Now he pulled out the paper-wrapped leg of lamb he was going to butterfly and barbecue after smearing it with garlic, rosemary, salt, pepper, soy sauce, and lemon juice. He brought it over to his cutting board, where he’d piled up the ingredients you really didn’t want to refrigerate if you didn’t have to: heirloom tomatoes-green, purple, yellow-bunches of Thai basil, thyme and rosemary, two heads of garlic, a lemon.

He opened a bottle of Chianti and poured himself half a juice glass full.

Grabbing his favorite six- inch carbon-steel Sabatier knife off the magnetic holder on the wall, he honed it to a razor’s edge with his sharpening steel. Then, whistling, he pulled the leg of lamb toward him and started cutting.

Five minutes later, Mickey laid the lamb out flat on the grill and covered it. Then, back in the kitchen, he took a saucepan down from its rung on the wall. He put it on the stove over high heat, throwing in half a stick of butter and some olive oil. In another minute, he’d added chopped shallots, garlic, thyme and rosemary, some allspice, and three cups of the chicken stock that he made from scratch whenever he started to get low. Some things you simply couldn’t cut corners on.

He stirred a minute more, added a cup and a half of Arborio rice and some orzo, then turned the heat all the way down to the lowest simmer and covered the pan. This was his own personal version of Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat, a simple pilaf, but he liked his strategy of first making the kitchen so fragrant that it drew his roommates to the feast whether they were inclined to eat or not.

And sure enough, here was Jim following his nose through the doorway from the living room. “That smells edible.”

“Should be,” Mick said, pouring wine into another juice glass and holding it out for him. “You ready yet for some hair of the dog?”