Spring Lamb from a Once Noisy Rock

Silla used to be Scylla. Those were heady days. When the Greeks were in charge this was a mighty place. Sailors knew: “but that is the den of Skylla, where she yaps / abominably, a newborn whelp’s cry, / though she is huge and monstrous.” Six heads of monstrous per Homer, who knew a bit about showmanship, with “triple serried rows of fangs and deep / gullets of black death.” The place had a buzz.

Opposite the rocks that lore named Scylla was Charibdis; a Sicily-adjacent whirlpool, impassible. To risk the whirlpool was to lose your ship. The rocks meant a sacrifice of six crewmen, “from every ship, one man for every gullet.” It was the original hard place.

Further south along the toe’s coast, you find Palmi, with views across the Tyrrhenian of the Aeolian Islands’s Mt. Stromboli to the northish and across the Strait of Messina of Mt. Etna to the southwest. There aren’t many places in the world from where you can see two active volcanoes. Keep going with the sea to your right and olive trees to your left to reach Reggio Calabria, the provincial capital (Overly simplified: Italians say regions when Canadians would say provinces and their provinces are what we’d call counties.)

The most interesting thing about Reggio Calabria to me right now is that it’s listed as the 100^th most populous city in Europe by Wikipedia. Not 99^th. Not 117^th. What are the odds that the city I read about last night and decided to look into further this morning would hold such a distinction? In grade school I was told that Mt. Everest was found to be 29,000 feet tall but reported as 29,001 because the statisticians didn’t think anyone would believe the round finding. “Latest measurements” put it at 29,032 feet. Better lasers than in Hillary’s time, I suppose.

What the ancients probably found most interesting about this place was a phenomenon known as Fata Morgana. It’s an optical illusion where images reflected off water makes things appear where they aren’t. Messina, seven or eight miles across the strait, through this trick of light appears as a wavy mirage. The impression is of an undersea second city. Given the right conditions, some swear they can make out Turner Field.

On the Ionian side of the foot used to be Sybaris. Back in the 600s BC it was hoppin’, possibly the wealthiest colony of the Hellenic/Classical cusp. Disastrously, the Sybarites, whose name today evokes excess, orgies, feasts, and hedonism, were conquered by fellow Greeks from Kroton who almost lent their city’s name to stale bread.

Calabria had it. Not so much anymore. Volcanoes were cooler when Hephaestus was fuming because there was something about the way Ares was looking at his wife. They’re still impressive, but seismology robbed them of most of their unpredictability. Technological leaps in travel and communication make the world smaller, fiddle with local legends. Turns out everybody with some coastline and a drunk telling stories down by the docks lays claim to Atlantis. What made Scylla stand out was a haunting song that carried out to sea, warning or seducing approaching ships. It was a geological structure, a cave the wind blew through. Rocks fell or were eroded. Either way, it’s quiet now. The coast is still treacherous, but so are outcroppings the world over. There are signs on Trip Advisor that the locals tried to fill their epic attraction void with “The Next Big Thing.” Trillionaire Beach (“No! You gotta think big, Giavanni. Billionaire…Pshaw. We’re going great guns! Royalty hobnobbing with captains of industry, see!”) is not well reviewed. I mentioned the orgy killing Krotons.

There are pockets of Albanians who fled a Turkish invasion in the 1400s and French Waldesians who showed up too early for the Reformation. Both groups found a place to hide in Calabria and their descendants are still there, speaking the language of the land they escaped and in the Albanians case, sticking out like blue-eyed, blond thumbs. Both groups remain largely unassimilated and keep contentedly to themselves. For Italians who want to keep up with the rest of Europe, things are rough.

The conflagration of soil and weather along the coast is a boon for olives. The oil produced is among the best in the world. Bergamot sprung up, probably an intentional orange-lemon hybrid but nobody’s sure of the exact details. It’s tremendously important to the cologne industry and is thought to have been introduced to Germany by Paul de Feminis, a Milanese merchant who did business in Calabria and whose last name is hilarious to anyone who considers wearing cologne dandyish. No matter what the origin, the region held a monopoly on the fickle citrus as it seemed not to grow anywhere else. Mussolini’s misadventures invited an embargo and the world began speculating in earnest. Argentina and Brazil mainly, but also bits of Northern Africa and Asia found a way to grow their own. Calabria’s still a major bergamot exporter, but there’s competition now.

It’s not all trough and olive oil. Calabrian peppers are astonishing. Rather, those same capsicum annuum grown all over the world stop being decent and workmanlike when grown in Calabria. For whatever reason, one or all of the necessary conditions to make peppers spectacular are just what makes up the local terroir. They’re cleaner, burn longer and right on the edge of tolerance. This only happens south of the Pollino mountain range.

Calabrians are rightly proud. Imagine a New Yorker bragging about magic pizza water or dirty corner grocery store culture. Now imagine they’re right. Lots of exported pastes are commercially available and I’ve yet to find a bad one. I can say the same about peppers packed in oil. A restaurant downtown macerates them in olive oil. They fill a few shelves of the big four-and-a-half-gallon-or-so Lexans and let the flavors marry for a month, bottle it, and bring it out with appetizers. I bought a big bottle of them, about a handle of liquor’s worth, for twenty-five dollars and flog the hell out of it.

