On Lamb

This Melissa Clark recipe for Lamb-and-White-Bean Chili was good. Full disclosure: I omitted the two poblano peppers (and two small green peppers substitute for the two poblano peppers), the cilantro (both the finely chopped stems and the leaves for garnish) and the two small jalapenos. Also, I switched the white beans for some very old white tepary beans I had in the cupboard and had been meaning to get rid of. I skipped the lime, as well, but we added dried mint afterward. So I sort of made this recipe.

How many recipes does this happen with? For me, it’s probably 90 to 95 percent of them.

Jen has been wanting to eat more lamb, so we tried chili with lamb. I think it’s kind of great: beans love fat, or more accurately, people love beans that commingle with fat. Speaking of oozing lamb fat, there was a good tip in this recipe, which was to brown the meat and let it rest on a paper towel on a plate, which soaked up a lot of fat.

For a cocktail, we tried a Jack Rose, which Jen read about in the new, improved Sunday Motherfucking Times Magazine. The hook in this particular piece in the new, improved Motherfucking Magazine was “the classic cocktail that never got invited to the oldies reunion.” It was OK. To be fair, we used the Applejack on hand and not the Laird 100-proof straight apple brandy in the recipe. But as they say, don’t let the accurate be the enemy of the available.