I didn’t create this recipe for womp rat stew. Womp rats are small creates that Luke talks about bullseyeing growing up on Tatooine. According to the Star Wars Wiki, the dish is sometimes called mystery stew and was served at Jun Seros‘ diner in Mos Eisley, Tatooine. But I got it confused with root leaf stew, which I assumed would be vegetarian since it was a dish that Yoda serves Luke and is supposedly made from “yarum seeds, mushroom spores, galla seeds, and sohli bark” that Yoda foraged from the bogs near his home on Dagobah.
But it turns out I mislabeled the dish at the 8th Annual Volk/Watson Christmas Extravaganza. Legend has it that in 1983, in anticipation of The Empire Strikes Back, New York Times food writer Craig Claiborne came up with a recipe for root leaf stew that called for lamb. So I thought the recipe was for womp rat stew. Easy mistake, right?
Whatever the name, everyone loved Craig’s recipe. So here it is:
Recipe for Misnamed Womp Rat Stew (Spiced Lamb with Spinach)
The only thing I changed was that instead of buying cubes of lamb, I had to buy a whole frozen leg of lamb, thaw it, cut the meat from the bones and then cut it into cubes (you can’t get fresh lamb in Newfoundland grocery stores, it turns out). Then I made a stock from the bones (because why not?), left it overnight then removed the fat and then used it in place of water. It made for a much more intensely flavoured stew, but water or beef stock would also work just fine. Yoda was not de-boning lamb on Dagobah. Trust me. I’m very believable, aren’t I?
Oh, and I threw it in the slow-cooker at step 4 for four hours on high followed by a couple hours on low to get me to party time.
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