How to make puff pastry dough (the easy way)

I love puff pastry, and it makes a lot of baking projects more delicious and glorious. But most people view it either as something to be purchased from an expensive store, or something that takes monumental effort and talent. This recipe, adapted from River Cottage Every Day, proves that to be wrong! This takes about 15 minutes to prepare, and then rests for (at least) 30 minutes, giving you easy puff pastry dough in well under an hour. Pretty awesome. Use this dough for french fruit tarts (entry forthcoming), pasties (where this recipe first appeared on this blog), as a pot pie topper, or any of a thousand other excellent ideas. 

Puff pastry 
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon  salt
2/3 cup butter, chilled and chopped into small cubes
ice water

Procedure
Sift the flour and salt together in a large bowl. Throw in the cold chopped up butter and toss until all the butter chunks are covered with flour. You can use a pastry cutter if you want, but if you do, make sure you don't over-chop the butter. This is important if you want that delicious flakiness in the pastry! The butter cubes shouldn't be smaller than 1 cubic cm (not that I measured). Definitely don't use a food processor---I've made that mistake.

Add the water a couple of tablespoons at a time, mixing it in with a wooden spoon, until you have just enough liquid to make a firm dough. The butter is still in chunks at this point.

Shape the dough roughly into a rectangular prism with your hands and put it on a well-floured surface. Flour a rolling pin and roll the dough out in just one direction (away from you is easiest) until it makes a long, flat rectangle -- about 1/4" thick. Fold the top third down and the bottom third up over that (like a letter) so that you have a rectangle that's three layers thick. Rotate 90 degrees and repeat the process. Roll out, fold, and rotate a total of six times. Then cover the dough with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge to rest for at least 30 minutes. You can also freeze it, and it should keep for a good long while.

Pork chops and fried egg brunch

Crucial Rule #1 when it comes to doing just about anything with a pork chop: make sure that you get the thickest possible cut of pork chop! Just about all of us pig-eaters have at some point encountered the jaw-straining treachery of the overcooked skinny pork chop, and it gives a bad name to this potentially delicious cut of meaty goodness. Crucial Rule #2---and this applies to most meats you'll want to cook---is that you should have a meat thermometer. If you get a nice, chunky pork chop and cook it to 145F, there's almost no way you can go wrong. I mean, seriously, a pork chop is gonna be delicious with no marinade, rub, or glaze at all. It's that good.

That said, here's a recipe for a brunchy pork chop presentation that does involve a (super quick and easy) rub/glaze, largely inspired by this recipe.

Ingredients [for 2 pork chops]
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 Tablespoons butter
2 thick-cut pork chops
3 Tablespoons bourbon*
2 eggs
2 teaspoons chives or scallions or garlic scapes

Procedure
Heat the butter on a (preferably cast-iron) skillet over medium heat. Mix brown sugar, paprika, salt, and pepper together. Rub the mixture onto the pork chops, making sure to get the whole surface. When the butter has melted completely, throw the pork chops on to the skillet. Lower heat to medium-low. Cook for about 5 minutes on the first side. Flip the pork chops, and then pour the bourbon. Cook for another 5 minutes. If your pork chop is really thick, the internal temperature is probably only around 100F by this point. If this is the case for you, finish the rest of the cooking in the oven: put the pork chops onto a foil-lined baking sheet, pour any glaze remaining in the pan on top, and bake at 400F until the internal temperature of the pork chops reaches the desired 145F. Transfer the pork chops to a warm plate when they're ready.

Meanwhile, fry up a couple of eggs (letting the whites cook through but leaving the yolks runny). Mince up the garlic scapes (or whatever green thing you're using). Put the eggs on top of the pork chops, and sprinkle the green stuff on top of the eggs. Serve with some delicious biscuits!

---

* When I was making this recipe this morning, a disaster occurred, in which I grabbed what I thought was a little Christmas-stocking-stuffer-size bottle of bourbon, only to discover it was a Christmas-stocking-stuffer-size bottle of bourbon maple syrup. I was saved only by the fact that it is humanly impossible to screw up a pork chop and literally any delicious thing tastes good on it.

