Lamb and Freekeh...Whatever

It was going to be the Easter dish of my greatest Instagram fantasies. 

I was going to use Heather Ardnt Anderson’s lamb shank and farro recipe except I was going to give it more of a Levantine twist. I would replace the farro with freekeh, a smoked, unripe rubbed/cracked wheat popular in the Levant, North Africa, and Turkiye. And since I love chickpeas, I’d add those too, making it reminiscent of qidreh, the Palestinian lamb shank dish I’ve made for the last two Easters. Since the assortment of spices called for in the recipe was already part way there, I would swap them out for advieh e-polo (Persian rice seasoning—fresh ground myself). Plus I still had a cup or two of leftover frozen lamb stock to which I had originally added too much mastic (along with baharat, the levantine spice mixture). Adding frozen vegetable stock to meet the four cups called for in the recipe would dilute that lamb stock a bit but still give a hint of something otherworldly. The whole thing would be a glorious Levantine-Persian mash-up appropriate to the current geopolitical moment. 

Like I said, the stuff of Instagram fantasies. I’d post it and bask in my culinary cleverness and creativity along with likes from my handful of followers. Maybe even from Anderson herself. And, best of all, have a super yummy Orthodox Easter after all that Lenten fasting. 

Well, pride goes before destruction as the Good Book says. Though there wasn’t destruction exactly. Indeed what I ended up with was still plenty tasty. It just wasn’t the dish of either the recipe or my Instagram fantasies. 

My downfall was in misreading the recipe. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation and exhaustion from completely losing my shit during Easter Vigil the night before (more on that in a forthcoming post). Maybe it’s my aging eyes. But I misread the part that said add enough water to reach the top of the lamb as the pan. When it said to cover and slide into the oven for two hours, I was mighty skeptical that all that water would be absorbed. Sure, freekeh does need a lot of liquid. But that much? 

Nope. It does not. When I pulled the whole thing out of the oven two hours later, I had a bubbly soup. I took off the lid and cranked the heat. After a half hour I realized I had better take out the carrots before they turned to mush. Hell, I better just put the rest of it on the stove and boil it down. After another half hour (during which I’d managed to scald a chunk while I popped out to the balcony to grab some parsley and mint), I decided to try draining it before the lamb got all tough and stringy (it had long since fallen off the bone leaving behind nearly pearly white femurs). I pulled out my colander and some cheesecloth and poured the whole thing in. Alas, my cheesecloth was too fine to allow much drainage. And...oh damn! I’d forgotten my chickpeas! I grabbed a can and plopped them into the still nearly boiling hot mixture. 

Perhaps I just needed to give the whole thing time to drain. I made my dressing and cut up some greens. Drained and spun my soaked mint and parsley before chopping them up. The mint went in with the greens, the parsley would garnish the lamb dish…whatever it now was. Since the shallots had long since dissolved amid all that boiling, I cut up a small yellow onion and fried it to also act as a garnish. 

Some drainage did occur. My bowl beneath the colander had maybe a cup of brown liquid the viscosity of gravy. Sigh. There was no help for it. I would just have to taste what was. And what was was…surprisingly yummy. Or “more-ish” as my British Internet Boyfriend would say. The freekeh was mushy but the lamb was still tender. It was like halfway to being a harees or haleem or a Chinese congee but also a tad tagine-y. Even the last minute chickpeas worked. 

Would I make this again? Probably not. I’d still like to try my original plan. But it was still a very rich Easter dinner. So rich I could barely eat the next day. Or for much of this last week as I totally crashed after all that work. Being homebound means cooking has become my primary means of celebrating holidays. Of having a break from Ordinary ME/CFS Time. But it is usually followed by Dark Night of the Post-Exertional Malaise Time, days spent curled up in the fetal position between the sheets unable to think or speak or eat much. And yet somehow usually still worth it. Especially with Lamb and Freekeh...Whatever in the freezer.