French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [205]
POITRINE D’AGNEAU SAINTE MÉNÉHOULD
BRAISED AND GRILLED BREAST OF LAMB
A very economical meat dish which is, or used to be, popular at the midday meal in French restaurants; it is served as a hot hors-d’œuvre rather than as a main course.
Ingredients for four to six helpings are a breast of lamb, a large onion, a bouquet of herbs, 2 carrots, and optionally 3 oz. of a cheap cut of boiling bacon bought in the piece. For the second cooking: mustard, a large egg, 2 oz. of fine breadcrumbs per side of breast of lamb, melted butter.
Arrange the sliced vegetables and the bacon and the bouquet in a shallow baking dish; on top lay the breast of lamb, neatly divided in two by the butcher. Season it, add 2 soup ladles of water (or meat stock if available). Cover with oiled paper or foil and a lid.
Cook in a very slow oven, Gas No. 2, 310 deg. F., for 3 hours. Remove the meat and leave until cool enough to handle. Pour the stock through a strainer into a bowl. Remove the bones from the meat. Most of them will slip out quite easily and the rest can be eased out with the help of a small, sharp knife. Put the meat on a flat dish, cover with paper and a weighted board. When absolutely cold, slice the meat into bias-cut strips about an inch wide. Spread them with mustard. Coat them with egg and then with bread-crumbs. Leave on a wire grid for this coating to dry and set. When the time comes to cook them put them in the grilling-pan, pour over them a little melted butter and put them in a moderate oven until they are quite hot, then place them under the grill, or better still, on one of those iron grill plates which are heated directly over a gas burner or electric hot-plate. Let them brown rapidly, turning them very carefully. Once should be sufficient. The egg and breadcrumb coating should be dry, crisp, and even here and there slightly scorched with the characteristic black grill marks characteristic of French grilled food. Serve them on a hot dish with watercress, wedges of lemon and, if you like, a sauce tartare or vinaigrette.
Breast of lamb prepared in this way is a wonderfully cheap delicacy for those prepared to take the trouble, admittedly considerable, of preparing it. It is sometimes called épigrammes d’agneau, but épigrammes should really include fried lamb cutlets alternating in the dish with the pieces of breast.
CERVELLES D’AGNEAU AU BEURRE NOIR
BRAINS WITH BLACK BUTTER
To prepare the brains for cooking, first put them to steep in plenty of cold water for a minimum of two hours, the water being changed three or four times. After this preliminary steeping, during which most of the blood will have soaked out of the brains, every scrap of the thin skin covering the brains must be removed, and the brains put back to soak in tepid water, so that the rest of the blood will dissolve and seep out.
For 6 sheep’s brains, prepare a court-bouillon of 1 pints of water, a teaspoon of salt, an onion, 2 tablespoons of wine vinegar and a bouquet of herbs, all simmered together for hour. Leave to cool, and strain. In this liquid poach the brains very gently for 15 minutes. Drain them carefully, put them in a hot serving dish, sprinkle them with parsley, and over them pour 3 oz. of butter cooked in a saucepan or small frying-pan until it is turning deep hazel-nut colour; in the same pan quickly boil a couple of tablespoons of vinegar and pour this, too, sizzling over the brains. This is a better way of presenting cervelles au beurre noir than the more usual system of having the brains ready cooked, and then frying them.
Calf’s brains are prepared in precisely