Rose Shrub, a Springtime Treat

I have been hard-pressed to do my blog posts for the last two months.  No, work and life in general have not been the culprits; I can only point to my loquat tree in astonishment.

A loquat, in case you didn't know, is a semi-tropical fruit that happily grows in my area and I have a decent-sized tree on my property.  It has produced fruit before but this year, it outdid itself.  I have picked over 120 pounds of fruit so far and it looks like another 20 to 40 are still on it.  I have made loquat jam, loquat chutney, spiced loquats, and loquat liqueur.  I have 12 pounds cleaned and frozen, waiting for a break in my schedule.  I've given away many pounds to friends.  Loquats are lovely to eat fresh, so I've had a lot of that.

Here is a picture of my tree and a closeup of the fruit on the tree.

One heavily laden loquat tree

Luscious, heavenly, flavorful loquats

The fruit is sweet and tastes somewhat like peaches or apricots without the tartness.  But it is different from them, which makes it a treat.  The recipes are not historic and, although they are foodie fun, most of them I got off the Internet, so I didn't want to write them up for my blog.  Now you know!

But today's recipe has to do with another springtime treat:  Roses!

The wet winter and now cool, wet spring has my yard in full bloom and among the flowers are the roses I planted a few years ago.  Two are highly scented and one of those has been producing flowers regularly.  I decided I wanted to try something with the petals.

I turned to a book I used once before, when I made a Rosemary Tea Sherbert  (part 1 and part 2).  It is Flower Cookery -- The Art of Cooking with Flowers.

By Mary MacNicol, Fleet Press Corp, published 1967

Today's recipe is on page 164.

Rose Shrub

Take one and a half pounds of fresh rose petals, add three cups of water and boil up.  Remove from heat and when cool, strain.  Then add two and half pounds of sugar, and the beaten white of an egg, boil, skim, strain and bottle.


My Redaction

I picked all the rose petals I could off of the three rose bushes.  The dark red roses aren't scented but I wanted them for color.  The other two were deeply scented. 

The recipe books all say to remove the bitter white base of the rose petals.  I tasted them and found that only the red petals had a bitter base, which I tore off.  The other bases were sweet.

A beautiful basketful, picked on a rainy day

It filled my basket to the brim and yet the total weight was barely six ounces.  I needed to scale the proportions.

Rounding up to call it 6

1 1/2 pounds petals (by weight) to 3 cups of water (by volume) is the same as

24 ounces petals to 24 ounces water, so that scales down to 6 ounces of petals to 6 ounces of water.

Similarly, 2 1/2 pounds of sugar is 40 ounces (by weight), so

24 ounces petals to 40 ounces sugar gives

3 ounces petals to 5 ounces sugar.  I had 6 ounces petals so I used 10 ounces of sugar.


That is not a lot of water but the roses took up so much volume that I chose to use my enameled cast iron Dutch oven.  I put the water in the bottom and then packed the petals in on top.

A large pot filled with roses.

I liked that the lid was heavy as I wanted to keep as much of the water and rose scent in the container as possible.  I set the heat to medium high until the water boiled -- I saw steam coming out from under the lid.  Then I turned the heat down to low, which stopped the steam, but I could still hear it simmering.

After about 25 minutes, I turned the heat off and let the whole thing cool for a few hours.  At no time during the cooking and cooling process did I lift the lid.

Once it was cold, I looked inside.

Now they are cooked down.

I decided to squeeze the petals to extract all the liquid I could from them.  I scooped them into a small colander, placed that in the pan, and squeezed with my hands until no more liquid came out. 

Squished until they could offer no more.

You can see the lovely red liquid in the bottom of the pan.

Then I strained the liquid through a fine sieve into a measuring cup and saw it was almost 8 ounces.  I still decided to use the original 6 ounces of liquid quantity to determine the sugar amount because that is what the recipe seemed to indicate.

I put the liquid into a small saucepan and then I added the sugar and the entire amount of egg white, beaten.  I suppose I could have put in a lot less white but I chose not to.  I stirred it all together and put it over medium heat.

Just starting to warm up.

It started foaming almost immediately but I waited to skim it until it had come to a boil.  As it was heating I kept turning the temperature down so it wouldn't foam over.  When I saw bubbling along the edges, I used a small ladle to skim the foam off the top.

Foam!  You can see the boiling at this point, so I started skimming.