Cheesy buttermilk biscuits

I love biscuits. I mean, to an unhealthy degree. Someone mentioned the word "biscuits" 3 days ago, and this ravenous part of my brain turned on and wouldn't shut up about how badly I need to bake and eat some biscuits right this second. And it wasn't even the relevant context: they were asking if they could give my dogs biscuits.  

I don't know how I waited 3 days before making them, but it happened, and it made the biscuits that much more delicious. No wait. It didn't. Because biscuits are the maximum amount of delicious already. 

Now that we're clear, here's a biscuit recipe. It is mostly adapted from the classic Joy of Cooking, with the addition of some cheese.

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
5 Tablespoons butter
3/4 cup buttermilk (or just put about a tablespoon of lemon juice into 3/4 cup milk)
1/4 cup grated parmesan
1/4 cup grated cheddar

Procedure
Preheat oven to 450F. Combine the flour, salt, baking powder, sugar, and baking soda in a large bowl. Cut in the butter (either with a pastry cutter or just with a knife). Keep chopping the butter up until it's as small as you're willing to get it. Pour in the buttermilk and the parmesan and mix lightly, just until you more or less have something you can call dough.

Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface. Knead gently for 20-30 seconds. Using your knuckles, pat the dough down to about 1/4 - 1/2 inch thickness. (Obviously the thicker the dough, the thicker the biscuit. I like mine pretty thick, but you may not. Play around with it if you're not sure.) Cut circles into the dough (I used the small end of a plastic funnel for canning; I've also used the rims from Ball jar lids). Place onto a foil-lined baking sheet. If you want a little cheesy crust on top, sprinkle the cheddar on top. Bake for 8-12 minutes, or until the biscuits are just starting to get golden on top.

Cut them in half, lengthwise, and add a thin pat of butter in the middle. Enjoy with some pork chops, tea and jam, or literally every other thing.

DIY Firelogs (Recycled paper firestarters)

This is a recipe, but not for food. Unless you're a termite, maybe. Just bear with me.

While trolling the interwebs one chilly morning, I saw instructions for making firelogs at The Survival Sherpa. We have a woodstove, but it is a crappy one (which is why we're building a yurt in our living room---stay tuned for an update on that eventually). And last winter, our wood was pretty crappy too. Word to the wise: maybe don't expect too much from anything you buy on Craigslist that some crazy dude delivers in his personal truck for about 2/3 the price of more professional competitors. But I digress. The point is that it can be pretty hard to get a good fire going in our woodstove while we try to light our damp, near-green firewood. And buying those Duraflame things feels lame (and gets spendy). So here is one solution:

Step 1. You'll need: 2 plastic buckets, a drill, and a drill bit.

We had a couple of old kimchi containers laying around, so we paid nothing for this. But you can get two five-gallon Homer buckets from Home Depot for $2.85 each. (Note: you can make big firelogs and saw them in half, or even into pie slices. Just depends on the size of fire you want and how long you want it to burn.) Drill holes all over the damn place (I used a 3/16" because it was around, but size isn't too important) on one bucket. Specifically, all over the base of the bucket, and about halfway up the sides. Keep the second bucket in tact.

Dog not included.

Step 2. You'll need a bunch of recyclable paper/cardboard/egg cartons/whatever.

We are always inundated with junk mail. And we eat a lot of eggs. If you, too, have an abundance of recyclables to choose from, go with the less colored, non-glossy stuff. But just about anything works. Tear it all up as small as you feel like tearing, and place into the holy bucket. Place the holy bucket into the unholy bucket, and cover all the stuff with water. If you're in super eco-friendly mode, do all this during a heavy rain and let that fill your bucket. This gives you bonus hippie points.

Step 3. You'll need patience. 

Wait until it's all soggy. I waited about 72 hours. Overnight would probably work in a pinch.

Step 4.  You'll need... something sharp that rotates fast.

I used a food processor because I was lazy. The guy who made the original post fashioned together a custom drill bit by welding a table saw blade to a steel shaft. This approach gets you way more DIY-awesomeness points. However you do it, the objective is to turn your wet recyclables into a colorless, formless mush. 

Step 5. You'll need something heavy, more patience, and a dry environment.

