[Braised Lamb Shanks, Grilled Polenta Sandwiches]

…and this is part III of the dinner I served on Saturday, when I was (at long last) given the opportunity to meet Derrick and Melissa, dear friends from the Blogosphere now happily upgraded to dear friends from the Real World.

After a lively chat going in ten different directions — we were so excited to finally meet, where were we to start? — over a nice appetizer of crostini and anchoïade at the bar, Melissa, Derrick, Maxence and I sat down to the main course: lamb shanks, slowly cooked in the oven in a red wine and mushroom sauce, and served with sandwiches of grilled polenta squares.

In French, lamb shanks are called souris d’agneau, which literally means “lamb mice”, most probably because of their shape. Be it for the cuteness of the name or the tenderness of the cut, souris d’agneau is a favorite of mine I often fall for in restaurants.

This was my first time cooking it myself though, and the first hurdle to hop through was procurement: since la souris is the tip of le gigot (leg of lamb, a noble cut), the butcher will only sell them to you if he is sure to sell the rest, which will then be called gigot raccourci (shortened leg of lamb) and is ordered by people for whom the whole leg is a bit much.

I knew from Pascale that Picard, the life-saving frozen food store, sold lamb shanks and that they were quite good, but I thought — this is Derrick. And Melissa. I can’t serve them frozen meat, now can I? No. Nothing but fresh would do, and I ended up having to call and negociate with three different butchers (and yes, I did it all from the office, going out onto the terrace for a little butcher-calling privacy).

The first one didn’t do souris at all. I hung up. The second one thought for a bit (I could hear the furrowing of his brow over the line) and said “Four? I can’t do four. I can sell you one, but not four.” Um, okay. Let me think about it and call you back when I have just one person to feed. Thankfully the trusted Boucherie des Gourmets came to the rescue, not even blinking at the request (or I would have heard). They wrote down my order, and the next day I went to collect my four beauties.

The recipe here is inspired from a cookbook called Recettes Mijotées by Joanne Glynn, which is in fact an Australian book, originally titled Slow cooking. It includes slow-cooking recipes from all over the world and is lovely to look at. I’ve had it for over a year (we got it for our friend Ludo’s birthday, but I liked it so much we bought a copy for ourselves, too), but this was my first time trying anything from it — you know how it is, so many cookbooks, so little time.

I made a few minor adjustments to the recipe, using mushrooms where the author called for red peppers (I wanted to use those fabulous fresh mushrooms from the market) and changing a few of the ingredients and amounts here and there, just because I can’t help it. But since I have a lot to learn when it comes to meat cooking, her instructions as to the general process were most helpful, and everything went perfectly according to plan. I’m always impressed by slow-cooking and how magical it feels: you simply combine ingredients, close the lid or the oven door, cross your fingers and let the heat do the work!

With this I served grilled polenta squares, skewered into sandwiches with Italian cherry tomatoes in the middle: I adore polenta, I knew from last time that polenta and lamb worked well as a team, and the sandwiching sounded fun — the idea came to me while sitting in a particularly lengthy meeting during which my mind had escaped to the wonderful world of menu-planning and recipe invention, where everyone is happy and eats really well.

I was delighted with the appetizing look and the deep flavors of this dish, the moist meat having slow-cooked until you hardly needed a knife to cut it, the fragrant sauce thickened to a velvety consistency, and the grilled polenta squares being their usual crispy-outside-tender-inside selves. Maxence and my guests confirmed, both with and without words, that they shared my pleasure.

With this we drank a 2001 Corbières, a delicious wine from the Languedoc, as recommended by my wine seller after I carefully explained what the recipe was like, what went into it and what I would be serving it with — the pairing worked beautifully.

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Anchoïade, a garlic and anchovy dip, is a specialty from Provence and the city of Collioure in particular, famous for its anchois. It is typically served with an assortment of raw vegetables, or spread on little toasts. When I was in Lourmarin for Easter, my aunt served a delicious anchoïade for lunch the first day, and it had the consistency of a thin mayonnaise. I have also seen anchoïades that were thicker and chunkier, a bit like tapenade, and this is what mine was like.