I kept skimming through the foam even though it seemed like I was taking a lot off.  Eventually I started seeing the clear syrup peeking through the foam.

Dark islands of syrup.

So I kept skimming, trying not to take the syrup off, until the surface was pretty clear.

Nearly done.

I used a wet paper towel to wipe the sides of the pan so that when I poured the syrup out, it wouldn't pick up more foam.  Then I poured the syrup through the fine mesh sieve into a clean jar.

8 Ounces of Nectar!

After it cooled, I gave it the taste test.

The Verdict

First we tasted it just as it was, straight out of the jar.  It was definitely a sweet syrup, thick, with a lovely rose flavor.  One tester is a person who does not generally like the flavor of roses.  When she tried this, she liked it.  She felt the sugar gave the taste enough body to feel like she was drinking something, instead of just getting a strong scent of roses.  She also felt the rose flavor was an actual flavor and not just perfume.

Everyone liked it although we all agreed that it was too sweet to have more than just a sip or two.

So we tried it mixed with several other liquids.

Just adding cold water was okay but I think too much water was added; the ratio should be more like equal parts rose shrub and water but for me to say that, I will need to experiment more.

I also added equal parts tonic water, which was interesting because the tonic water is bubbly and has a bitter taste.  That shifted the whole experience away from sweet, which I liked, and the bitter added an extra dimension in flavor.  One taster, who does not like bitter, did not like the tonic water mix.

I mixed some of the shrub with a white wine, a little more wine than syrup.  That was intriguing because I no longer got the definite rose flavor but it didn't taste like wine, either.  It was a perfumed, fruity sensation that I truly liked.  One tester thought it could be described as a "rose sangria".  She does not normally like wine but felt this was a mixture she could drink, and she described it as "classy."  I liked that.

We also mixed it with white wine vinegar.  When it was about 2 parts shrub to 1 part vinegar, it was too tart for a beverage but we thought it would be a good sweet-and-sour glaze on roasted meat.  At about 3 parts syrup to 1 part vinegar, it was a refreshing, sippable beverage.  Actually, this is what I think of when I think about a beverage called shrub.

Success!

I want to make more (keeping blooming, my rose bushes!) and try it with other foods.  I think it would be good in lemonade, or drizzled over fresh loquats (or strawberries), or on pancakes, or in my hot chocolate, or mixed with vanilla yogurt as a fruit salad dressing, or brushed on the top of a cake hot from the oven (white, yellow, or lemon cake).

Non Bread -- Uzbekistan

This conversation went through my head when I was thinking about writing up this post:

"This is about non bread.  No, not non-bread, non bread!  Seriously, it is about bread.  Non bread."

So rather than subject you to the silliness of the conversation, I would like to show you how I made a bread called Non.

Not too long ago, my daughter had the good fortune to visit Uzbekistan.  Being a good daughter who knows me well, she returned with various food-related items, like barberries, spices, roasted apricot pits, and these dried, salty yogurt balls called kurt.  She also brought me two (yes, two!!!) bread stamps that are used on the popular bread of the region.



She subsequently acquired a cookbook for the region (it is hers, but it lives in my house for the time being) called Samarkand, Recipes and Stories from Central Asia & the Caucasus, by Caroline Eden and Eleanor Ford.

ISBN 978-1-909487-42-0

The beautiful pattern you see on the book's cover is a picture of a fabric they call ikat.  If I understand it correctly, the warp threads are tied into groups and the dye is applied, then the threads are separated for the weaving.  You get that interesting jagged look to the fabric.  Lovely!

I felt the need to use those bread stamps.  I also felt the need to try the bread!  My daughter said she loved eating it. 

The recipe is on page 152.  The author began it with this:

Non is the flatbread that is made the length and breadth of Central Asia.  It is usually baked by being slapped onto the searingly hot clay walls of a tandoor oven.  At home, using a pizza stone and the oven cranked to maximum is the best way to achieve the characteristic chewy, elastic texture.

I decided I would take them up on their challenge to crank my oven up to the maximum!