Remove the mush-filled holy bucket. Fill the unholy bucket with the heaviest stuff you've got and put it inside the holy bucket, so that it's squeezing the mush into a thick brick. The heavier the stuff you put on top, the more water should ooze out of the holes in the bucket. Let this sit for a little while (I waited about half a day), until all the water that's going to drain off, drains off. At this point the paper mush should be dry enough to be removable from the bucket without falling apart. Remove it and place it in a sunny area. 

Note: If you're doing this during a particularly rainy few weeks, you may be kind of screwed. So I suggest coming up with some other project that involves leaving the oven on low for a while (I dried cranberries at my oven's lowest setting: 170F). Then you can place the firelog in the bottom of the oven without feeling bad (or losing those bonus hippie points you got from rainwater collection). I also put it into the oven any time I was done baking something else in there, and just let it sit. After a few days of having forgotten about it, I checked on it and it seemed pretty dry. Success! 

Now you can light fires with ease. Note that the harder you press down on it in step 5, the harder it'll be to light. But the less you press down, the shorter the fire will last. So play around with the density however you like. 

Simple frozen dog treats

This is probably the single easiest "recipe" (if we can even call it that) that I'll ever post here. This recipe requires 4 things:

1. Yogurt
2. Peanut butter 
3. Silicon ice tray for easier treat removal
4. Dog(s) (optional)

In more detail...

Ingredients

[makes 6 treats]

• ~1/2 cup plain, non-fat yogurt
• ~6 teaspoons peanut butter

Procedure

Fill each cup in an ice tray about halfway with yogurt. Put about a teaspoon of peanut butter on top of the yogurt. Fill the rest of the cup with yogurt. Freeze. Done! 

For a somewhat slushy treat, only freeze for about 15-20 minutes. On a particularly hot day, freeze it all the way. Will last in the freezer for just about ever. Use Doctor Who themed ice tray so everyone knows you're a nerd.

This post brought to you by our A/C breaking.

Challah back!

Holla! I finally made some challah! Is that joke super old? A-yup. I'll stop.

Active prep time: 20-30 minutes
Passive (waiting) prep time: 2.5 hours
Bake time: 30-40 minutes

Ingredients [Makes 2 braided loaves]
2.5 cups warm water (110 F)
2 tsp instant yeast (or 1 Tbsp active dry)
0.75 cups honey
4 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 egg, 3 egg yolks, and 1 more whole egg for brushing on at the end
1.5 Tbsp salt
8 cups flour

Procedure

Put the water into a large bowl (or a KitchenAid stand mixer if you have one). Sprinkle the yeast into the water (you can technically skip this proofing part if you're using instant yeast, but I don't think it makes a difference so I'll include it here in case you're using active dry yeast instead). Beat in honey, oil, 1 egg, the egg yolks, and the salt until thoroughly mixed. You might have kind of a frothy mixture at this point but that's OK.

Beat in one cup of flour at a time (waiting for it to mix in thoroughly before continuing). If you're using an electric hand mixer (or a whisk---jeez, I don't envy you if you're doing this without the aid of kitchen power tools), you'll want to switch to kneading when you've added enough flour that you have a thick dough. If you're using a stand mixer, just beat it with the dough hook to begin with and you don't really have to worry about it.

Knead the dough for a couple of minutes, until you have a soft, thick dough that is no more than a tiny bit sticky. Cover with a damp cloth and let it rest until the dough about doubles in size (about 1.5-2 hours in my experience, but this will depend on the temperature in the room and the activeness of the yeast, so just start checking the dough every half hour after the first hour has gone by; if you're too busy to be that attentive, you'll probably be fine even if it over-proofs slightly). 

NB: You may want to grease or flour up a bowl and let the dough rest in there, as I found that putting it in a bowl without those precautions resulted in some extra work in scraping sticky dough off a bowl.

...

OK, now that the dough has doubled, punch it down in the bowl, and turn it over onto a pretty floury surface. Split it into two halves (one for each loaf) and knead each one for a few minutes. Add flour as necessary to keep it from sticking to your hands, but don't go overboard. 

Now the most fun part! If you want to do the traditional braided type loaf, start by splitting each half into thirds (more or less), and making each piece into a long snake about 2 inches in diameter. 

Squish the (let's say right) ends of the three snakes together firmly, and braid them. Squish the open ends (left, in this case) together when you're done.

NB: Some people like the circular style loaf. You can achieve that by braiding the strands together and then squishing the ends of your loaf together into a sort of braided bagel shape.