I made this anchoïade as an appetizer for our dinner with Derrick and Melissa on Saturday. Traditional recipes call for anchovies packed in salt, which I had never used before. They were somewhat difficult to come by, anchovies packed in oil are much easier to find, but I finally located some and soaked them overnight. The next day however, once the heads and spines were removed (which was a bit of a mess and left a nice pungent smell on my fingers), the yield was not as much as I had hoped, and I had to go out and buy more, going for the oil-marinated ones this time since I had no time to soak them. This worked fine, so unless someone has anchovy-handling tips to share, I probably won’t bother with salt-packed anchovies next time, as indicated in the recipe below.

The anchoïade was served with a bowl of assorted crudités bought fresh from the market that morning (oh, the joy of the market under the pouring rain), featuring: spring leeks and spring garlic (delicious, and almost indistinguishable from each other except for the shape of their base, straight for the leek and rounded for the garlic), sticks of young zucchini (raw zucchini is way underrated — stick to small ones and you’ll see what I mean), raw fennel, pink radishes and plum tomatoes. The choice of veggies provided a nice variety of tastes (sweet, aniseedy, sharp, peppery) to match the salty smooth anchoïade.

With this I also served grissini (Italian breadsticks) from Piemont, handmade in the traditional way and thinner that ordinary grissini, and we washed it all down with dry muscat.

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On Saturday night, we had the pleasure of meeting Derrick and his wife Melissa. They were in Paris for a few days on their way back from a wine-intensive trip to Germany, and I had invited them over for dinner. Derrick’s An Obsession with Food was the very first food blog I ever laid my eyes on back in 2002 — and wow, does anyone know where these last three years went? — and he was part of my inspiration to start C&Z. After years of emailing and commenting back and forth, I was particularly happy to finally meet him in person.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever read about the three-star dinner parties that Derrick and Melissa throw, but if you have you may understand the slight pressure one is under when one has put oneself in the situation to cook for them. But I quickly decided not to overthink it, shrugged away any looming sign of KPAS (Kitchen Performance Anxiety Syndrome), and simply followed my instincts, planning a menu just like I usually do for my friends.

I like to start casual dinner parties with an appetizer served at the bar facing our open kitchen. I like that moment when the guests arrive, we serve them a drink, they sit on the bar stools, and we can chat while I put the finishing touches to the meal. I will usually serve two or three different kinds of nibbles, and this often serves as the first course, so that when everyone sits down at the table, it is to enjoy the main course. I used to serve an appetizer and a first course, but I found that 1/ it was a lot of work, and 2/ it was difficult to determine the right quantities to serve, and this often left too little room for cheese and dessert afterwards.

These pancetta and capers crostini were one of the two “bar course” items I served on Saturday night. I wanted to make some kind of crostini (little toasts with a topping) because they are easy enough to assemble, they look pretty and they make a very satisfying finger food. Since they are eaten in just one bite, simplicity is key and it is best to stick to two or three ingredients at the most, so that all the flavors can express themselves.

I had been wanting to try pancetta (which could be shortcut-defined as “the Italian bacon”) after reading about its crispy properties on Pascale’s blog. I was certainly grateful for the tip: we loved the salty-nutty taste, and it was a great change from the charcuterie that’s most often used here. The capers pairing idea came from spotting an attractive bowl of salt-packed capers, large and moist with delicate tails, at the Italian deli (l’Epicerie Fuxia, rue des Martyrs). Crostini usually need a somewhat creamy component as well, so I added a thin layer of fresh cheese, stabilizing the pancetta on the bread (very important), rounding out the texture and making each bite taste fresh and delightful.

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Punitions is the name given to the delicious, blond, thin, crisp, unique, buttery cookies, made by the world-famous Poilâne bakery.

You can purchase them by the weight (200g for roughly 4 euros), but there is a basket of them on the counter for you to help yourself when you buy a quarter, a half, or a whole round of the legendary Pain Poilâne.

Warning: it is strongly advised to practice restraint and limit yourself to one, or at the most two — or maybe three if you pretend to share them with imaginary little children accompanying you, but whom the lady sitting behind the counter cannot see because, you know, she is sitting behind the counter.

When I was little, on Saturday mornings, my father would often take my sister and me to the comic book stores in the Quartier Latin (this is probably why Saturday mornings remain my favorite time of the week, so fresh and full of promises), and on the way home we would occasionally stop by the Poilâne bakery on boulevard de Grenelle (the second shop Lionel Poilâne opened after his first one rue du Cherche-Midi) and buy bread for lunch. We were too small (especially me) to reach the basket on the counter, but as we left the lady would always hand us one Punition each, that we would savor religiously, in tiny nibbles.

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