Non

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons fast-action dried yeast
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon superfine sugar
sunflower oil or melted lard
1/2 teaspoon black onion seeds



Put the flour in a large bowl; add the dried yeast to one side, and the salt and sugar to the other.  Make a well in the center, pour in 1/2 cup cold water, and mix thoroughly.  If it feels stiff, add a little more water to make a sticky dough.  Turn onto an oiled surface and knead for 10 minutes until the tackiness has gone and the dough is silky soft and smooth.  Form into a ball and put in an oiled bowl.  Cover with a kitchen towel and let rise for about 2 hours, or until at least doubled in size.

Knock the air out of the dough and form it into a domed round.  Sit it on a floured wooden board lined with a piece of parchment paper and cover again with the kitchen towel.  Let prove for another 45 minutes, or until doubled in size again.

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees F, or as hot as it will go, and put a pizza stone or baking sheet in to heat up--it needs to get really hot before you bake the non.

Make an indentation in the middle of the bread by pressing with the heel of your hand, leaving a doughnut-shaped ring around the edge.  Pierce a pattern in the middle using a non bread stamp or the tines of a fork.  Brush the top with oil or lard and sprinkle with the onion seeds.  Trim the excess parchment from the sides of the bread.

Put a handful of ice cubes on the bottom of the oven--this will create steam.  Use the board to lift the bread to the oven and carefully slide it (still on the parchment paper) onto the preheated stone or pan.  Bake for 15 minutes.  The top should be golden and the load should sound hollow when tapped underneath.

My Notes

I used regular granulated sugar, canola oil, and white sesame seeds instead of the onion seeds.  My daughter assured me that most of the non she ate had sesame seeds on it.

Yeast on the left, well in the middle, sugar and salt on the right

I was astonished that the water was to be cold; I had expected it to be warm to start the yeast.  It was easy to mix the dough and adjust the water to make it sticky.  Kneading it was just fun:  the ball of dough is small so it truly did not take a lot of effort to get it moving and to keep working it for ten minutes.  It turned out beautifully soft and smooth. 

Sticky dough

Silky soft and smooth

The timing on the two risings was just right.  I put the dough in my oven set to "Proof" for the 2 hours rise and then just left it on the counter for the second rising.

It has risen!

I chose the decorative bread stamp to pierce the center. 

The stamp I used

The stamp I didn't use

It flattened to about 6 inches diameter before the second rising.



This is my hand imprint after the second rising.



Here it is stamped, oiled, and sprinkled.



Now comes the time for true confessions:  I ended up making this recipe twice. 

The first time, I set my oven for as hot as it would go, which turned out to be 550 degrees F.  When the bread went in, it puffed up considerably, and in about 7 minutes, was burning.  Yes, too brown and some of the sesame seeds were burnt. 



The inside looked pretty good but I thought it was still too wet.



My daughter thought I hadn't flattened the dough enough, and that it should be wider and thinner.  This loaf was too puffy.

So I tried it again, which was still fun to mix and knead.

I flattened the dough to about 8 inches in diameter this time.



I set the oven temperature to 475 degrees F as the recipe specified.  After 10 minutes of baking, it was the perfect golden color and sounded hollow when thumped.



And when I sliced it, I thought it had cooked just right.



The Verdict

I had my daughter try it because she alone had tasted it in Uzbekistan and could correctly judge the results of my efforts.

Her response?

The flavor and texture were just right.  Hooray!  Chewy, like a bagel, with a classic bread taste highlighted by the slightly toasted sesame seeds.

She still thought the bread was too thick and should have been pressed out to a wider diameter than 8 inches.  Also, I did not make the center indentation thin enough.  She said it should be very flat, without any puff at all.  So the next time I make it, I will aim for 10 inches diameter at the least.

We cut it into little wedges and ate it for several meals, with a sausage stew, with grilled pork chops, and at breakfast along side poached eggs.  We all thought it was perfect with a light spread of cream cheese and a dab of our favorite fruit jam.

Even the first attempt tasted pretty good, although I dislike burnt seeds.  They were easily brushed off, so it wasn't a big problem.  But the second attempt was much better.

Success!  Easy and simple to make, wonderful to eat. 

Now I am excited about trying other recipes from the same book.  Something with barberries, perhaps!

Onion Shortcake

My cookbooks reside on shelves in my dining room, which I can easily see from my place at the table.  Sometimes a book just seems to be vying for my attention, by catching my eye over and over again.  This time the book was River Road Recipes.  I have had it for a while but I never really looked it over.  So I gave into its siren song and pulled it off the shelf.

Published by the Junior League of Baton Rouge, Inc.

