mama z

Remember the french onion soup from the other day? Ended up having it for dinner.

The good news? It’s hard for anything to be too bad when it has toast with melty oozy Jarlsburg on top.

The bad news? The onions were undercooked :(

On the side I had a nice frenchish salad:

Arugula, pears, black pepper, olive oil, lemon juice.

Lest you think that is an absurdly small dinner, I have of late had the unfortunate habit of eating absurdly small MEALS, thus allowing myself to snack on lots and lots of cookies and nuts and candy oi oi oi. MUST BREAK HABIT.

In other news, look how freakin’ glamorous my mom’s parents were:

I love that picture. They look like movie stars.

So we lost my grandfather in ‘03 and my grandmother on Christmas day last year (awful awful) but this year for Christmas my aunt made a really really incredible gift for all her siblings:

Family cookbook and photo album!

Another fabulous picture of my grandma, very Julia- reminiscent:

   

Need those sunglasses in my life!

There are a lot of fun family pictures, including everyone’s favorite one of me, wearing a tie (for some reason) and a seriously exasperated expression. I was 9 or 10, maybe?

Hah.

Anyway, what does that cookbook have to do with anything?

Well remember my leftover bag o’ lamb?

Well would you LOOK AT THAT:

I slightly tweaked the recipe, due to what I had on hand, but feel free to try the original! I kind of did the variation with leftover lamb, and I also roughly 1/3d’d the recipe (and didn’t use tomato sauce cause who feels like having 2/3 of a can of tomato sauce in need of using? Instead I added onions). SO:

Browned the leftover lamb in some olive oil

 

Once that was done, took it out and reserved it and browned up some onions:

Then deglazed the pan with red wine:

And added some of my homemade lamb stock:

 

Once the pan was free of drippings and the liquid had mostly evaporated, I put the onions aside with the lamb and added more stock:

And then added my avolegmono:

A simple egg and lemon sauce, thickened with corn starch or flour, is a STAPLE of Greek cooking and good with a lot of things (chicken soup with rice, for example!).

I whisked some of the hot liquid in with the mixture above, of 1 egg, 1 T lemon juice, and 1 t cornstarch and then added it back to the hot brothy pan, along with the lamb

And 2 8.5 oz cans of ARTICHOKE HEARTS! (<3 <3 <3).

 

I also added salt and pepper. Fresh dill is also a great addition (I omitted it because my picky sister doesn’t like it).

Heat through, et voila.

A taste of Greece.