Lamb Hash

Sounds like a Nick Adams story, but I actually learned this dish from a Basque sheep-herder in western Colorado. They free-range cattle and sheep, in the spring and summer, on the Uncompahgre Plateau, usually without much supervision, but the years I lived there, the ranchers kept a old Basque guy, Ramone, up on the plateau in a small Air-Stream trailer because the State Wildlife people were doing a survey of bears and mountain lions and had closed hunting on those species. Our ranch was the last canyon before the Uncompahgre, so it was sort of an extended backyard, a million acres or so. I'd take him a pint of whiskey and a pouch of chewing tobacco, and we'd talk. I'd accumulated quite a nice little herd of sheep, at that point, and I didn't know what to do with them. They'd just wander off and find a way down into Spring Creek Canyon, and they became mine because no one ever came looking for them. A good part of my cash flow, and I do love cooking and eating lamb, and even, heaven forbid, mutton. The definition of a lamb, at auction, is a sheep less than a year old. Ramone was very old, and toward the end, I'd kill a lamb for him, butcher it out. He had a small Servel gas refrigerator and he could keep meat in a brine for several weeks, some of it he dried. But my favorite was the hash he made from the trimmings and the little bits of meat that cling to the bone. Mince a medium, smallish potato, set it on to fry in a mixture of lamb fat and olive oil, mince up the left-over lamb, half a small shallot, some fresh mint. Form it into a patty right in the skillet. This is best topped with a duck egg and a lot of black pepper. If you have morels, just brown them in butter and pour on top. The wild turkeys eat morels and I reloaded a couple of shotgun shells with rock salt, to put the fear of god in them. Cosset and fettle. Furze. Reading the London Review certainly keeps me running for the dictionary. Not running exactly, stepping over would be closer to the truth. The dictionary table is adjacent to my writing table, but I have to stand up and step over. I stopped at a junk store on 2nd street because I saw a music stand in the window. Got it for $5. It's an old one, and the lips are higher, and I installed it at my left hand and put an unabridged Random House on it. It's heaven. I keep some reading glasses and an LED headlamp right there, on a candle stand I made from a hickory sapling and a couple of slabs. Getting close to perfect here, lamb hash and a dictionary at hand. The birds are going crazy, goddamn Goat-Sucker woke me before dawn, then they all jump in, a dozen melodic lines, and it's another day. B came over and reminded me that he was having a cook-out at his new/old place down the road, so I went and spent a couple of hours with the Richards clan. Spend the evening reading about various extinct languages, refining my imagined migration sequence that ends on Easter Island. I should write this up, because I have all the correct books out, spread everywhere right now. This could be the libretto, for the opera that is on the stage where the actual opera happens. Rednecks drinking in the dead of night. While the basis for the Argonauts is right there in front of you. And tin was like gold, without it you couldn't make bronze. The first big leap, pouring molten metal. Then you want to just get it as hard and stiff as possible. Go ahead, joke. I could have made a fortune, but I choose to let the soft green take the stage. I don't have anything to say. I'd avoid any easier solution. Making hash is about right. You might cast iron.