Special Treats

Lamb is not a meat I grew up eating. It's not commonly consumed in the States, as least not as commonly as is beef. In fact, as far as I can remember the first time I ate lamb was when I met my Australian girlfriend. She's never said as much, but I'm certain feeding me lamb was a test, and if I'd failed, she'd not have married me. Australians, you see love lamb, in fact they love it on a scale second only to New Zealanders. Americans do not. By way of comparison, Australians eat about 13.5 kilos of lamb per capita each year, while Americans eat about 0.3 kilos per capita.

Lamb in America expensive. Part of the reason for this can be attributed to the powerful cattle lobby in the States. They successfully managed to limit subsides and land access to sheep ranchers, thus keeping the price of lamb and mutton hight. This high price eventually creates something of a negative feedback loop: hight price means low popularity, low popularity means low demand, low demand means lower supply, lower supply means higher prices, higher prices mean lower demand.

Lamb in Oz was once cheep. When I moved to Sydney the market price for a lamb was somewhere below $100 for a whole animal. Now, however, eight years later, the price is double that: a result of years of drought followed by catastrophic flooding that has seen sheep numbers in Oz greatly reduced. A look beyond the last decade shows sheep numbers have been declining more or less steadily for at least the past 30 years. In the early '90's there were nearly 140 million head. By 2010, according to the Australian Bureau of Statics, that number fell to only 68 million, the smallest number since 1905. In that same 20-year period, the human population in Oz increased by almost 5 million. Fewer sheep, more people, higher prices.



So, the price of lamb is up. Way up. So far up I can't really afford to serve it in the restaurant, not at a price that would make money. Lamb has become, in Australia, a luxury food of sorts. Where it was once served at home two or three times a week, roast lamb is likely now to be reserved for special occasions. Which is what lamb once was exclusively: a special occasion food. Nearly every country in Europe has a tradition of a spring lamb feast, often around Easter. There was a long expanse of time when this might have been the only lamb one could afford from the flock annually, the rest of the year was punctuated by the occasion feed of mutton.

The the history of sheep eating in Oz is as long as European settlement. A number of sheep – anywhere from 44-70, depending on the source – were brought to Australia on the First Fleet. The morning of February 7th , just one day after the crew and convicts disembarked, Governor Phillip and his officers dined on a lunch of cold, boiled mutton, which, incidentally, as Robert Hughes relates in his history of Australian settlement The Fatal Shore “was completely crawling with maggots, although the sheep had only been butchered the night before.” The flies, if you've never been to Australia, are like nowhere else on earth.

It is with all of this in mind (the bits about tradition and celebration and lamb being a treat, not the flyblown meat part), that brought be to the subject of this week's post. This is what I would consider the ultimate roast lamb meal. It's the perfect combination of comfort food and special treat. It is also the perfect celebration meal for OHC's third birthday, which passed a week or two ago. Just the sort of complicated cooking project I love.



Rare Roast Lamb Rack and Pot Roasted Leg
with Caramelized Carrot Puree, and Potatoes Two Ways

I'm going to break this down bit by bit, more or less in the order you should prepare things, with an aim to have everything ready before you roast the rack. We'll meet at the end and assemble the final dish. This should serve 4 people.

Pot Roasted Leg of Lamb

You do not need a whole leg of lamb for this, I just like the sound of “leg” in the dish description. Any braising cut, actually – shoulder, shank – would do fine. The method below would work for any of those cuts. I used a small cut from the lower portion of a lamb leg.

500g (800+g if the bone is in) braising lamb cut
1 carrot, peeled, cut into large chunks
1 stick celery, cut into large chunks
1 brown onion, peeled, quartered
1 clove garlic, whole
500 ml chicken stock, optional

Heat a medium, heavy-bottomed pot on medium-high heat. Add a tablespoon or two of cooking oil, liberally season the lamb on all sides, and brown in the pot, turning to brown all sides evenly. Remove from the pot. Reduce the heat to medium and add the vegetables. Cook, stirring frequently, until they begin to color and smell roasted and sweet. Add the stock to the pot with the veggies and return the lamb. Bring to a simmer and reduce the heat to low. Cover with a lid and cook, with the liquid just ticking, for 2-3 hours. Until the meat is tender and nearly, but not quite, falling off the bone. Remove from the heat and cool to room temperature in the cooking liquor.

