We Love Our Lamb

Well I thought I'd try my hand at this blog thing too. This is our first attempt (joint or otherwise) at creating a blog, so while we're still on the same continent, we'll try to tweak any bugs.

So why the obsession with Stephanie? We have often been caught out talking about her like she's a good friend of ours, only to have to explain to unsuspecting friends that actually, it's a cooking bible written by a wonderful Australian chef who works with lots of fresh, local produce. We have both owned this book for years, and some of our favourite dishes have come from The Cook's Companion. I remember buying Mum one of the first editions years and years ago.

Why do we love it so much? Well it's pretty simple, actually. Aside from the informative introductions for each section, it really is like a bible, or a dictionary. If I have ever been given lots of, say, lemons, I would just thumb through the lemon section and have a look at the many recipes where I could use this core ingredient. There are just so many useful tips in this book, and if I was only allowed to have one cookbook, this would definitely be my all-rounder.

The purpose of this blog is to try and keep the two of us sane while we are nearly 17,000 km apart. This is probably the biggest challenge, considering we have lived 5.7 km from each other for the past two years.

Ok, so you might say this has been done before, with Julia Child's book, the blog, and later that movie, but we really don't care. This isn't about competition, notoriety or fame. We just wanted another way to try to stay in touch while we are so far apart. Cooking, talking about cooking and eating are some of our favourite things, so this seemed like the perfect thing to create. We hope to share our experiences over the course of the next year or so, while also remaining the closest of friends.

Yesterday was Australia Day, and we've had our fair share of lamb. Monday night was Australia Day Eve (which means nothing to most, but to us it was very important). For almost 12 months, we have eaten lamb every Monday. Last night was lamb on the spit at our place. It was heaps of fun to prepare and cook, but most of all, it was loads of fun to eat. This past year we have had lamb in so many different dishes - shanks, casserole, curry, ragu, ravioli, paella, pizza, you name it, we've probably tried it :)

I actually tried to slow roast some tomatoes from Stephanie's book (see p960) for Lamb Monday. They are so flavoursome when they cook down, even if the finished product does look a little shrivelled up. The bonus is that hubby will eat them - he can't stand semi-dried or sun-dried tomatoes normally, but was happy to demolish these. I'm sure I'll have another crack at cooking these before Summer is over.