Meat, Braise, Love II: Chocolate & Lamb. Seriously.

Braised lamb w/ bitter chocolate-rosemary sauce, preserved Meyer lemons, and minty gremolata

Sometimes, despite all the planning, the search through my personal Library-of-Congress of cookbooks, the endless page views on epicurious.com, and all that frigging prep work, I'll find out the hard way that it's what I don't have, what I didn't plan for, what I can't do, that ultimately determines my success or failure in the kitchen. Maybe it's a forgotten ingredient, poor time management, or, most frequently, just a simple mistake, something I've done with ease dozens of times, but that, in the presence of friends/kids/wives/copious wine/whatever, suddenly becomes daunting.

Typically, the requisite discipline will be imposed by some highly technical flaw, like spacing out on the kitchen timer when I'm roasting nuts (great tip I read somewhere but can't place: always put a nut on your cutting board as a reminder whenever you're roasting nuts) - a clear indication if ever there was one of too much fun, too much wine, and too little focus on the task at hand. Typically, but not always; sometimes, discipline is imposed because, for a lack of a better turn of phrase, stuff happens.

To wit, I was recently tooling around the market in anticipation of a visit by our dear friends, the C's, and the dinner I had volunteered for. I wanted most of the cooking to be done in advance, the weather was still unseasonably cool, I had a great bottle of Syrah floating around, and I had just been chatting with Deborah Owen of the Owen Family Farm about their humane and healthy ranching - in short, we were having braised lamb. In keeping with our MO here in the Proximal Kitchen, my intent was to keep it as simple as possible, to highlight the quality of the ingredients in a simple, well executed dish, so I decided on a classic preparation: Shoulder of lamb, in a braise of Syrah wine with lots of garlic and rosemary from our own garden. The catch? Ms C does not, can not, eat garlic. But of course, I wouldn't find this out until all the marketing was done and the meat was literally searing in the pan, mere minutes before the garlic cloves were destined to meet their flaming cast iron maker.

The thing about a garlic-and-rosemary scented lamb is this: In the absence of the garlic, something important - depth, spice, aroma - will be missing, and the dish will fall short of its potential. But I had neither time nor resources to reconfigure my dish, other than to look around the kitchen and see what was to readily to hand.  I can't say why (if only because I don't know why) but chocolate came to mind. Perhaps it was the first time that I had herb-infused chocolates, easily a decade before such things were de rigeur, from the brilliant Joel Durand in St. Remy en Provence (see the letter "R" under the "Alphabet"); or maybe it was the ragu of game with Barolo and bitter chocolate at Scalini Fedeli, with its peripheral echo of my lamb and Syrah, that I still remember from an anniversary dinner with my wife several years ago, before they lost - correctly, in my opinion, their Michelin star.

Whatever the case, I dropped the garlic in deference to Ms C, and reworked my recipe around Syrah, Rosemary, and Bitter Chocolate, and set to work on garnishes. I had already planned on using some preserved Meyer lemons from the folks at the Cheese Shop, and the salty-citrus bite of the lemons only sounded better and better against the chocolatey undertones that were now to be a part of the sauce. The only remaining puzzle at this point was my other garnish, a gremolata, which contains a bunch of garlic and is classically paired with Osso Bucco. But again, the forced discipline was also the liberator: Lamb and mint jelly at my grandmother's house... chocolate and mint, in all its myriad and uniformly tasty variations... why not substitute mint for the parsley, drop the garlic, and call it minty gremolata? If you spend enough time mixing ingredients together and tasting the results, you can usually tell when something is going to work, and I just knew this would fly. So there you have it: A new dish, certainly more interesting and arguably just better than what I had planned, all because I couldn't do what I wanted and had to deal with it.

Braised Shoulder of Lamb with a Bitter Chocolate- Syrah Reduction, Preserved Meyer Lemons, and Minty Gremolata

This dish is considerably more complicated than the vast bulk of what I do; frankly, it is something of a pain in the ass. But I did it, and I'm telling you, it will impress the heck out of your next dinner party.

1. Start with a 3lb (+/-) shoulder of lamb from a good local rancher (you could use a couple of shanks; I just used the shoulder to do something different, and because I knew I was going to pick the meat for replating anyway). Prepare as for a basic braise, with the following substitutions: (a) Use a Syrah-based wine, something stylistically similar to a Gigondas, with it's leathery, gamey notes; (b) Add a few sprigs of fresh rosemary to the braising liquids; and (c) add a couple of tablespoons of unsweetened chocolate, either melted into some of the cooking liquid or - easier - made into a paste from powdered baking chocolate and water. An untempered bitter chocolate, such as the 100% cacao from local purveyor Choco Vivo would work particularly well, and could simply be crumbled into the braise.
2. While the meat is cooking, cut the lemons into neat dice and prepare the minty gremolata: Mince up some fresh mint and mix gently with the zest of a lemon (preferably Meyer, to match the other garnish, and for its wonderful and not overly aggressive smell). Note that this can and should ideally be combined close to service, as the citrus will cook the mint.
3. When the meat is done and while it's resting, strain the liquids and reduce to a syrupy consistency, skimming for grease and impurities. Mount with a few chunks of cold butter to give it body and shine and adjust the seasoning with finely milled salt and pepper.
4. In order to plate, pick the meat from the bones and use a ring mold to set it neatly in the center of the plate. If you're feeling particularly motivated, or you already have some Onion Marmalade (recipe at bottom of that link) sitting around, first heat and then layer the onions thinly at the bottom of the ring mold - it's another step, but this is a very rich, dense dish, and the extra acidity does wonders for it. Finally, arrange some of the lemon dice, drizzle the sauce around the disc of lamb and top the lamb with a spoonful of the gremolata.