I wrote some time ago that I would use this column to make progress on my forthcoming funeral-food book, “Dishes to Die For.” I haven’t done much of that lately, but here I go.
One of the features of the book will be recipes from people I have known who are now dead. There seem to be more and more of these as the years go by. This week, I’m writing about Jerry Sternstein of Hawley, who died last November at the age of 92. Jerry’s family recently organized a memorial service and party to pay tribute to him.
I met Jerry in 1998, shortly after he and his wife, Trina, moved permanently to Hawley, settling on property that had been in Trina’s family for generations. I actually heard of him before I met him. The UPS driver kept me informed about the new resident’s growing garden. According to the guy in the brown uniform, Jerry had a new rhododendron bush delivered almost daily for at least a month.
When I finally met Jerry, I was instantly impressed by his big personality. He was funny. He was smart. He was talkative. He was argumentative to a fault. He was also generous to a fault, particularly in the kitchen.
Jerry loved food and cooking. During his lengthy tenure as a history professor at Brooklyn College, he even initiated a course on the history of gastronomy. He owned — and had practically memorized — the contents of more than 600 cookbooks.
I should note at the outset that Jerry was not a fan of my food writing. He did, however, adore my singing voice. He was convinced that I belonged on Broadway. In fact, the family asked me to perform my signature tune, “Find Me a Man I Can Cook For,” at the memorial party. So, while Jerry liked me as a singer and a person, he just didn’t usually care for my recipes, which tend to be simple.
As Trina recalled at his memorial service, Jerry liked to work on — and induce her to work on — recipes that could take days to prepare. Although we didn’t agree on how long a dish should take to make — I never want to spend days on a single creation — we enjoyed sampling each other’s food. He savored the succotash recipe I inherited from my mother, basic as it was, even if he didn’t take it as proof that food doesn’t have to be complicated. And I never ate anything at the Sternstein household that was less than tasty.
In his later years, Jerry discovered the joys of ordering food online. He spent untold sums on things like ham from Iberia and French bread — real French bread, shipped directly from France. One of our neighbors theorizes that this penchant may have stemmed from Jerry’s youth. He and his two sisters lived with a single mother in a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, where money and treats were scarce. As an older person with money to spend, he was probably making up for his impoverished childhood.
Jerry and I did agree on the value of cooking with food that is fresh and high in quality. He grew a bevy of vegetables and fruits in which he took justifiable pride. And although he had a tendency to order certain meats from faraway purveyors, he also patronized local farms.
More than a decade ago, he shared a recipe for local meat with me. I always enjoyed spending time with Erwin and Linda Reynolds of Charlemont, who raised delicious local lamb at their Erlin Farm. The sheep are now gone, and so, alas, is Erwin, but I have happy memories of the care with which the pair treated their livestock. I was always interested in figuring out what to do with their meat.
Erwin called me in the spring of 2012 to say he had sold several cuts of lamb to the Sternsteins.
“You should get Jerry to tell you when he’s cooking something,” said Erwin.
I ran into Jerry at our local general store one Saturday afternoon and told him about Erwin’s call.
“I’m cooking lamb right now,” said Jerry. “Come to dinner tonight.”
That evening, I joined Jerry, Trina and two charming out-of-town guests for delicious lamb and lively conversation about food, taxes, art, Paris, politics and weddings, among other things. Jerry was a historian and Trina is a painter. As a couple, they loved France and French food, so Jerry’s lamb dish was was definitely influenced by French cuisine. It was amazingly tender, thanks to Erwin’s care of the lambs and Jerry’s careful, slow cooking. Each ingredient kept its own flavor while merging just a tiny bit with the others.
I recommend the dish highly. It has quite a few steps — as I mentioned, Jerry relished complicated recipes — but the only truly difficult part is trimming the fat from the lamb. I wish I could tell you how to replicate the evening’s lively conversation, but you’re on your own there.
I’ll probably be back to talking about Jerry in the fall, when I hope to feature his pumpkin pie recipe. Meanwhile, here is the lamb. You can’t purchase your meat from Erlin Farm anymore, but a number of local farmers still care for their sheep and produce succulent, local meat.
Lamb à la Jerry
Ingredients:
3-1/2 pounds boned, trimmed lamb shoulder, cut into 2-inch cubes (it will weigh more before it is boned and trimmed of fat.)
4 tablespoons canola oil
1 tablespoon sugar plus another teaspoon later
1/4 cup flour
2 to 3 cups beef broth or water or a combination of the two
(If you use the water, add 3 onions, roughly chopped, and 3 carrots, roughly chopped, to it.)
1 cup crushed tomatoes
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 bouquet garni (4 to 5 sprigs parsley, 1 bay leaf, and several sprigs of thyme, all tied together with string)
1 teaspoon kosher salt (2 teaspoons if you’re using water instead of broth)
5 to 6 turns of a pepper mill
6 to 10 small potatoes
4 carrots, quartered lengthwise and cut into 2-inch pieces
4 turnips, quartered
12 to 16 small onions (about 1-1/2-inch thick)
1 cup cooked and peeled fava beans (optional)
1 cup barely cooked peas (optional)
1 cup barely cooked snow peas (optional)
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Sauté the lamb pieces in the oil in a sauté pan over high heat until the meat begins to brown nicely on the outside, about 5 minutes.
Remove the meat from the oil and place it in a 4- to 5-quart stove-proof casserole dish or Dutch oven.
Add the first tablespoon of sugar. Stir it around over a medium-high flame until it caramelizes (about 4 minutes). Add the flour and place the whole mixture in the oven for about 4 minutes, until it gets brown and crusty.
Remove the pan from the oven. Add the liquid (and the extra vegetables if you are using the water). Add the tomatoes, the garlic, the bouquet garni, the salt, and the pepper.
Return the casserole to the oven and bake it, covered, for 1 hour.
Remove the pot from the oven. Remove the meat. Strain (and reserve) the liquid. Skim the grease from the liquid. (This is easiest to do if you have time to let it cool so that the fat will rise to the top.)
Return the meat and the strained liquid to the pot, mixing them well. Add the potatoes, carrots, and turnips. Return the pot to the oven and cook, covered, for another hour.
While it is in the oven cook the onions. Peel them and cut a small “X” on the bottom of each. Place them in a small sauté pan with the second teaspoon of sugar. Cook, stirring, for 3 to 4 minutes.
Cover the onions with water. Cook, covered, for 20 minutes. Drain them and set them aside.
When the lamb has cooked, add the onions and the peas and/or beans and/or snap peas. Taste for seasoning, and add more salt and pepper if they are needed. Top with parsley.
Serves 6 to 8.
Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning cookbook author and singer known as the Diva of Deliciousness. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.