The cover says it is a Louisiana #1 Best Seller, and looking inside the front cover tells me why.  The original copyright, for the first printing, is 1959.  My copy is from the fifty-eighth printing, in October 1983.  At 10,000 copies for each of the first twenty printings (200,000 copies!) and 20,000 copies for each of the rest (760,000 copies), this book clocks in at over 1,000,000 copies -- and that was 36 years ago.

I looked around the Internet and saw one copy boasting the 80th printing and the total number of copies at 1.2 million.

I am impressed, and the Junior League of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, should be very proud. 

I also found it amusing that my copy was inscribed:  "Won by Mildred Cyran on Delta Queen."  My book has been on the Delta Queen!

So what called to me from this book?  I looked through it and saw many recipes of the category I call "Ladies' Group":  recipes submitted by women (and some men) to build a fund-raiser cookbook.  Examples are:  "Hot Stuffed Tomatoes", "Baked Lasagna", "Cheese and Walnut Balls", and "Eggs Benedict."   Those are fine and lovely recipes, but I wanted to see something unusual, intriguing, or new.

Enter page 45, in the Hot Breads section.  At the top of the page was "Onion Shortcake" and I was intrigued.

Onion Shortcake

2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons shortening
1/2 to 2/3 cup milk
2 tablespoon butter
2 1/2 cups sliced onions
1 egg
1/2 cup top milk
1 teaspoon salt

I used just one onion for the 2 1/2 cups

Sift together flour, baking powder, and 1/2 teaspoon salt.  Cut in shortening.  Add milk and knead dough slightly.  Flatten into a greased casserole. 

Melt butter in a skillet; add onions and brown.  Cool and spread over dough.

Beat egg, milk, and salt and pour over onions.  Bake in a 400 degree oven for 15 - 20 minutes.  Good with roast beef, and also nice when you have no gravy.

-- Mrs. D. C. Johnston, Lindsay, La.

My Notes

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

I decided to start the onions first since they would take longer to cook than it would take to make the dough.  I didn't let them cool before using.

I sliced the onions into thin half-rounds while the butter melted in the skillet.  Then I cooked them over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until they were mostly browned.

Thin!

I used 2/3 cup milk in the dough.  This gave me a fairly dry dough that still stuck to itself more than the bowl.

The dough was patted into a 2 liter casserole dish that had been coated with non-stick cooking spray.



Once the onions were cooked, I spread them evenly over the dough.



"Top milk" is the milk-and-cream mixture that you get in unhomogenized milk.  I didn't have any cream available but I didn't worry about it because the butter in the onions would probably make it rich enough.



I declared the dish ready after 20 minutes of baking and the milk-egg mixture was slightly browned, puffy, and looked set in the middle.



The Verdict

I served the onion shortcake as a side dish to a lovely Tahiti squash soup. 

The shortcake is basically a biscuit with a topping of onions in a savory custard.  And it was tasty!



The biscuit portion was tender and fluffy.  The onion/custard topping was moist and flavorful and tied the whole dish together.  Overall, the experience was a savory bread with enough substance to stand up to roast beef.

My guest taster and I both enjoyed it and I thought it was a good pairing with the soup.  Success!

If I were to make it again, I would use a slightly bigger pan to spread the dough out more and not make the biscuit part quite so thick.  My guest taster disagreed as he liked how much biscuit was there.  We both agreed that more onions in the topping would be better.  I would like almost twice as much, I think.

My guest taster thought the shortcake was rich, and I thought it was just right.

I recommend the book based on this one recipe and on how many interesting recipes there are in it.  There is a Game recipe section and even one called "How Men Cook":  "We give to you their recipes -- untouched -- just as they gave them to us.  To standardize would have wasted their wording; to edit would have lost their charm.  To change them in any way would be unfair, and so the wording, the methods, as well as the recipes themselves are how men cook!"

Mrs. Fisher's Cheese Pudding

Abby Fisher was born a slave in South Carolina circa 1832.  After she was freed she moved to northern California where she distinguished herself by her cooking skills: 

she had clearly long been steeped in the best traditions of Southern cookery and was a fine practitioner, so recognized in her day.  ... she was awarded medals and diplomas at various fairs in California ... 

So impressive were her skills that a "committee of residents in San Francisco and Oakland <were> responsible for recording her knowledge of the art from dictation."  You see, neither Mrs. Fisher nor her husband were literate.

