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Irish Lamb Stew and Icebox Cookies

There are hardly any I-themed ingredients.  Almost everything is prefixed with Irish, Italian, Indian or Ice.  Idiyappam is an indian rice noodle dish, but we didn't have the equipment to make it properly.  So we settled on Irish stew and Icebox cookies.

I suggested that we make our regular Irish beef stew, but Mary insisted that we do something a little different than usual.  So we found a lamb stew recipe.  Here in the US, not a lot of people eat mutton or goat, but from what I understand, those two meats are fairly common in other countries.  I like lamb, but not if it's in any way rare.  Lamb made like roast beef?  Bleah.  Cooked into a stew.  Heck yes!  I think the flavor was somewhat off-putting for Mary, but I liked it just fine.  It was really, really fatty, and that was even after Mary cut off a ton of excess from the lamb shoulder we got.  And I'm sure it doesn't help that there was also bacon in there.   Mmm, bacon.  But I'm sure it was somewhat authentic.  Good, hearty, fatty foods for northern climes.

Irish Lamb Stew

adapted from http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Irish-Lamb-Stew/Detail.aspx

1 pound thickly sliced bacon, diced
2 pounds boneless lamb shoulder, cut into 2 inch pieces
salt and pepper to taste
1/3 cup flour
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 small onion
1/3 cup water
3 cups beef stock
1 1/2 teaspoons of sugar
1 bunch carrots
3 yukon gold potatoes
1 teaspoon dried thyme
2 bay leaves
1 cup of Guinness
Place bacon in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium high heat until evenly brown. Drain, crumble, and set aside.

Put lamb, salt, pepper, and flour in large mixing bowl. Toss to coat meat evenly. Brown meat in frying pan with bacon fat. 

Place meat into stock pot (leave 1/4 cup of fat in frying pan). Add the garlic and yellow onion and saute till onion begins to become golden.

Deglaze frying pan with 1/2 cup water and add the garlic-onion mixture to the stock pot with bacon pieces, beef stock, and sugar.

Cover and simmer for 1 1/2 hours.  Add carrots, potatoes, thyme, bay leaves, and beer to pot. Reduce heat, and simmer covered for 20 minutes until vegetables are tender. 

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The icebox cookies turned out to be really familiar to me.  They were from one of our older cookbooks, back when they weren't called refrigerators, but iceboxes.  And the cookies tasted just like some that my late grandmother Jane Avinger used to make.  Thin, crispy, with nuts in them.  So we looked more closely at the recipe, and it was from Spartanburg, South Carolina, where my grandmother spent lots of time.  I'm going to have to talk to my mom, and see if she has Grandmomma Jane's recipe.  Then we can compare them.

Simple meal.  Plenty good.