One Fat Man

Easter Lamb... what else?

My friend Rose and I are known amongst our mutual friends for our deep and profound love of ham. This manifests itself most strongly in our Christmas discourse, when for a period of roughly three weeks our communications are either solely ham-related, or at least 50% of each communication is about ham. At its most extreme, and most moving, this can involve one word text messages - 'HAM' in capital letters. A one word missive that communicates so very much.

Last week, I asked Rose what our unified response to the notion of an Easter Ham is. She informed me, quite rightly, that; 'at Easter ham must stand aside for "LAMB"'. We did, however, agree that ham is permissable on Easter Monday, and that ham is permissable on Easter Day provided that Lamb is also present as the focal point. It was good to have clarification on this important issue.

With this in mind, I give you my recipe for Easter Lamb (and indeed Lamb at any other time). Of course there is much symbolism surrounding lamb at Easter. We naturally think of Christ the Paschal lamb, of the lambs of the Jewish Passover feast, and also more generally of dainty little creatures gamboling through spring pastures. But I've been far too reflective of late, so let's just get on with the food.

You will need:

4 - 4 and a half lb leg of good lamb

A big bunch of fresh rosemary

Six or seven fat garlic cloves

8 oz pancetta

1 and a half pts wine

An onion - roughly sliced

Wash the rosemary, and peel the garlic. Reserve around 20 rosemary 'tops'. Chop the remaining rosemary and garlic together until both are finely chopped. Chop the pancetta too. It gets quite sticky. You could use a food processor for this, but you do want the pancetta to be recognisable in pieces and not a paste. Mix the pancetta with the garlic. It should be in part a sticky paste, but also with lots of decently sized lumps of meat. I'm making this sound lovely, aren't I?

Then get your lamb. Pierce the flesh every 2 inches or so with the point of a small, sharp, paring knife. Now put the rosemary tops into the holes and rub the pancetta/garlic/rosemary paste all over the lamb. Place the lamb in a large roasting tin on top of the sliced onions and pour over a good amount of olive oil, and about half a pint of wine (either red or white, it doesn't matter - I actually like white as it makes it a bit lighter). Cover and leave over night somewhere cool. Ideally not in the fridge, unless it's really too warm everywhere else.

The next day, preheat the over to 220C for about 20 minutes. Then put the lamb into roast for twenty minutes. After this pour over the rest of the wine and reduce the temperature to 200C. Roast for a further forty minutes. Once this time is up baste, and check to see how the lamb is doing. It should be getting there and the crust should have formed nicely. Give it an extra ten minutes after basting. Now take the lamb out of the oven, take the crust off and put it in a serving dish. Then baste, and return the lamb to the oven for half an hour longer.

Remove the lamb from the oven, cover with foil, and allow to rest for half an hour whilst you finish potatoes and vegetables etc, and make a nice gravy with the pan juices and onions. This will give you a nice pink leg of lamb. If you want it rarer or more well done then it's pretty obvious what you need to do.

These photos are from last year's Easter lamb. This year I know that lamb is on the menu in the Abbey too... which, of course, is right and proper. However, I was beyond delighted to find out that in addition to lamb, Br Dunstan also intends to do a HAM!

 

 

Maundy Thursday and Good Friday - Fish Pie, Lentil Soup, and Dill and Cheddar Scones

 

Yesterday was Maundy Thursday. I had a lovely day, which began with Tenebrae. Fr Bede and I then collected flowers for the altar of repose – daffodils. This was a surprisingly beautiful experience, because St Louis has been covered with a foot of snow. It had all melted and the daffodils were flat against the ground. There was something deeply evocative of the themes of Holy Week in these bright flowers flattened against the ground, being raised up to the Altar of Repose. All desperately corny really, but it gave me pause for thought whilst we were picking the flowers.

On Spy Wednesday Fr Bede and I had set up the Altar of Repose. This was a wonderful moment for me. In a way it reminded me of my childhood, in my old parish church. My mother and I would usually spend the morning of Maundy Thursday helping to prepare the church for the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. I would be sorting things out in the servers’ sacristy, polishing the thurible, faffing with candles. My mother would be helping the sacristan with linens (which my mother washed and ironed for many years). I particularly remember the hanging of the curtain to go behind the Altar of Repose, and Olga (a lady of parish) coming in with hyacinths from her garden to go on it. The smell of the hyacinths mingled with incense is the scent of the Mount of Olives for me.