These quotes, from page 75 of the book What Mrs. Fisher knows about Old Southern Cooking, brings to our attention that her book appears to be the first cookbook written by an African-American that was published in the United States.  It was published in 1881.

ISBN 978-1-55709-403-2

I had the good fortune to recently visit Charleston, SC, where I found this reprint of Mrs. Fisher's book in a gift store.  It didn't take much perusing to decide that this book needed to come home with me.  It contains 160 recipes that address breads, meats, croquettes, cakes and other desserts, pickles, sauces, salads, sherbets, soups, and miscellaneous.

I saw several intriguing recipes I would like to try.  But the first was Cheese Pudding, recipe #159, partly because the ingredients caught my interest and also because we are directed to send it to the table "as a vegetable."  That made me laugh, because my first reading made me think it was a dessert!  However, I think she meant it to be a side dish to cooked meat, which is how I decided to serve it.

Cheese Pudding (159)

Have mild cheese; grate half pound of cheese and half pound of apples, add to this half pint of sweet milk, beat four eggs very light, and add to above.  Before mixing apples with cheese, put to it one tablespoon white sugar; stir all well.  Season with nutmeg, and pour it into a dish and put to bake, putting one tablespoon of butter over it in small pieces.  Twenty minutes will bake it, and send to table as a vegetable.

My Redaction

1/2 pound mild cheddar cheese (I used a mixture of mild and sharp cheddar), shredded
1/2 pound apple, cored and then shredded
1 cup milk
4 eggs
1 tablespoon sugar
ground nutmeg, to taste 
1 tablespoon butter

This is enough for two batches, except for the butter

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.  Grease a baking dish that has at least four cups capacity.

Put apples and cheese together; mix well.  Add the nutmeg and mix well.

Shredded apples!

Apples and cheese

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs until they lighten in color.  Add the milk and beat again.  Pour this liquid over the apple/cheese mixture and shake the baking dish a little to push out the air bubbles.

Dot the top with the butter and place in the oven.

This is the deeper baking dish

This is the shallower dish

Bake until the center is firm and the surface is lightly browned.  This took much longer than 20 minutes.  See notes.

My Notes

I was preparing to feed seven people with this, so I doubled the recipe.  I baked it in two separate containers, one that was wider than the other which affected the cooking time. 

It was easy to prepare; I was visiting with my company while fixing it and didn't worry that I would make mistakes.

The wider pan cooked for 30 minutes and was almost ready, although still too soft in the middle.  I think it should have cooked at least another 10 to 20 minutes. 

The deeper pan was cooked for a total of 50 minutes and was just right -- lightly browned on the top, puffy, and firm in the middle.

The Verdict

I didn't manage to get a picture of the deeper pan, despite it being cooked just right.  But here is the shallower one:

Close but not quite right yet

We scooped it out using a ladle and that worked well considering how soft it was.  The sides of the pudding were firmer, much closer to what I expected.

This was from the firmer side region of the baking dish

Letting it cool a little before serving helped with the firming up process.  But cooking it further would have been better.

I served it as a side dish to a lovely smoked beef brisket and a tossed green salad.

Three of us had the softer version and four had the firmer version.

First, everyone thought it was delicious!  Basically it was a cheese custard with the sweet flavor but more importantly the slightly crunchy texture of the shredded apples. 

The criticism I would make (and some of the others agreed) was that it was too oily -- perhaps the cheddar cheese was oily enough that I didn't need to put on the butter or that the butter wasn't necessary at all.  If I did this again, I would consider a different cheese that wasn't as oily.  It is hard to tell what would be good considering the cheese has to be firm enough to shred. 

I felt that apples went with cheddar, so that is why I picked it.  I think a good Swiss-style cheese would be good, too.

The apples kept the pudding from being too uniformly a fine-textured custard and the sweet cut through the oily enough to keep it from being heavy.  It was rich so a small serving was appropriate but it was tasty so many of us had second helpings. 

It was definitely not a dessert but I think you could serve it as such, especially if you put some chopped, toasted pecans on the top.  Apples and cheese and nuts all in one dish would certainly make a tasty dessert accompanying a good wine!

If twenty minutes cooked it to firm, then I think Mrs. Fisher used a hotter oven than I did.  350 degrees, maybe?  I'm not sure but it would be interesting to try it at that temperature another time.