Place the loaves on a well-greased baking sheet. Once again, cover with a damp towel and allow it to rest for an hour.

 

NB: Unless you don't mind your loaves sort of melding into one, be sure to give them a good amount of space when you let them rise! Oops. 

...

So, now you have fat, squishy braids ready to be baked! Preheat the oven to 375F. Beat an egg and brush generously onto the loaves, coating every surface as best you can. This will give the bread that nice glazed, shiny, and browned surface that you probably associate with challah.

Bake at 375F for about 40 minutes, until the bread is browned and you can flip it over and thump the bottom and hear a nice hollow thud. Personally, I like challah much less if it's kind of overbaked and dense, so if this is important to you, I'd start checking every 5 minutes after it's been in the oven for 30 minutes, because it would be a shame to waste such a potentially delicious bread by making it gross.

When it's done, let it cool on a wire rack for at least an hour before cutting into it (to avoid crumbliness or squashed bread, etc.). Voila!

Some more notes

• If you object to slightly stale challah, and you aren't having lots of company, I recommend halving the recipe and just making a single loaf. I'm not totally sure why I made two---probably because the recipe I adapted this from called for two and I wasn't in the mood to do simple division. Also, you may want to freeze it after the first day or two of sitting out and just make toast with it. I noticed it tasted a little more stale already on the second day.
• Speaking of toast and too much challah... you can also make challah french toast. But that's a recipe for another time, so you'll have to look that up on your own.
• I noticed it wasn't as flaky on the inside as challah usually is. Check back for a follow-up challah experiment to see if I figure out why.
• Source: adapted from this recipe.

Easy fridge pickles

This recipe works for just about any vegetable that you have going to waste in the back of the refrigerator. We did it with baby red peppers and string beans, and they turned out really delicious. We'll definitely be doing this with other veggies in the future, too!

Ingredients

[Makes enough to fill 3 quart-sized Ball jars]

~ 3 lbs. string beans, peppers, and/or whatever other veggies you want to pickle

3 cups vinegar

3 cups water

4.5 Tbsp. pickling salt

6 cloves garlic

6 Tbsp. dill seed

Procedure

Clean the jars in boiling water to disinfect. Put the garlic and fennel seeds into the bottoms of the jars.

To make the brine, combine the vinegar, water, and salt in a large pot until the mix comes to a roiling boil. While that's heating, put the veggies into the jars on top of the spices. Try to pack them in pretty tight. You may need to trim the beans if you're using pint jars or the veggies are particularly long, but I didn't find this to be an issue in the quart jars.

Pour the brine over the veggies, leaving about a 1/2 inch at the top. Stir a little bit to remove any air bubbles, put on the lids, and stick the pickles in the fridge for about a week (for full flavor). That's it!

Storage

These will last for a while (at least several weeks) in the fridge.

If you've canned stuff (like jam, or "real" pickles, or tomatoes) in your life, you probably know that there are more particular steps to be followed. One thing that's so great about this recipe is how easy it is, because the pickles last for a long enough time in the refrigerator to render serious canning unnecessary. But if you do decide to can them, this recipe will still be perfectly fine---you're just on your own for the canning procedure. This is what happened when we tried to do it:

And no. This is not our first attempt at canning. Maybe some people just aren't meant to be able to make pickles that can be stored indefinitely at room temperature. 

Variations

You can add red chili flakes for a bit of a kick, but as our household average spice-wussiness level is quite high, we haven't tried. 

Grilled BBQ Tostadas

Yeah, these aren't tostadas. But I couldn't come up with a better name. "Left-over Pulled Pork Delivery Mechanism" wasn't as catchy. So here we go.

Ingredients

• Pulled pork (we make it in the oven using the dry rub from Tyler Florence's recipe)
• 1/3 can baked beans
• 1 handful baby spinach
• 2 small cucumbers
• 1/3 cup cheese, grated
• 4 small flour tortillas

Procedure

Put stuff onto a tortilla. 

Put the other tortilla on top. Fire up the grill and put the not-a-tostada on it. 

 Close the lid. Wait.

Get distracted for about 5 minutes setting up a hammock. 

Come back and find the bottom tortilla is burned. Oh well. Take it off the grill & eat!

