c/o Gemmarosa Ryan, Food Editor

I get to campus a week early. My thesis demands my attention. It’s 20 degrees Fahrenheit and there’s not a soul around. Weshop is closed, so I must make do with my haphazard Trader Joe’s run and the contents of my freezer. There are two pounds of lamb stew from last semester’s meat co-op, two large bulbs of fennel, and a bag of parsnips. I start to piece together what I could make, slowly arriving at the soundest conclusion: ragù. I’ll throw it together in the morning, and when I return from my solitary Olin excursion, I’ll just have to get the pasta water to a boil. Nothing is more comforting after a long day of academic toil.

Chef G’s Lamb Ragù With Parsnips, Fennel, and Dill

Ingredients

Serves 6–8

• 1 and 1/2–2 pounds lamb (stew meat)
• Kosher salt
• Black pepper
• Olive oil
• 1 bulb of fennel
• 1 large parsnip
• 1 white onion
• 1/2 bunch dill
• 1 cup white wine
• 3–5 cups chicken broth
• Pasta of choice

Instructions

1. Season your lamb with salt and pepper (roughly 1 teaspoon kosher salt per pound of lamb). This is preferably done the night before, or a few hours before cooking.
2. Preheat oven to 275 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. In a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat, add olive oil. When hot, sear the lamb in batches, taking care not to overcrowd the pot. 
4. Once browned on one side (3–4 minutes), remove the lamb from the pot and set aside. 
5. Chop the fennel, parsnip, onion, and dill.
6. Add another tablespoon or two of olive oil to the pot. 
7. Add the chopped vegetables, excluding the dill, and season with salt. 
8. Sweat the vegetables until translucent and fragrant (3–4 minutes). 
9. Add dill and cook for another minute. 
10. Using an immersion blender or food processor, blitz the vegetables until smooth. The mixture should be a pale green with flecks of dill. 
11. Add the mixture back to the pot over medium heat. 
12. Add in the white wine, scraping the bottom of the pot with a spatula to release the brown bits at the bottom.
13. Once the wine has evaporated (roughly 2–3 minutes), add the lamb back in with an accompanying 3 cups of broth. 
14. Close the Dutch oven with a lid and place in the oven. 
15. Cook the lamb for roughly 3 hours, or until the meat is tender and falling apart.
16. Check the pot every hour to make sure it is liquid enough, adding broth if the mixture looks too dense.
17. When finished, serve over pasta.

Lewis’ Lamb and Beef Ragù With Fusilli

This recipe was adapted from both Gemma’s initial lamb ragù project and a recipe from Food & Wine, proving the point that recipes, concoctions, and all attempts at creating food are always at the whim of the chef. A recipe, especially one found online, should only be seen as a loose guideline, and the more adept you become at cooking, the more you can experiment. I didn’t have enough lamb stew meat, so I cubed up a strip steak, which I seared along with the lamb. I also had a bunch of half-dried basil that had been in the fridge for a while, so I tied it all up with a rubber band and let it steep in the sauce, taking it out after a few hours. 

Ingredients

• 1 pound lamb (stew meat)
• 1 pound beef, cut into similar-sized pieces
• Kosher salt
• Black pepper
• Olive oil
• Red pepper flakes
• 5 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 large shallots, chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 2 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1/2 cup dry red wine
• 1 can diced tomatoes in juice
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 1/2 bunch basil

Instructions

• Season the lamb and beef with salt and pepper (roughly 1 teaspoon kosher salt per pound of lamb). This is preferably done the night before, or a few hours before cooking. 
• In a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat, add olive oil. When hot, sear the meat in batches, taking care to not overcrowd the pot. 
• Once browned on one side (3–4 minutes) remove the meat from the pot and set aside. 
• Add another tablespoon or two of olive oil to the pot. 
• Add the chopped vegetables and season with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. 
• Sweat the vegetables until translucent and fragrant (3–4 minutes).
• Add in tomato paste and cook for another minute. 
• Add in the red wine, scraping the bottom of the pot with a spatula to release the brown bits at the bottom, and then pour in the tomatoes, crushing up the larger pieces.
• Once the wine has evaporated (roughly 2–3 minutes) add the meat back in with an accompanying 3 cups of broth and the basil package. 
• Stir vigorously, pop a lid on the Dutch oven, and reduce to a medium-low simmer. 
• Cook the meat for roughly 4 hours, or until the meat is tender and falling apart.
• Check the pot every hour to make sure it is liquid enough, adding broth if the mixture looks too dense.

Recipe writing is an act of resilience, confronting a list of ingredients and making do with what you have, your skills, your resources, and your time. No recipe can be replicated perfectly. Recipes demand to be personalized and adapted. Reconfiguration is integral to their reproduction. A cook who strives for imitative perfection is a cook who will never be satisfied, a person who will not know how to weather storms both in and out of the kitchen. Recipes are harbingers of change: they warp and craft time through visible production. To contain a recipe is to try to stunt the flow of time. The sooner we stop deceiving ourselves about that possibility, the sooner we can integrate resilience into our broader approach to life. 

Lewis Woloch can be reached at lwoloch@wesleyan.edu.

Gemmarosa Ryan can be reached at gryan@wesleyan.edu.