When cool, strain the liquor, keeping the lamb, but discarding the cook veggies (they've given up their flavor). Bring the liquid to a simmer and reduce by half, until it becomes a bit sticky but not overly salty. Strain again and reserve.

Caramelized Carrot Purée

I love this purée. No one ever believes me when I tell them that the only ingredients are carrots, a bit of butter and salt. It's the long, slow cooking that draws out and then concentrates all the natural sweetness in the carrots. It takes time to do it right, but the result is amazing.

4 large carrots, peeled
2 tbsp butter
salt

Slice the carrots into rings, as thinly as possible. I suggest using a mandolin or the slicing blade on a food processor. Heat a heavy based pan on medium heat. Add the butter and, when it starts to foam, add the carrots and a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, scraping the bottom to prevent sticking, for 1-2 hours. The carrots will break up, dry out considerably, and deepen in color. When the mixture is deep orange and richly caramely sweet, transfer to a mouli (ricer) or food processor and purée. It is possible to make this absolutely smooth, but not necessary; I leave a bit of texture in mine. Adjust seasoning.

Mashed Potatoes

I make mash, as I have said before, differently every time I make it. This is because I am usually looking for the mash to play a different role in each dish I make – silky and creamy, fluffy and light, firm and structural. And that's what I was going for here – structural, as I needed a mash that would help hold up the dish, match the carrot purée in texture, and soak up all the delicious lamb juices and sauce without becoming soupy. The problem with all of this theory is that it is difficult to give accurate measurements, as different potatoes will require varying amounts of cram ant butter to be both tasty and firm. Use this as a rough guide.

500 g potatoes, peeled and quartered
100ml cream
30g butter

Bring the cream and butter just to a simmer together. Remove from heat and keep warm. Boil the potatoes until just cooked through – you'll be able to pierce them with a knife or skewer with little resistance. Drain and process through a mouli (ricer). Add about half of the cream mixture to the potatoes and mix until combined. Season, and add enough more of the cream mixture to make the mash moist but not at all slack.

Crisp Potatoes

These are not an every day food. They are bits of potatoes which are first boiled and then crisped up in a pan in a bit of butter. They are creamy on the inside and crisp and butter on the out. I cut potatoes into 6ths and then turn them a bit (trimming off the angular edged with a paring knife). You can skip the trimming step and just use wedges.

3 potatoes peeled, cut into wedges, turned if you like
2-3 tbsp butter

Bring the potatoes to a boil and reduce to a gentle simmer. Cook until just soft through. Gently drain, taking care not to break the potatoes up. Heat a frying pan on medium heat. Add 2 tbsp of the butter. When it foams, add the potatoes (don't overcrowd the pan, work in batches if necessary). Brown the potatoes, turning as needed, in the foaming butter. Keep the butter foaming by adjusting the heat – reduce the heat if it stops foaming and begins to brown, increase the heat if it both stops foaming and sizzling. Butter, in fact, is the perfect cooking medium, it lets you know when it is too hot or too cold by ceasing to foam. You can also keep the temperature down by adding more cold butter as you go. Remove the finished potatoes from the pan with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels.

Roast Lamb Rack

For the love of god if you are going to fork out for a whole rack of lamb, insist that it has all of the fat on it. As the meat roasts, the fat melts and bastes the lamb, keeping it deliciously moist. Stop being so afraid of fat. It's delicious.

8-point rack of lamb

Preheat your oven to 230ºC. Score the fat on the lamb rack in a criss-cross pattern. Heat a heavy-bottomed, oven-safe pan on high heat. Season the lamb liberally on all sides. Add a touch of oil to the pan and, when that begins to smoke, add the lamb, fat side down. Sear until the fat begins to color, flip so that the fat side is up, and transfer directly to the oven. Cook for 5 minutes and then reduce the oven temperature to 180ºC. Roast for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and rest in a warm place for at least 5 minutes. The meat will be perfectly rare to medium-rare.

Bringing it All Together

Rewarm the pot-roasted lamb in the reduced cooking stock on low heat. Make sure the carrot purée, the mash, and crisp potatoes are hot.

Arrange a large spoonful of the carrot purée and an equal-sized spoonful mash in the middle of the plate. Carve a few slices of roasted lamb and place on top. Place a few of the crisp potatoes around. Carve the rested rack into individual cutlets and cross two over the slices of roasted lamb. Drizzle with the warm reduced lamb stock. Celebrate.