Prometheus and the Lamb

Let me tell you a story the Greeks left out. When Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and gave it to man, man rejoiced. It's red! It's hot! Let's stick a pan with some chicken in it and make ourselves a stir-fry! At first Prometheus celebrated with man; months of endless feasts rolled on and on as the party people cooked. As with all new discoveries, the initial excitement lead man and Prometheus to overindulge. In these days before gas stoves with heat adjustment dials and ovens with different leveled racks, meat was thrown straight onto the fire and man thought, "what the Hades? let's cook the shit out of this minotaur steak, just because we can." So they dined on the charred remains of all kinds of animals, and Prometheus sat at the head of the table, and it was good.

Sometime between this Olympic feasting (get it? Olympic??) and the day Zeus finally chained the guy to a rock for eternity, Prometheus was helping out in the kitchen cave and absentmindedly took a bite out of some raw lamb he was butchering. He was shocked. Everyone had been so excited to eat overcooked meat that they had forgotten how delicious meat was raw - it was tender, juicy, earthy, and most of all, tasty. It didn't have that cancerous black crust and it didn't have the consistency of asphalt. What had they been doing? And it was then that Prometheus learned to moderate the fire he had stolen. Touching the lamb with just enough heat to finish rare, instead of grilling it from here to Mount Olympus, yielded a succulent, mouth-watering product that would tempt the Gods.

I tell you this story because S. and I came to a similar realization this past weekend when we made an herb crusted rack of lamb. Fully intending to keep it in the oven long enough for medium rare, we bickered at where to stab the meat thermometer lest we get an inaccurate reading and overcook it. Finally, hunger won over patience. We slipped the rack out of the oven and tapped our feet impatiently as it rested. At the moment of truth, S. carved the thickest portion from the rest of the rack and we peered in. It looked rare. Torn between our hunger and the irrational modern day fear of eating raw meat, we decided to gamble our chances at eating the one unlucky lamb that may have had worms and no friends.

It was delicious.

Herb crusted rack of lamb with wilted spinach and mushrooms:

Unfortunately, days after his rediscovery of rare meat, Prometheus was chained to a rocky hillside somewhere. His punishment for stealing fire was to lay with his innards exposed to the sun and every day about the time when his liver was heated to the perfect temperature, an eagle would fly in and eat it rare.