is in the spicing, and that all modern or "fancy" spices should be excluded -- meaning that (in this school of thought) the only spicery proper for a lamb stew is salt, pepper and parsley.

But the liveliest arguments tend to start up over the issue of the presence or absence of carrots...

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