The other day I had ordered a leg of milk-fed young lamb at the butcher’s for Easter, but he provided an older and heavier animal and I ended up with 2,5 kilos of meat.We decided to invite four people over for an impromptu Easter Sunday lunch.
Lamb shanks are called “souris d’agneau” in French and are the top end of the leg, which is often sold in slices at the butcher’s. They give nice one-person portions and look pretty with the bone sticking upwards. It takes a long time of cooking and can be prepared in advance. Many restaurants do that in France so that they can serve the dish quickly […]
Man can be cruel. Thousands of years ago man sacrificed animals to honour the gods. We evolved a bit since then, became less barbaric and many people embraced monotheism. Nevertheless, it is Spring, the Christians and Jews celebrate the resurrection of Christ, non-believers toast the end of winter, and what do we do? We sacrifice lamb, we eat (chocolate) eggs…we celebrate the return of new […]
I sometimes buy vacuum-sealed meat from quality providers and put it in the freezer. One of these suppliers is Greffeuile with the Alaiton lamb from the Aveyron region. Here I made a Sunday roast dish of a rolled, deboned, lamb shoulder, with two colours of turnips. I had also bought some herb and lamb sauce made by Michel Bras. But it is also tasty without.
A few months back, during a farmer’s market, I had bought a rack of suckling lamb from a producer in central France. It is called “Agneau alaiton”. The meat was sealed and I put it away in the freezer. With eight ribs, I was waiting for a dinner party to present it.
This is one of those dishes that seems simple but can easily go wrong. Done properly and it is succulent, done badly and it is…well, tough. The quality of the meat is important. Here, I used a leg of lamb we had bought on a farm. I had it frozen and that means you need to get it slowly to room temperature before cooking. Ingredients […]
Yes, the winter seems to have released its grip on France and we even had a good week of sunshine before the sky turned greyish again. The result was noticeable on the town market as fresh seasonal vegetables appeared on the stalls, from French regions and not from Africa or Spain. I had bought lamb chops from a farmer/butcher near Neufchatel-en-Bray in Normandy and combined […]