Save the bones, for Henry Jones (and Annalena): bone in lamb shoulder

Unlike Henry Jones, who "don't eat no meat," Annalena does. Do any of you know, or remember that song? Annalena learned it from the Pointer Sisters, and then followed up and learned that the great Johnny Mercer wrote it. Not being much of an expert on this type of music, Annalena finds it a bit of an odd song for Johnny Mercer, and she'll have to check with her resident experts on the man to find out what it's all about. Indeed, she has such experts. Sometimes, life IS a cabaret.

OK, so the inspiration for the title cometh as follows: two weeks ago, as the weather turned more than a bit colder, Annalena's cooking thoughts turned to slow cook braises, and since the Guyman and I hadn't had a bit of lamb in a while, I checked with ovine Goddess Karen, looking for lamb shoulder. As it happened, Ms. Karen had lamb and mutton shoulder, both with bone in and bone out. Karen felt that the bone in lamb shoulder would make a perfect braise, and Annalena bought herself a 6.5 pound shoulder roast, thinking there would be no problem with finding a recipe for such a beast.

Annalena was decidedly incorrect. What she found was that we seem to have very much gotten away from cooking meat on the bone, if we can help it. If you look up, for example, leg of lamb, many of your recipes will call for butterflied, or boned leg. So, too with other cuts of meats and, as you may have suspected, she found nothing for a lamb shoulder on the bone. The closest she came was to a recipe that called for slicing the shoulder into extremely thick chops, and then dealing with them from there.

This of course led to musings. We do gnaw on bones when they are provided to us, in the privacy of our own home, and if there is someone out there who doesn't like osso bucco, I don't want to know him or her; however, it is part of both the daintifying of American eating, and also the extremely cautious approach we take to product liability, that has really taken bones out of the equation in our cooking. The Guyman and Annalena have friends who will not eat chicken breast on the bone (I kid thee not). People get the skeeves over fish on the bone. And that classic dish of Italian American cooking, chicken scarpariello, which is so named because when you eat it, the bones stick out of your mouth like a shoemaker with his nailes, is now made with boneless chicken breast.

Oh, dear. All this being said, it IS true that bones add flavor to a dish. They add depth, and they add a solidity that comes from the gelatin that is released from them. And if you happen to have a friendly dog as a neighbor, they make a treat for the creature that always seems glad to see you and treats you like royalty. Learn to like bones.

Confronted with the beast of a roast in front of her, Annalena had no choice but to exercise her butchering skills. And, to be honest, removing the bones from the roast was not difficult. Without pictures showing you, describing the process is not really feasible. Suffice it to say that, if you're patient, and do not fight the flow of the bones, removing most of them is ridiculously easy. There is one bone, down the center of the roast, that requires more work, and whether you like it or not, you wind up with a butterflied roast that you will either need to tie or treat as such, but I finished removing the bones in less than 20 minutes.

If you buy your meat from the farmers market, you will have to learn how to do this. As I say, it is not difficult. The farmers are not going to do it for you. If you buy your meat from a good butcher (as they disappear, becoming harder and harder to find), ask him or her to save the bones for you. You WILL be paying for them, because the roast is weighed with the bones. Take them. I am about to explain what to do with them.

So you have your lamb shoulder roast which weighed about 6-7 pounds with the bones, and the bones have now been removed. Deal with them first. They will have some meat on them. Rub the bones with salt and olive oil, and then roast them in a very hot oven (450-500) for an hour. Try to remember to turn them every fifteen minutes but if you don't, it is far from the end of the world. When they are done, let them cool.

Meanwhile, let your boned shoulder sit in the fridge, salted and peppered, like we do with all of our meat. And get out a good knife, or your food processor, and chop up three medium sized leeks, three carrots, three stalks of celery, two large stalks of rosemary, and three cloves of garlic)(we're coming back to garlic... wait).

Get a pot that is going to be big enough to hold the meat, bones and vegetables in it, and heat a few tablespoons of olive oil and butter (2 and 2 I think) until this is really hot. Then, sear the meat. Sear it GOOD. Six minutes a side is good, I think (it's what I did with ours). Then, move the meat to a plate, and pour off all but about two tablespoons of the fat. Save it for a minute, as you throw in those veggies, with a good teaspoon of salt. Stir them until you see that they are beginning to give up liquid, and the brown bits on the bottom of the pan are coming free. If you're having trouble with this, add a little of the reserved fat. When the vegetables have gone from that "vicious" sounding sizzle, to a quieter one, put the bones on top of them, and put the shoulder on top of the bones. Add one whole bulb of garlic, unpeeled (trust me here). And then add chicken stock to the point where it just touches the shoulder meat. It could be three cups, it could be a quart. It is difficult to say. Once that stock comes to a boil, cover the pot, and move the whole thing to a 300 degree oven.

I had planned to cook this for six hours, turning it over every hour and a half. After three hours, however, the meat had literally fallen from the bones, and the roast itself had disintegrated beautifully, into a luscious ragout. As I fished around, pulling out the bones, I looked for the bulb of garlic.

GONE. Annalena is serious. The entire bulb had dissolved right into the dish. There is, literally, not a trace of the critter anywhere, just its essence.

You will probably NOT need to add salt to this, but you should taste just to make sure. What you will have is about 2 quarts of incredibly succulent, melt in your mouth meat, that will go on pasta, polenta, potatoes, anything you like. Try not to pick at it constantly, as Annalena was doing. And it will keep well. If you refrigerate it, some fat may come to the surface which you can remove, or stir back into the meat. This is your choice.

Try this. I think you will soon start joining Henry Jones at the table, and stealing some of his dinner.