Lambs to the Slaughter

(Veggie and Vegan advisory: contains meat lyrics)

We stopped off at a small town to buy some groceries and something for the barbecue. Even though the Mongolian staple diet is meat, potatoes, milk and flour we’ve found it hard to buy meat in the small countryside shops. What meat they all have though is salami and spam (in tins or rolls) and sometimes frozen chicken. The chicken works fabulously on the barbecue; especially after I’ve spiced it up with some chilli, coriander and olive oil.

Anyway on this occasion the shop had no meat but, as we went to get into the car, I saw someone come out of the building next door to the shop carrying what looked like half a dead sheep. We ventured in. The room was unlit; the little light there was was coming in through the two small windows on either side of the door. To the left, on the floor, was a sheep’s fleece and in front of the door was a table. On the table was the sheep. It had been cut up into large sections: the shoulder, the legs, and rib cage were obvious, though other parts were not. Behind the table was a women and to her side was a weighing scale.

We would have loved the shoulder of lamb but it was enormous so we pointed to what was the smallest piece. After some pointing at my body it turned out the part was the neck. Now I should state that Captain and I used to be vegan and vegetarian so our knowledge of meat, now that we’ve turned to the ‘dark side’ is somewhat limited. ‘Lamb’s neck’ – is that good or bad – I kept trying to picture some posh menu – ‘Rosemary scented neck of lamb served with potatoes dauphinois and onion gravy’ perhaps? Regardless of provinence we bought it anyway – at the cost of about £2.00.

That evening, having found a beautiful camp spot on top of a steppe, the heavens opened and a short, yet thunderous, rainstorm passed overhead. Being ever the optimists we thought it would be the only storm that night so decided to barbecue the lamb. Everything went well at first: the four sides nicely sealed and suitably burnt. (We had decided to cook it well-done to be on the safe side). After half an hour we decided to cut into it expecting it to be ready – it was utterly raw inside! So we began cutting it up into smaller pieces to barbecue.

Well it turns out the ‘neck of lamb’ doesn’t have a lot of meat on it: there were bits of flesh; a lot of fat; strange yellow bits and sinew – oh and a lot of bone. We must have managed to carve off about 1/30 of the original piece. This we literally incinerated becoming ever more cautious of the meal ahead. And then the dark menacing clouds suddenly poked over the steppe and the thunder and lightning cracked and the rain drops fell violently. With seconds to spare we were in the seats of the car with a handful of burnt lamb’s neck on the dashboard for supper.

I’ll be honest; we probably only ate a couple of small bits being, by now, utterly paranoid that we had made a huge mistake and would literally DIE of some ‘lamb’s neck disease’ that EVERYONE else knows about – you stupid fools. The biopic ‘Into the Wild‘ kept going around in my head as we sat on top of a hill in a large metal car as lightening and thunder raged overhead: all the time slowly digesting neck of lamb like ‘lambs to the slaughter’………