Who's Your Daddy?

Though it looks like an excess of consecutive red meat consumption around here, there was actually a day in between- my last day of solitude- wherein not much interesting was et. This meal honored the return of my family, who actually really missed me and were pretty excited to be home again. I defrosted a butterflied piece of lamb leg and gave it a quick rub with Moroccan-type flavors. While it rested, I made a mash/pesto hybrid by spinning radicchio and frisée in the food processor with garlic, ume plums, rosemary, mint, thyme, oregano, lemon juice, truffle oil, and lots of olive oil (all the herbs came from the herb garden, which is an unruly jungle of fragrant goodness.) I also put on a pot of quinoa.

And I steamed a lovely mixture of peas, rainbow carrots, and chioggia beets that I had picked earlier with Milo. It's pretty sweet to have him "help" me shell peas exactly the way I "helped" my Mom do it all those years ago- by eating them as fast as possible. We also picked the last of the bolting gai lan, which he loves; he ate all the flowers raw and scarfed the leaves down after I sautéed them with garlic and olive oil then deglazed the pan with smoked duck broth. The meat came out just right; the to halves were different thicknesses, so the thinner half was medium rare and the thick half was very rare. Thus everyone got pieces to their liking, and there's an undercooked hunk that can still handle some heat without turning to leather. We finished a 2000 Gros Noré Bandol that I opened a couple of nights before, and the intervening time open let it soften into burly, leathery grace- like a hairy biker dude with years of ballet training.