mary had a little --

I feel as if I have won the lottery.

The meat lottery, that is.

Cooking in Mexico offers a lot of possibilities. Plenty of fresh vegetables. Lots of starch choices. And some of the best chicken and pork I have ever tasted. It is true that local beef can be a bit tough and stringy by northern standards, but once I learned how my neighbors cook theirs, beef became an occasional, if rare, addition to my dishes.

The only meat I have missed is lamb. I came late to the Lamb Fan Club. The first time I tasted it was on the second day of my Greek assignment. I had been assigned to work with the staff of a Greek Air Force Base on the western shore of the Peloponnese peninsula, and flew into Athens in mid-August 1973. One of my fellow officers (I think it was Joe Desutter) was assigned to drive me across the width of Greece to my new duties.

 The half-way point of the drive crossed the Corinth Canal. The canal itself was an attraction. But Joe introduced me to the prime reason for the stop. Skewered and grilled chunks of lamb sprinkled with olive oil, lemon juice, and oregano. It was like eating little bits of heaven.

Because of its mountainous terrain and lack of rain, Greece is not blessed with a lot of food choices. Goats, sheep, lemons, olives, chickens, tomatoes, onions, artichokes, eggplants. That was about all that was on offer when I lived there. 

But scarcity (and an ancient art of making do) resulted in Greek cooks creating simple dishes that eked out every bit of taste from the chosen ingredients.

That was certainly true for my first taste of lamb. Even off of a small grill at a tourist trap, the meat was juicy and tender. At Corinth, the grilled meat was called souvlaki. In Corinth (the largest city near the base), souvlaki is what we would call a gyros.

For my year in Greece, I ate almost nothing but lamb. In the subsequent years, I have sought it out in restaurants and cooked it frequently at home.

"Cooked" is in the past tense because, even though I have searched for lamb in the part of Mexico where I live, I have come up empty-handed. With one exception. About six years ago, I had dinner in a Mexican restaurant in San Miguel de Allende. The special was advertised as "cordero." It wasn't. It was either mutton or goat. Or one of the oddest-tasting lambs I have ever encountered.

At the beginning of the month, I told you about the pleasant surprise of discovering the expanded offerings of the newly-remodeled La Comer in Manzanillo (going to town). My friend Elke commented on Facebook that I had missed the lamb on offer there. I had.

I remedied that error on my dry cleaning trip to Manzanillo on Wednesday. Sure enough, Elke was correct. There were numerous cuts available, including a 4-pound butterflied leg that I immediately tossed into my cart.

The only down-side was that it was frozen -- as were all the other cuts. It is unfortunate, but I suspect the demand for fresh lamb would leave a good deal of wastage for the accountants to deal with. Thus, the freezing.

Now, what to do with it?

The obvious answer is to grill the butterflied leg, stuffed with garlic, lemons, and rosemary, and eat it sliced with a mix of kalamatas, red onion, English cucumber, and grape tomatoes. I have all of them on hand.

But I have been playing with the idea of cutting off a portion to grind for gyros. I came up with that idea because of a recent exchange on Facebook. A reader wanted to know if there was a shawarma shop nearby. Shawarma, of course, is the middle eastern progenitor of tacos al pastor and the cousin of souvlaki.

I have a rather unorthodox (in every meaning of that term) friend who once celebrated Passover with a seder plate that comprised a pita for the matzah, sliced gyros for the zeroah, dices of onion and tomato for the karpas, shredded romaine lettuce for the maror, and tzatziki for the charoset. He added a boiled egg on the side for the beitzah.

My friend claimed his meal was far more orthodox because the seder is to be eaten in haste while readying oneself for the exodus to freedom from oppression. And what can best represent readiness than a pita sandwich?

He related that his father was not pleased with his John Stuart Mill approach to theology and, as my friend put it, "Did a perfect Tevya impersonation -- right out of the second act of Fiddler on the Roof." His biggest objection was mixing dairy and meat. The tzatziki and the lamb. Father knows best.

If I do use some of my hard-won lamb leg to make gyros, my cooking approach is going to be every bit as unorthodox as my friend's seder plate. I do not have a skewer nor do I have a rotating roaster. What I do have is an Instant Pot that Urvashi Pitre* (my go-to source for all things pressure cooked) promises will produce gyros slices that will make me believe I am sitting in that little taverna at the marina in Glyfada. I just may put her to the test.

Finding treasures here is often like finding them at Costco. If you do not buy them then, they might not be there tomorrow.

I hope that is not true with the selection of lamb at La Comer. Because Steve can have a little lamb. Omar can have a little lamb. And even Mary can have a little lamb -- though that does seem a bit macabre. 


* -- Not to neglect my frequent Instant Pot expert, Jennifer Rose.