Bagel French Toast

Let me begin with two important facts. One, my freezer doesn't work. Two, this weekend my parents came for a visit from New Jersey which, among many other wonderful things, means that there are about a dozen bagels too many in my house. New Jersey bagels. In New England. I mean, it doesn't really matter how not hungry you are -- when that treasure finds its way to within eating distance, you eat. And let's face it, the freshest bagel ever made outside of the NJ/NY area doesn't hold a candle even to a two-week-old Jersey bagel from the freezer. But subtract the freezer from the equation, add two days, and all you have are tough, stale bagels that could have come from anywhere. And there's only one way to feel about that:

OK, so what do we do? French toastify! Soak the bagels in eggy milk for a few minutes and it's like they never gave you reason to wear that adorable long face.

Ingredients

[Makes about 3-4 servings depending on how hungry your servees are.]

2 old bagels, cut into rounds or wedges or slices

1/2 cup milk

2 medium eggs

cinnamon (optional)

cooking oil

chocolate chips (optional)

powdered sugar (optional)

maple syrup (optional)

Procedure

Whisk together eggs and milk (and cinnamon, if you're using it) in a wide-bottom bowl. Place bagels in a single layer in the mixture, and let them sit for a few minutes. Meanwhile, heat a pan over low/medium heat. Back to the bagels: flip them over and let them sit for a few minutes on this side as well. Shove chocolate chips, if using, into the now mushy bagel -- the deeper you shove them in the better, so they don't burn on the pan. Place the bagels chocolate chip side down (I tried it both ways and found that this way actually burned the chips much less). Cook on each side about two minutes, or until golden brown. If they're burning, lower the heat.

When ready to serve, sift some powdered sugar over everything and/or pour on maple syrup. Personally, I love the combination of sharp cheddar with sweet stuff and am not big on maple syrup, so my perfect bite includes some extra chocolate chips, a slice of cheese, and a sugared little bagel round.

Bagel crisis averted! (Well, more accurately, I've turned my bagel crisis into a french toast crisis, but it wouldn't be so bad if I weren't home alone and trying to consume way too much french toast for brunch.)

Mini Meat Pies

Following our Game of Thrones themed birthday party, we had an insane amount of leftovers. The small amount of lamb still leftover two weeks later was easily dispatched by our dogs (they liked it almost as much as when they got to devour blue cheese filet mignon last week -- yeah, these dogs are ridiculously spoiled). The only thing left was a bit of rabbit stew. Super delicious and made by my mom -- who will perhaps post a recipe here one day?!

So today I finally got off my butt and decided to use our leftovers for good! And hence rabbit muffins. Or... Stew scone? Bunny bread? Carcass cupcake? Yeesh, okay, I'll stick with mini meat pies.


Ingredients
Leftovers
Pie crust

Pie Crust
[For 12 mini pies.]
2 cups flour
2/3 cup shortening
1 tsp salt
~1/2 cup cold water

Procedure

Mix flour, salt, and shortening together using a pastry blender until you have a fairly homogenous crumbly mixture. Add in water, a little bit at a time, and stir with a wooden spoon until the dough forms a ball. Roll it out (depending on your work surface, you may want to roll out half of it at a time) pretty thin line the bottoms of a greased muffin tin. Spoon in your leftover filling (any thick stew would work, as would anything that's not too runny).

 Cover the filling with another layer of dough, crimp the edges with a fork, and glaze with a bit of egg wash. Bake at 425F for about 15-20 minutes, or until the pie is slightly golden on top.

When you're splitting up the dough into the muffin cups, neatness is not very important. Just rip out a portion roughly large enough to go into the cup and stick out a over the sides. Same for the top. All that matters is you can crimp the edges to seal in the meaty goodness.

* Dog approved!

(Taken with a pie held over the camera. Don't feel bad, he got to eat it after.)

Storage/Leftovers
These will not be great re-heated, so only make the amount you plan to eat. Remaining uncooked dough can be frozen.

Fiddleheads!

too old!

So I was wandering around in the yard the other day looking for a big stick... as I do. And then out of the corner of my eye, I saw some ferns. Which reminded me, as I get reminded every year, that I have been planning on foraging for fiddleheads for the last five years. But every year, when I am reminded, I'm invariably reminded by the tall, unfurled, mostly full grown ferns that we see all summer, and not by the small, edible (nay, delicious!) young shoots.

