This morning I sat on The Patio with my coffee enjoying the sunrise, but with a gut full of anxiety. I’m waiting on our combine mechanic to arrive to diagnose a “simple” electrical issue with our new-to-us grain head. While I was sitting there, my thoughts went back to an evening of solo cooking two months ago.
That evening I cooked burgers from scratch while my conversations with Dale Durchholz, Sean Arians, and Karl Shlagel were still fresh in my mind. We had talked about ingredients, the consumer, food changes, and the lack of cooking knowledge in many people.
Here is the part I did not expect to admit. I raised the lamb. I know what it ate, I know who processed it, and I had two pounds of it sitting in front of me. I knew what to do with it: salt, pepper, patties, grill. But I wanted something more. I wanted something that complemented the meat and gave it the flavor all the work we put into that lamb deserved.
That sounds awfully touchy-feely, I know.
So I asked for ideas from Iris, my Claude Sonnet AI interface. I started with parsley and maybe bacon bits. The bacon got a no, since lamb is already rich enough. The parsley came straight from our herb garden right outside the back door, and I added a few sprigs of mint from the same spot. Red onion, minced fine. Worcestershire. Then I asked whether the garlic could stand in for salt. It can’t. Garlic is flavor and salt is seasoning, and those are two different jobs. I pressed the garlic instead of mincing it so it would spread through the meat, and I cracked pepper from the mill.
I made five big patties for brioche buns. They shrank more than I expected, because that is the fat, and with home-raised lamb I don’t get to pick the ratio. I crumbled feta on top for the last few minutes, and they turned out good.
Everyone I talked to that week was circling the same thing. People want to know where their food comes from. Plenty of them are also unsure what to do with it once it’s in the kitchen. I was standing in the middle of both, wanting to do right by something I had raised.
The mechanic still hasn’t pulled in. Some things I can fix with a question and a little salt. Others I have to wait on.