This is a recipe for Springtime. It’s lamb shank in a white wine vegetable braise; rustic osso buco. I’m a sucker for lamb shank, but almost always cook it in red wine. I like the leftovers over pasta and rich and bold are nitrous oxide injections to my rigatoni obsession. This time, the weather was newly warm and sunny, I went lighter and for the first time incorporated my Calabrian pepper oil into the process. I’ve done that with marinara before, but with braises I’ve held it back as a condiment for table use. It worked.

If you can’t find Calabrian peppers or infused oil, use a lot of red pepper flakes. No one will know the difference.

Spring Lamb Shanks with Calabrian Pepper Oil

• 4 lamb shank
• 1 yellow onion, chopped
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 2 ribs celery, chopped
• 4-6 cloves garlic, chopped
• 28 oz. can whole tomatoes, drained and torn
• handful flat leaf parsley, chopped
• 8 or so sprigs thyme, leaves only
• ½ bottle dry white wine
• 2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
• olive oil
• Calabrian pepper oil, paste, or chopped peppers stored in oil, to taste
• salt and pepper, to taste

Liberally salt the lamb.

Brown them on all sides in a deep dish. Dutch ovens were born for this kind of duty but any similar is fine.

Pull them from the pan and set to the side.

Wipe the grease out of the bottom of the pan with a paper towel. Or not. You won’t mess anything up if there’s meat juice in the sauté. Just be wary of pops and resulting eye seeking oil drop explosions.

Taste your Calabrian substance and judge how much oil/paste/chopped pepper you want to add. There’s no wrong answer. I like a subtle heat that brightens other ingredient’s flavors. I want to know it’s there, but I don’t want to feel like I could have saved time and left everything else out. If in doubt, add a little bit at first and add if you feel the need. In the picture above the whole bottom of the pan is covered in a thin layer of olive oil to dilute the red circle of pepper oil poured after. So, add a few glugs of olive oil and your chosen form of the destructor.

Start with onion and carrots and sauté over medium-high heat until the onions sweat and turn towards translucent. Next add the celery. I tasted at this point and added more pepper oil. When it turns to a dull green, add the garlic, tomatoes, parsley, and thyme.

Give everything a few stirs and pour in the wine. Bring to a boil.

When you have a boil, pour the stock in and coax another boil forth.

Submerge the lamb as best you can and reduce heat to a low simmer. Cover and let it go for 45 minutes to 1 hour – some shanks are thicker than others.

In my kitchen, I attract attention when I open a bag of chips. When it’s meat I’m fiddling with, the attention turns to slobbering devotion.

This is Rebus and I’m shamelessly showing a picture of my dog. If you have a Rebus too, consider that this is a long cook and you are tantalizing him with braising smellicules. I should have let him lick the cutting board I seasoned the raw lamb on, but didn’t think of it until I’d rinsed. Luckily, fake bacon strips ease tense situations and make for domestic peace.

After 45 to 1 passes, roll the shanks so what was not submerged is and cook for another 45 minutes to 1 hour.

After that, the meat should be done cooking. Remove the shanks and let them cool.

Strain the liquid with a sieve. There’s no further need for the solid vegetables so toss them or save them. Doesn’t matter. You don’t want viscous gravy in this case, so no starch. Taste, correct for salt. Leave over a low simmer.

It should take but ten minutes until the lamb is handleable. Pull the meat into medium chunks and give them a sear in the Dutch oven. Add a little braising liquid if you just want to heat it back up.

I forgot to get a picture of the squash, onion, and Parmesan fritters my wife made. I sealed some carrots with cumin, ginger, butter, flat leaf, salt, and pepper and cooked them sous vide. If that doesn’t sound right to you, gnocchi, broccoli, asparagus, or limas would do well. My thoughts are something vibrant and something with a slight crunch to pair with the lamb. Lentils would do well too.

It all came together well. Better than we expected. The gravy is gold. I don’t know that I’ve ever been as happy with a meat sauce not meant for pasta. The process requires that liquid covers the meat for braising so there’s way more sauce than needed for the amount of lamb cooked.

I’m assuming it keeps only as long as soup in the fridge. You could freeze it I suppose. I have no idea how people decide how long frozen stuff keeps safe. Don’t turn to me with fridge or freezer questions because I know less than you. My intent is to use it as often, so as fast, as possible.

There’s a lot there. Some will go to leftover lamb. Then chicken. Over pork chops. Maybe a mug in lieu of morning coffee.

There’s nothing in this recipe that can’t be found on the Italian peninsula, but since it features Calabrian peppers, if someone asks you if it’s Italian, say no. The Greeks who landed in Calabria named their new home Itali. That was the name only for the foot and heel found between the Ionian and Tyrrhenian Seas. Over time the name extended as settlers expanded northward, but Calabria was the original Itali. So say “No. It’s not Italian food. It’s authentic Italian food.” Be snotty about it. Dismissive if you can pull it off.