French Provincial Cooking (83 page)

If you like, a
béarnaise
sauce can be served with the lamb; in which case you wouldn’t really need the gravy as well, except a little to mix with the beans.

The ordinary English cut of best end of neck can, of course, be cooked in the same way, allowing a little longer cooking time.

Cut 3 or 4 carrots and the white part of 3 or 4 leeks into small dice; chop 2 shallots and a little piece of garlic; skin and chop 3 or 4 tomatoes; in a shallow fireproof dish or frying-pan heat a mixture of olive oil and butter, and in this melt the shallots and 2 rashers of streaky bacon cut into small pieces; add the leeks and carrots. When the vegetables start to take colour put in your little joint—a piece of best end of neck comprising 6 to 8 cutlets, preferably trimmed, partly boned and tied in the French way, as described in the preceding recipe. Let it brown very lightly on each side. Add the tomatoes and salt and pepper (the sauce should be rather highly seasoned) and a bouquet of thyme and parsley. Pour in a teacup of stock previously prepared from the trimmings of the joint, and let it bubble. If a frying-pan has been used for this preliminary cooking, the joint and sauce are now all to be transferred to an oven dish, covered with a buttered paper or foil, and cooked for just about 1 hour in a moderate oven, Gas No. 4, 350 deg. F.: 10 minutes before the end of this time, remove the paper, cut the string from the joint, sprinkle the fat side with breadcrumbs and finely-chopped parsley, and let it brown.

To serve, put the joint on a hot serving dish, pour off excess juice and fat from the sauce, give the residue a quick stir over the fire, and pour it round the meat. A purée of white haricot beans is served at the same time.

Other joints of lamb can be cooked in the same way; in fact, when I had this dish in Nancy it was made with a shoulder of baby lamb, so small that each joint provided portions for only two people—that is to say two people expected still to have very respectable appetites after consuming their fair share of a
quiche.

This way of presenting roast lamb makes an attractive dinner-party dish. The fillet is a piece of loin, boned, rolled in a sausage shape and tied. A good butcher will do it with much less waste than you can manage at home; it is initially an expensive joint, but there is no waste. A 2 lb. piece (before boning) should be enough for four people, and lamb is not at its best cold, so there is little point in buying more than you need in this case. Ask for the bones to be put in with the meat.

Season your meat, sprinkle it with a little thyme, and for those who like the flavour of garlic with lamb and mutton put a clove or two underneath the meat in the roasting-pan, where it will flavour both meat and gravy without being overwhelming. Put the bones round the meat and add 2 soup ladles of water, or meat stock if you have it, and cook uncovered in a medium oven, Gas No. 5, 380 deg. F., for about 45 minutes to an hour, or even a little more, depending on the thickness of the meat. Remove the bones, pour off the juice into a saucepan and leave the meat to brown in the uncovered pan. Pour the fat off the gravy, reduce what is left to a good consistency by fast boiling and serve it separately.

The average weight of an English or New Zealand saddle of lamb is about 6 lb. and should serve at least eight people. Preheat the oven to Gas No. 5, 380 deg. F. Wrap up the joint in plentifully buttered foil, and stand it on a grid over a baking tin. Cook it in the centre of the oven for 1
hours. Unwrap it, turn the oven down to No. 5, or 330 deg. F., and cook it another
hour. Have ready a large cupful of good strong stock made from trimmings and bones of lamb. During the final cooking baste the joint with this. This, and the juices from the meat itself, will then form the gravy. Carve the joint in long thin bias-cut fillets, then turn it over and carve from the undercut. Reconstitute the joint as nearly as possible in its original shape, and serve it surrounded by little potatoes, baby carrots and tender little string beans, all cooked separately and well buttered.

French butchers cut a saddle of lamb shorter than is the custom in England, which makes it more manageable. But this makes little difference to the cooking time, as it is the thickness of the joint rather than the length which has to be taken into consideration.

Carbonnade
is a name usually associated with a Flemish dish of beef cooked in the local Belgian beer. A
carbonnade
of mutton is also a traditional dish from Nîmes in the Languedoc, home also of the famous
brandade de morue,
the Friday dish of salt cod found all over southern France. The Nîmois
carbonnade
is one of those slow-cooked dishes of meat and vegetables which is still, in places where household ovens are rare, sent to cook at the local bakery. Put in as soon as the bread is taken out, while the oven is still very hot, it is left 3 or 4 hours and, by the time the oven is cool, the meat is so tender that it could be eaten with a spoon. This form of cookery is obviously most convenient for people who have Aga or similar cookers, or for anybody who wants to leave the food to look after itself while they are out.

The ingredients for a
carbonnade nîmoise
for four people are 2 slices of mutton or lamb cut from the leg, each about
inch thick and weighing about
lb.,
lb. bacon, 2 lb. potatoes, garlic, herbs, olive oil.

Lard the meat with little spikes of bacon and garlic. Heat a little olive oil in a large baking dish, put in the rest of the bacon cut in strips, put the meat on top, sprinkle it with salt, pepper and thyme or marjoram, surround it with the potatoes, peeled and cut into small squares, and put the dish, uncovered, into a hot oven for 20 minutes. Then turn the oven very low, Gas No. 2 or 3, 310 to 330 deg. F., cover the pan, and leave for 3
to 4 hours. By the time it is cooked most of the fat will have been absorbed by the potatoes, and the whole dish will have a typical southern flavour and smell. Sometimes other vegetables: onions, artichoke hearts, a tomato or two, fennel cut in quarters, carrots or aubergines, unpeeled, but cut into small squares, are added with the potatoes.

Have two thick slices cut from a leg of mutton, with the bone, weighing about
lb. each. Brown them in butter in a heavy shallow pan with a well-fitting lid. Salt and pepper them; pour over about 4 fl. oz. of brandy or
marc
(see page 92) and the same amount of water. Add a dozen peeled cloves of garlic. Cover with paper and the lid, lower the flame, and cook as slowly as possible for about 2
hours. There will only be a little concentrated juice when the dish is ready, but the mutton will be very tender with a highly aromatic flavour. You can, of course, use less garlic if you like, but some there must be. Almost any root or dried vegetables go well with this dish, either braised or plain boiled, or in a purée.