So helping Fr Bede to hang the curtain behind the altar of repose and to clear the tables from the hall was a trip down memory lane that I greatly valued. Fr Bede’s parish is wonderful. It is a thriving community with many young families, and great devotion. In fact I've never encountered a parish with this youthful demographic before. In some ways it reminds me very much of the parish of my youth, even though Fr Bede’s parish offers Traditional Latin Mass and sacraments and mine did not. I think part of this is the mingling of the ‘make-shift’ and the ‘sincere’. My old parish church was a sort of hall, with a sanctuary that could be screened off at one end. It had to be a multi-purpose space in order to finance itself. But the sanctuary was very sensibly ordered, and it was a deeply prayerful space, with the tabernacle at the centre. Sadly the church was closed down, and has since been bulldozed to make way for houses. There are some pictures of it here on a very interesting website that looks at derelict buildings. Fr Bede’s parish has a similarly humble setting, but it is very prayerful, and sincere. Like my old church, it just works.

The church I now go to when I’m at home in Guildford just isn’t a prayerful space for me. I find there to be no sense of silence, or of the sacred. Architecturally it is a meeting space, not a place of sacrifice. I find it very difficult to pray there, and find that the design of the space can often exacerbate the tendency for the modern liturgy to become incorrectly focused upon ‘communal meal’ and ‘community event’. I don’t want sound mean, because I know that many people like this building, and have meaningful experiences within it. I am also acutely aware that it’s the only option many people have as a place in which to attend Mass (and indeed it’s my only option when I’m at home). But I simply don’t think it functions well as a Catholic liturgical space.

But I digress. Yesterday was a day of preparation, in which I took great comfort. And the sense of preparation was experienced in many aspects of the day. Between Holy Mass and some time at the Altar of Repose I helped Br Dunstan make fish pie. This is the same fish pie that appeared on this blog last Good Friday ... the Jennifer Paterson Two Fat Ladies recipe. But I thought some photographs of it in progress this year would not go amiss. We will eat it this evening after the Good Friday liturgy.

[Lots of mashed potato]

['Prawns for treats' as Jennifer said - I realise this looks fairly uninspiring, but we haven't baked the pie yet so I can't show you it finished]

Br Dunstan also made a delicious lentil soup for lunch today.

Indeed, I thought it was slightly too delicious for Good Friday - but perhaps that's a worrying Puritan streak coming out in me that I should stamp on ASAP. He some dill and cheddar scones from the Barefoot Contessa to go with it. Now they really were DELICIOUS and I urge you to make them. The recipe for the scones can be found here.

Mince Pies for not-the-Annunciation: 25th March

Easter is coming. Now, I tend to focus on Christmas quite a bit at Easter. I remember once having a conversation with an Anglcian friend of mine about the Incarnation. We were talking about whether humanity could have been saved by the Incarnation alone – that is, is the Incarnation by itself enough to restore humanity? In the Christ child is human flesh perfected already, are we saved? Of course, we both knew that the answer is both yes and no… In the Christ child is our redemption, and the potentiality of it, but it is only in the cross that Christ draws all things to himself, and achieves our redemption.  But thinking of the Incarnation at Easter and of the Cross at Christmas is a nice exercise. The Incarnation is pointless without the Cross, the Cross impossible without the Incarnation.

This Easter these thoughts have been more pronounced than usual. This is partly because Monday would have been the feast of the Annunciation (because it’s Holy Week the Annunciation is transferred to 8^th April… but it’s difficult not to think of it). Indeed, as we make our last steps towarsd Easter it is wonderful to remember the first steps of the Incarnate Logos towards the Cross too, we can remember that in the Virgin’s womb was the potential for our salvation.

It’s also been feeling Christmassy. Certainly the Almighty has decided to make us think of Christmas:

So now seems as good a time as any to finally give you some pictures of me making Mince Pies this Christmas with my dear MaMa. In the pictures you’ll note the following:

A splendid Christmas apron – given to me by the wonderful Mrs Joan Casey of St Louis, MO.

 

My mother.

 

We used my granny’s recipe for rose crust pastry. It can't be beaten, and here it is:

The pastry is very short, so be sure to chill it, and avoid overworking it (or use marg instead of butter - but it'll taste awful). Full details of mince pie making can be found here.

And whilst you think of the symbolism of the mince pie next Christmas, the pastry manger, the holes on top for the wise men, keep in mind that those piercings might just as well – if it doesn’t seem too crass a connection – remind us of Zechariah’s prophecy; ‘the shall look upon Him whom they have pierced’ (Zech 12.10 - quoted in Jn 19.37) for in the joy of Christmas we must also detect the desolation of the Cross.

