lamb: preserved lemons or lemon preserve

Saturday morning I poured through Bonnie Stern's Friday Night Dinner Book. Every chapter in this cookbook focuses on an entire menu (such as Thanksgiving, Asian Dinner, Graduation Dinner, etc.). Fun for me! However, I decided to live on the edge and combine a few menus for our meal. Wild, I know.

I decided on a leg of lamb for the main course and called a local butcher to have the meat butterflied, trimmed and flattened for the grill. The recipe called for preserved lemons and suggested that I go to a middle eastern grocer to purchase. I headed to Wyndotte St. in Windsor and went into to one of the larger stores. I looked through all the shelves before I found the lemons.

Once I got home, I started to make the Grilled Lamb with Preserved Lemons and Shallots. Sadly, I realized that I had lemon preserve rather than preserved lemons. oy vey! Regardless, I used the jam and the lamb turned out fine (in fact, it had kind of a sweet lemony flavour!). That said, I'm now determined to preserve my own lemons.

Now for the evening's highlights...

Bonnie Stern's Sparkling Pomegranate Sangria

(Recipe stolen and posted below)

Smoked Fish Platter

Smoked fish rocks my world! Growing up, I refused to eat it. I remember going to breakfast club at our shul as a kid and seeing all the men eating bagels, cream cheese with lox and thinking that it was absolutely repulsive that someone would put fish on their bagel. Now I say, bring it on! For our appetizer I pulled together a smoked fish platter with honey-mustard dill sauce and cucumber-coriander yogurt. We purchased our smoked whitefish and kippered salmon from Zingerman's Deli since I haven't been able to find a good supplier for smoked fish in Windsor.

Required: friends who bake

Violet brought over a beautiful apricot daisy dessert. It's German-inspired and not too sweet. If we're lucky, maybe she'll post the recipe in the comments section.

Dinner menu:

• Smoked fish platter with honey-mustard dill sauce and cucumber-coriander yogurt
• Grilled Lamb with Preserved Lemons and Shallots
• Grilled Baby Artichokes with Olive Oil and Lemon
• Arugula and Almond Salad with Preserved Lemon Dressing (I used lemon zest instead of preserved lemons)
• Apricot Daisy Dessert

Sparling Pomegranate Sangria: (1/4 cup orange liquer, 1/4 cup of granualated sugar, 3 cups of pomegranate juice, 1 orange cut in wedges and sliced, 1/2 cup of pomengranate seeds (optional), a bottle of bubbly, ice cubes --- combine first two ingredients in large pitcher and stir until sugar disolves; mix in everything except the sparkling wine and ice cubes, cover and throw in the fridge, when ready stir in the bubbly, add ice cubes to glasses and pour sangria in...mmm!)