So I call it a success.  I enjoyed my small taste of an old Southern recipe. 

Thank you, Abby Fisher, for sharing your well-honed cooking skills with us!

Lamb with Red Cabbage -- Another recipe from the Transylvanian cookbook

It is time to pick a recipe from the Transylvanian Prince's Cookbook!

This is the digital translation of a book in Hungarian that I have tried recipes from before.  Here is the book reference:

The Prince of Transylvania’s court cookbook 

From the 16th century 

THE SCIENCE OF COOKING

You can find a copy of it here:
 http://www.fibergeek.com/leathernotebook/files/2018/05/Transylvanian-Cookbook-v3.pdf

The recipes I have tried are here:  Prince of Transylvania's court cookbook

Today I picked recipe number 82, found on page 20.


Lamb with red cabbage. 

Put the lamb on the fire, cut it, boil it, then roast it, add some bacon, but you can do it without. Boil it until tender, put it to the fire and let it cook, clean the red cabbage, poach it, wring it out, then put it with the meat, then add some honey and spices. 

I love how this recipe gives me so much room to experiment.  Spices?  Which spices?  I look around at other lamb recipes in the book and only got a glimpse of what our author might choose.  Garlic didn't seem right but Recipe 84 suggested black pepper and ginger.  Some websites I browsed suggested that you need spices that would stand up to the stronger flavor of lamb.  So I decided on pepper, ginger, and cinnamon.

The book's translators noted:  "This preparation for lamb, spit roasting, slicing, cooking in broth, then a final roast appears in nearly all the lamb recipes in this section".  I assumed that the spit roasting happened with large pieces of lamb, since you slice them and then continue the cooking.  As I had purchased boneless lamb steaks for this recipe, I decided I would start with the "cooking in broth" step.

My Redaction

2 lb. boneless lamb steaks
2 1/2 cups beef broth (enough to barely cover the lamb in the cooking pot)
1/2 pound bacon, sliced
1 large head of red cabbage (mine was 2 1/2 lb before preparing); cored and sliced or shredded
1/4 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

And broth

Put the lamb in a covered pan big enough to hold the meat in one layer.  Put in the broth and bring to a gentle simmer.  Simmer, covered, until fork tender.  Mine simmered for 1 1/2 hours and would have benefited from more time.  I turned the meat twice, once after 30 minutes of cooking and again at 45 minutes.

The beginning of the cooking

Place the meat in a greased oven-proof pan and cover the top with the sliced bacon.

The more bacon, the better!

Core and slice or shred the red cabbage and put into a large, covered pot.  Strain the broth and pour it over the cabbage.  (Mine was about 2 cups broth.)  Bring to a boil over medium high heat, cover the pan, and cook the cabbage.  Stir occasionally and taste test for tenderness.  My goal was to cook it to tender but not limp.  I didn't note the time but it was less than 20 minutes.



When is cabbage is done, remove pan from the heat and stir in half of the honey (I approximated rather than measured) and all of the spices.  Mix well.  Scoop into serving bowl, leaving most of the pan liquid behind.  Taste for seasoning.  I put in the rest of the honey at this point.  My mixture was only slightly sweet and the spices were tingly on my tongue.

Broil the lamb until the bacon is crisp and the meat is browned.  It doesn't take long so watch it carefully.



The Verdict

I plated a piece of lamb covered with a piece of bacon on top of a nest of cabbage.  It was served with a side of baked butternut squash and a nice pinot noir.



My guest taster was happy with the tenderness of the lamb, but I was not.  I wished I had let it braise longer (but I ran out of time).

Most bites consisted of lamb, bacon, and cabbage, and that was lovely!  We both agreed that the lamb and cabbage was a good combination but it was the crispy bacon that pushed the taste to excellent levels.

The spices did hold their own against the lamb flavor; in fact, I felt that the flavors all blended nicely together and that none actually dominated.  This is interesting because when I ate the cabbage all by itself (still a good thing), I could really taste the pepper and ginger.  The honey seemed to just mellow the cabbage flavor and shift it to a gentle sweet.

Success!  Lovely!  A nice way to serve lamb without a lot of fuss.  I think it would be fun to try different spice/herb combination in the cabbage to see if there are any better versions out there.

One last note:  The leftovers are tasty, too, although we needed more bacon...