Lamb Shoulder (Blade) - Dried Fruit Extravanganza

I'm probably aging myself a bit, but does anyone else remember Johnny Carson's routine about holiday fruit cake?  He had a theory, one with which I agreed back then, that there was actually only one holiday fruit cake in the entire world.  He mused that since absolutely nobody likes fruit cake, they just keep re-gifting it.  And there is actually only one in the world.  Good stuff, in my opinion.  Of course, back then, I didn't really think dried fruit had much of a purpose in this world, let alone for baking cake.  But, my palate has changed, and I now enjoy dried plums, apricots, cherries, raisins, cranberries, etc.  Now, I won't go so far as to say let's put them all in a fruit cake.  But, I will say I enjoy them.

Well, cooking with them has become a bit of a trend now in this Year of Meat.  In this Alton Brown recipe for Lamb in Red Wine, I needed to use some chopped dried apricots and dried plums.  And from my recent experiences with dried figs with potroast and dried apricots with pork chops, I had all the confidence in the world that dried apricots and dried plums with lamb shoulder was going to be a winning combination.  And as Charlie Sheen would say, "WINNING" was what I did!

I took 4 lamb shoulder (blade bone) chops and coated them in vegetable oil.  And then seared them for one minute per side.  After cooling them off, I put them in a zip lock bag with 16 oz of Bordeaux Red Wine and 4 rosemary sprigs.  Let them sit in the marinade in the refrigerator for 3 hours.  Preheated the oven to 250.  Put the lamb chops, wine and rosemary in a 10 inch saute pan and covered it, and put it in the over for 3.5 hours.  Yep, just sit back, relax and let it braise.  After 3.5 hours, I removed the pan from the oven, and moved the meat to a serving dish (bones falling off in the process, good times).  I used our newly purchased gravy separator (very cool contraption) to separate the fat from the good stuff.  And put 2 cups of the good stuff back into the saute pan.  Over medium heat, I added dried apricots and plums, and whisked for 10 minutes.  Then, I slowly added unsalted butter, one small piece at a time and let each piece melt as I stirred.  The smell just kept getting better with each additional piece.  Yum.  After all butter was mixed in, I added a teaspoon of chopped rosemary, a tablespoon of wine and stirred it all together.  Added Kosher salt and black pepper for taste, and we were ready to serve.  I poured the sauce all over the meat, and served with mashed potatoes and asparagus and a glass of the aforementioned Bordeaux.

There is clearly a trend developing.  Good food and good wine are a winning combination.

24 down, 35 to go!