Local Food - Lamb!

Well, I was originally planning to write about something else, but a trip to the butcher made me so excited about lamb that I can't resist writing about that!

Lamb here is delicous. I mean, I liked lamb before we moved here, but I only liked it in a like, "This is new and interesting," kind of way. Now I CANNOT imagine my life without lamb! I love it! I think part of the reason is that it's pretty fresh, but also I think this must be a good place to raise lamb. Maybe because of the altitude? Anyone know?

Lamb for sale!

At any rate, the lamb here is really good. Some of the most frequent lamb dishes are "finger food lamb" which is boiled ribs served cold with a garlic sauce or spicy powder, lamb skewers cooked over an open fire with cumin and lots of spices and "skillet lamb" which is cooked with fried potatoes, onions and chili peppers and served with piles of cilantro.

That finger food lamb I just mentioned.

All of these dishes are delicious, and when I cook lamb at home, I usually aim toward the skillet lamb and I just cut my lamb into matchsticks or thin slices and stir-fry it with onion and chili peppers and then season it with cumin and plenty of cilantro. Actually, this is a great way to eat lamb if you've never tried it. BUT TODAY.

The one in the back is my usual way to cook lamb.

Today I went to get some lamb from the butcher near our place expecting to cook it like that, but when I asked for ribs, he recommended that I make the finger food lamb mentioned a few paragraphs ago. I had never made it before and when we get it in restaurants it's SO tender that I thought there must be some complicated way to cook it. But the butcher told me I just needed to boil it for half an hour. Really?

Well, first of all, it's a miracle I understood him. He has a strong local accent and he was saying all kinds of words I didn't know a few months ago like "pressure cooker" and "boil soup" and "gas stove." But at any rate, I did understand him and told him that I would like to cook the lamb like that since H likes it so much. So he cut it for me into the right sizes for that dish and sent me off happy with my plastic bag of lamb.

My boiled lamb ribs! The other dishes are zuchinni slices, stir-fried potato strips and a giant piece of bread I bought.

Well he was right!! I just needed to boil it for 15 minutes! And it was delicious! It wasn't even lamby (how is that possible?). I'll definitely be making lamb ribs this way again!

In other news, M's teacher told me this afternoon that she has all the ancient poems they've studied memorized, which I definitely did not realize. What a kid! Not just learning how to survive in a new language but even memorizing classic poetry in that language in only a few months! The mind is an amazing thing.

It was really cold here last week! But E is really cute in her hat and mittens.