cold cuts : bits and bobs

How naive! How I walked into that one!
After sweepingly declaring that I could probably make the River Cafe's 'Chocolate Nemesis' at home, and adding the RC's cook books to my Amazon wish list, I stumbled across this, from Julian Barnes:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/mar/29/julianbarnes.houseandgarden
Oh dear. Nemesis by name, nemesis by nature, it seems. And written seven years ago, too! Very old news.

In cauliflower news, I urged both my sister and Bert to make the Moro cauliflower soup which is so dear to my tastebuds, but couldn't find any mention of it on my blog to direct them to. Very remiss of me: it is the most wonderful yoghurt soup flavoured with coriander seed, first made for me by Jo, and worth buying the book 'Casa Moro' for alone.

And finally, a mention of the gent's roast lamb. He made it for me just over a year ago and it has sentimental as well as taste merits. He made it recently for a few of us and this is how he did it:

• Take one huge shoulder of lamb, spear the fat with a knife, at a 45 degree angle, making a hole in the surface. Repeat, many times. Fill each mini-pocket with a sliver of garlic, bit of rosemary and about 1/4 of an anchovy fillet.
• Roast about 2 hours, depending on weight.
• It is sublime with anything you choose to serve, but this time it's supporting act were be-almonded cous cous and rocket.

It is amazing how much flavour this gave to the lamb fat: my vanity had left the building, beaten back by the first mouthful, so I snapped up all the semi-crisp globs of fat like a greedy gannet. Absolute heaven. Just for purposes of note-keeping though, a good reason not to binge-eat lamb fat could be heard at midnight, in the whimper: 'I feel really sick: please don't let me do that again!'.