That's the problem with fiddleheads. They aren't edible for longer than a few days, or at least that's how it seems to me. They start coming out in spring or even early summer, according to sources on the internet, but at least this year (maybe due to unseasonable heat? it's been near 80 for the last couple of weeks), most of the ones I've seen have already been mostly unfurled.

So I was really excited to see these little edible shoots. SO EXCITED.  

juuuuust right.

To make sure you're picking the right variety of fern, look at the stalk. If it curls inward like a celery stalk, you've got the right one. You can just rip them off -- the bottom bit of the stalk is a bit white, and people claim this part is woodier and not really tasty (I wouldn't know though) so I just ripped above that. When they're young, they'll snap pretty easily.

Before you go nuts, Wikipedia gives some sense that fiddleheads are full of healthy stuff but may also be harmful if ingested in great quantities:

Fiddleheads contain various vitamins and minerals, as well as omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. They are a source of antioxidants and dietary fibre.^[2] They are low in sodium, but rich in potassium, which may make them suitable for people who need a low-sodium diet.^[4]

Fiddleheads may harbour microbes, and should be washed and cooked before eating.^[2]

Many ferns also contain the enzyme thiaminase, which breaks down thiamine. This can lead to beriberi and other vitamin B complex deficiencies if consumed to excess or if one's diet is lacking in these vitamins.^[5]

Further, there is some evidence that certain varieties of fiddleheads, e.g. bracken (Pteridium genus), are carcinogenic. Ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris) is not thought to cause cancer,^[6]although there is evidence it contains an as yet unidentified toxin.^[7]

Though it seems like these types of fiddleheads (ostrich ferns) haven't been known to cause specific health issues, may as well play it safe and only eat a bit at a time.

So now that I've said that, let's move on to the cooking bit. Clean off any of the dried brown leafy bits that may be stuck to the fiddleheads and wash them thoroughly.

Step 1. Steam or boil for 10 minutes.
It seems to be generally accepted that whatever toxins may be in ostrich ferns, you can nullify their effect by steaming the ferns for 10 minutes first.

Step 2. Saute in butter and lemon.
Drizzle a bit of lemon on them and saute in a bit of butter for 2-3 minutes. Drizzle just a little more lemon on top and serve.

Serving suggestion.
Serve on a bed of quinoa with a side of pickled daikon (or whatever happens to be in the fridge when you're serving hungry people a late dinner). Fried egg on top is also delicious.

How to Spit-Roast a Lamb Using Household Items

• Step 1. Buy a leg of lamb in the city. Put it in your backpack. Run to catch the bus while grotesque animal limb bounces up and down behind you because it's twice as tall as your backpack. Ignore curious looks. Ignore looks in the terminal. Ignore looks in the bus. Ignore looks at the bus stop at home. Bring leg home. Ignore dogs.

• Step 2. Dig a hole for a firepit in your yard. Move the grass off in one piece so you can replace it later and tell your landlords you have no idea why a perfectly rectangular section of their yard is dead. 

• Step 3. Build a fire pit after your town's fire warden tells you that it's too dry to safely light a bonfire, but if you're going to cook food on it, then it's okay. Lamb makes everything safer.

• Step 4. Stick a couple of sharpened dowels through the meat. Ignore dogs. 

• Step 5.  Start doubting yourself. Introduce structural supports. Use household items like twine and the base of a tiki torch. Bonus points if all your structural supports are flammable.

• Step 6. Cooking time! Bring the meat to the fire. Ignore dogs.

• Step 7.  Put the spit on vertical sticks (16" off the fire). Start turning the meat. And don't stop for 4 hours. You had nothing else planned for today, right?

• Step 8. Introduce increasingly desperate reinforcements (e.g. nails, a clamp, a metal broomstick, more twine).

• Step 9. Get cocky and decide to clear some dead brush while lamb cooks. Throw pine branches on the fire, getting the fire so hot that you set ablaze the twine with which you wrapped the lamb, and watch helplessly as the meat falls into the raging flames. Rescue the meat and admire the "fire-kissed crust." Pretend this was all part of the plan.

• Step 10. Bring the lamb to the table. Ignore dogs. FEAST!