Margaux's Lamb Stew

It's late and I should be heading to bed, but I have been thinking about posting about food and how devoid some traditions are of including food around big life events. My brother and his wife recently had a baby, and they live far enough away that I wasn't around the first week they came home to help family with the cooking and provisioning I have come to associate with the first week baby comes home. But that's a new association, one I've only come to as an adult, as I moved away from how and where I was raised.

I lived on Toronto island, with family I only came to know as an adult, for two great years. In that time, I learned a lot about community, the kind that comes with proximity, and shared value of place, and people you find where you find your place. On the island, when and islander has a baby, they can depend on their family and/or neighbours organizing the first week of meals for whomever they share their lives with in their home. It's like a birthright of the child. You come home, your community immediately greets you with love and support, welcomes you in with the gesture of beautiful home cooked meals, that are as varied and spicy as the folks that prepare them. It's a simple legacy, but elemental.

So when I showed up at my brother and sister-in-law's place two weeks ago, to hang out with the 8 week old baby, I couldn't do it empty handed. It mattered to me that I go and leave their fridge and freezer a little fuller than when I came so that in some small way my nephew had a sense of that islander legacy, that connection of thinking about what to cook, preparing the food and provisioning that links the joy of that homecoming to a meal prepared with the intention of welcoming the new baby into the community and offering support to the new parent(s) and family that child is coming home to for the first time.

So welcome Wyatt, and Margaux to our family. I'm looking forward to many, many more meals in your company!!

Lamb Stew to Welcome Margaux
(The recipe is based on Julia Child's "The Way to Cook" Knopf, 2003, Tenth printing. I blended the Beef Stew and Lamb Stew recipes for this one - I'll get into my cookbook favourites in another post...watch for it!!)

3 1/2 pounds stewing lamb - lean - trim fat if necessary
(Flour for dusting the lamb in a dish for browing)
2 cups sliced onions
2/3 cups sliced carrots
2 to 3 cups chicken stock
3 cloves garlic, smashed
2 cups tomatoes (1 can drained Italian plum tomatoes)
1 cup dry white wine
1.2 tsp rosemary

In a fry pan, just sweat off the onions and carrots until tender (about 5 minutes). Put them into the casserole.

Put about 1/2 cup flour in a bowl, coat lamb, shake off excess. Brown the lamb pieces a few at a time in a frying pan, transfer them to the casserole when they are browned, and repeat for all the lamb. Deglaze the pan with the wine, pour into casserole. Ass to the casserole the garlic, rosemary, tomato, and enough stock to cover the ingredients. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Simmer 1 to 1 1/2 hours, or if you are Janet and I, open a bottle of pink cava, toast the birth of Margaux, and enjoy the meal of curry and dal cooked earlier that evening, and forget about the cooking time, causing the stew to cook for about 3 hours!! It was wonderful!! Bon appetit!!