Every summer since I was a toddler, my family has spent a week at the beach.  Though the location has changed over the years — Destin and Perdido Key, Florida; Gulf Shores, Alabama — it’s always been on the beautiful Gulf Coast, with sand as white and fine as confectioner’s sugar, brown pelicans skimming over the water looking for a meal, and seafood and produce so fresh it was either caught or pulled from the ground the same day we eat it.  Yes, the beach is great, even for a frog-belly-white gentleman such as myself, but it’s always the food I’ll remember, and rightfully so.  To say that my family cares about food is kind of like saying the Manning family cares about football.  Serious understatement.  In fact, this past year we managed to fill two cars to the brim for our one week vacation, and it wasn’t until we’d arrived at our destination that I discovered we’d packed significantly more refrigerator and pantry provisions than actual luggage.  Hey — we can wear the same swimsuit day in, day out, but we’re not going to eat the same meal twice, not if we can help it.

Cooking at the beach — in the early evening with the sun hanging low, a cool breeze off the Gulf of Mexico, and my father dutifully occupying a rocking chair on the deck with his martini, cigar and novel — has always been a particular joy for me.  And for my mother, as well.  As soon as she realized that I was learning how to cook, I was quickly put to work dicing vegetables, rinsing lettuce, peeling shrimp and the like.  Eventually, it fell to me to become the grill man, which is only natural.  I’m the meat guy, after all, and Mom soon came to trust my judgment with the doneness of our marinated beef tenderloin or seasoned grouper fillets, while she stuffed the twice-baked potatoes, steamed Silver Queen corn, sliced baguettes and sauced the broccoli amandine.

On our most recent summer vacation, she trotted out a new recipe that she’d found in Gourmet magazine: Lamb merguez patties with golden raisin couscous.  I’d always been a fan of this spicy, North African sausage, so it was a delightful surprise.  “But you’re not going to squeeze them into a casing?” I asked.  She looked at me with the chagrin only a mother in the kitchen whose judgment has been called into question can affect.  “Scott,” she said, elbow deep in ground lamb and spices, “do I look like have time to make sausages right now?”  With that, I deferred to her expertise (and time management), and made my way out to the deck to sip my Planter’s Punch and check on the grill.

The patties were delicious, of course.  As they say sometimes in the South: “Momma don’t mess around.”  But I couldn’t seem to get around the fact that it was merguez, yes, in all its exotic, savory glory, and yet it wasn’t a sausage.  I thought about this for some time.  “If it’s not in link form,” I later told Mom (after noting how tasty it was, of course), it’s just a meat mixture.  It doesn’t even have to be formed into a patty.  You could bake it in a pan and make a meatloaf.  Or roll it into little merguez meatballs as an appetizer.  I mean, hell, you could even pack the mixture into a cupcake tin and…”

Ding!

Thus was born the idea for Lamb Merguez Cupcakes.  We discussed this on our drive back from the coast to New Orleans.  It was actually kind of neat, now that we thought about it — individual sized portions, like little mini meatloafs disguised as cupcakes.  Would you frost them?  Not with sweet icing, of course - that would be a thousand ways wrong.  Something savory, then…maybe mashed potatoes?  No, we decided, too pedestrian.  How about a white bean puree?  That could work — after all, it’s a classic French appetizer, usually served on sliced bread, and France is known as a haven for some brilliant North African cooks.  Let’s see, what else…maybe decorate the top with some paprika or a few dots of ketchup?  Again, still too plain.  “How about a single grape tomato on top, masquerading as a maraschino cherry?” suggested my mother.  “Now we’re getting somewhere!”

It took some time before this fanciful creation would find its way into existence.  After all, I’m kind of famous for not having a real oven in my apartment, so I had to enlist the aid of my friend Amanda, who graciously volunteered her more than amply stocked kitchen as testing grounds for this novel dish.  Also, it turned out that she had a fantastically heavy cast iron cupcake pan, which was perfect for cooking the meat, since every person would, in effect, get an “edge piece” of the meatloaf.  It was all coming together.

I seasoned the ground lamb — beautiful grass-fed, heritage meat from Marlowe & Daughters (expensive, but I don’t like to sacrifice quality when it comes to my meat…plus, my friends were worth it) — with ground, toasted fennel seeds, coriander, cinnamon, cumin, harissa and garlic, all the flavors and spices you’d expect from a good Moroccan dish, then mixed gently by hand (yes, you can play with your meat too much).  After packing the finished mixture into the cupcake pan and setting it in the oven, I put the finishing touches on the white bean puree, which was a cinch.  All I really had to do was add a can of cannellini beans, some Herbes de Provence, salt, olive oil and lemon juice to my food processor, et voila.  Savory frosting.  Finally, I whipped up the couscous with cilantro and golden raisins, the latter adding some welcome sweetness to an otherwise spicy and rich meal.  I was a little nervous when I removed the tin from the oven, but the lamb had browned perfectly.  Better still, the melted lamb fat reserved nicely in the little cupcake dishes,  much like the galic butter in an escargot dish, which made it easy to baste the little “cakes” before plating.

When all was said and done — and I mean “done”…there wasn’t a bite of lamb left in the house — my friends all declared this little exercise in culinary whimsy a success.  Even Patrycja, who’d claimed that she didn’t care for lamb, and who I invited over by carefully omitting the central protein of the evening.  “Wow, I really do like lamb,” she said after finishing her cupcake, taken a little aback that something she’d avoided for years could be so gratifying.

“Yes,” I said.  “I do, too.  And how!”

Email