A recipe from our Holy Fathers - Ss Joseph and Benedict

A few Sundays ago we had the gospel of the prodigal son. Now, of course, I have been a prodigal blogger. It’s been a very busy start to the year and I’ve not spent it in the best of health. But it’s been a reflective time too. The ‘Pope shenanigans’ (you all know what I mean) have been weighing heavily upon me. In a way I feel that these extraordinary events have presented a time of grace, a time of reflection and reconnection. What an extraordinary thing for Pope Benedict to initiate during the year of faith.

Last week we had the feast of St Joseph, closely follwed by the feast of St Benedict (of his death, kept in the pre-1970 calendar). Two feasts intimately connected with fatherhood, St Joseph, Our Lady’s spouse most chaste being the earthly father and example to Our Lord, and St Benedict being not on the patron of Europe, but also the spiritual father of the Benedictines. But more than this, these two feasts link our Emertius Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI. They are both his name days! The feast of St Joseph was also, this year, the day of Pope Francis’ inauguration as Supreme Pontiff. Futhermore, in many European countries (including my ancestral homeland of Portugal) the feast of St Joseph is, quite rightly, celebrated as ‘father’s day’.

So this gave me much to meditate upon, and indeed much food for thought. So this will be an odd blog post. I do not intend to give a recipe as such, but to look, as we draw closer to Easter, at the ‘recipes’ our fathers – Popes Benedict and Francis – have given us in these recent weeks, and at the great nourishment they have both given me accordingly.

Both of these remarkable men have taught us of humility this Lent. Pope Francis in clear, and obvious ways it seems. Indeed his humility is much focused upon and praised by the media – usually in terms of the externals (or lack thereof) that make him worldly, because this is what the media can understand. However, his humilty in the simplicity of his preaching, and his seemingly effortless ability to touch hearts is what I find more interesting.

At the start of this Papacy I find myself focussing not upon Pope Francis’ refusal to wear the signs of his office – except insofar as this refusal is in danger of differentiating him from other Popes and making it all about him and his own personality, and how he wants to be seen, which is what – paradoxically – also makes him worldly. My thoughts instead focus upon the Pope’s remarkable and simple call to us at the end of this penitential season; ‘it is not God who tires of forgiving, but we who tire of asking for His forgiveness’. I also take the remarkable simplicity and quietness of his elevation of the host, and fixed gaze in adoration of the crucified Christ. This image of Pope Francis has been in my mind a lot in these first days of his Pontificate. Listening to him preach and keeping this image of the elevated host in mind it is clear that Pope Francis desires always to keep Christ at the centre. This is most comforting.

From Pope Benedict we have an even more remarkable demonstration of humility, in his resignation from one of the most powerful positions in the world. It is also in the manner of that resignation that the lesson of humility lies. I was struck that he did it in such a way as to mean that his last public event as Pontiff was to offer Mass on Ash Wednesday. This was not a Pope riding out on a wave of triumph, but one quietly disappearing in humble pentience. Shortly afterwards we had the feast of the Chair of St Peter, upon which our thoughts were focussed not on a particular Pope, but upon the Papacy itself. Pope Benedict had provided us with a wonderful opportunity to focus not upon him, but upon the office he had left, at the time when it most needed our prayers. This led me to think of the prayer intention that we have been asked to keep for the year of faith – an intention for the Supreme Pontiff. I hadn’t thought much about it before, but suddenly I did and was struck by the beauty of it. We had been asked to pray for Pope Benedict as he made this momentous decision, but we had also been asked to pray particularly for his successor. As always Pope Benedict had distanced things from himself. The focus was on the office, not the man. This is something I hope Pope Francis can learn from his predecessor, especially as the media creates a cult of personality around him [sometimes perhaps the more humble thing is to just put your clothes on and get on with it]. 

This all led me to think of Pope Benedict’s writing on the sacred liturgy, in which he reminds us most particularly of the need to keep Christ, and specifically Christ sacrificed at the centre, to keep our worship oriented towards Him and not towards ourselves, or each other. The crucified Christ draws all to himself on the cross, and we participate in this through the action of the priest at Holy Mass, as we gaze towards Calvary.

Both Pope Benedict and Pope Francis show us this in different, but manifold ways. We must always keep Christ at the centre. What better recipe to follow? What greater food can we ultimately receive?

God Bless Our Pope, and God Bless Our Pope Emeritus.