I'd planned on something completely different, but as Autumn has come in with a bit of a rush this year I changed my mind. So I hope you've no objection to gigot d'agneau boulangère, which has much to recommend it - apart from the fact that it's lamb, which should be enough in itself for any right-minded person, it's relatively quick and definitely simple. And although it's not absolutely required, you can also use white wine instead of water, which more or less obliges you to open another bottle.
Start off with a 1kg leg of lamb. I could do a shameless plug for the New Zealand product here but will refrain, get what you can. Do remember to defrost it first, and leave enough time for it to be done completely - I recall going up to Pesselière for the traditional family Christmas some years ago with two frozen legs of lamb in the boot of the car, thinking that after the five-hour trip and a day in the cellar they'd be fine. I was wrong. It must have been pretty close to freezing in the boot, and the cellar was a balmy 8°C or so. We did not eat lamb on the day initially planned - luckily, as every year, the place was bursting with food and swapping menus around was not a problem. Probably turned out for the best anyway, as it might have been a bit too much after the soup, the oysters, the smoked salmon, the foie gras ...
And thinking of defrosting brings to mind the time I went off to see a client and had a wander in his cold store. Fifty thousand cubic metres at a nice steady -25°C, much of it full of frozen industrial croissants and pain au chocolat. Which were stashed away until called for and then delivered to a supermarket near you, ready to be put on the shelves. Whatever, I'd like to point out that -25 is bloody cold: not only do you lose any notion of your ears after a short while, but after about a minute your jeans become stiff and actually crackle as you move. I'd guess it's the humidity (from the outside air, I'm not saying you sweat) freezing virtually instantly in the weave of the fabric - whatever the explanation it's quite impressive. Kind of gives you the urge to go to Antarctica.
Anyway, now that I've impressed upon you the importance of proper defrosting when preparing food, we can perhaps get on with it. Take as many cloves of garlic as you feel like (say, six or seven), peel them and crush lightly with the flat of your knife. Then insert them into the meat - you can either stab the poor thing with a pointy knife (it won't feel a thing, it's already dead) and put the cloves in the slits, or just use a finger to poke pockets between the various muscles.
Now, having preheated the oven to 200°C, stick the leg into a large flat earthenware dish (or if you don't have one, a good heavy metal roasting dish will do, albeit less aesthetic), pour over 50gm of melted butter, sprinkle it with sea salt, add a couple of tbsp (hell, add a wine-glass) of white wine and bung it all in the oven for 20 minutes.
Those twenty minutes are going to require a bit of organisation, as you will probably want to have a glass or two just to check that you've used the right wine, you'll need to baste the meat once or twice, and you have to get the potatoes ready. Which is not, I admit, that difficult, but it does need to be done.
So, you start off with 1kg of potatoes, peel them and slice thinly. Then peel and finely chop a large onion, ditto another couple of cloves of garlic. Mix the whole lot together. You should have a large pile of feculent on the chopping board, and about 10 minutes to finish your glass and perhaps start on another.
Once time's up, take the lamb out of the oven, put it on a plate and cover with tinfoil so it doesn't cool down too much whilst you spread the potato/onion/garlic mix over the bottom of the baking dish. Which you will then place on a very very low gas flame (no point in cracking the dish, is there?) and add enough white wine (or water, your choice) to come about three-quarters up. Sprinkle with thyme, add a bayleaf or two, and let it slowly come to the boil.
When this happens - which it will, eventually - replace the lamb on top of the potatoes, pour another 50gm of melted butter over the meat, and then put it back in the oven. For forty minutes, no more. During which time you could usefully turn it twice, but that's about all. (The rule is that lamb has to be pink inside: count 20 minutes plus 20 minutes per 500gm. If the lamb is dry and gray because you've overcooked it, there will be a reckoning. One day.)
You now have all that time to bemoan the passing of the bottle, perhaps open another and, who knows, get some vegetables ready? Something like aubergines au trois fromages would be good, and as you have the oven on anyway ... it's not complicated. Cube or slice aubergines (your choice) and fry till golden in olive oil. Depending on the size of your frying pan, you may - evidently - have to do this in several batches. Once that's done, grate about 100gm of gruyère and another 100gm of parmesan, cube 200gm of feta or curd cheese.
Now just put a layer of aubergine in a baking dish and sprinkle with cheese. Repeat the performance until it's all gone, ending of course with a sprinkling of cheese. Then take a small tin of tomato purée, mix the contents with two or three times their volume of water, and pour down the sides of the baking dish, which then goes straight into the oven. Coincidentally this'll take about 45 minutes to cook. Which probably means that you really should have started getting it ready before starting on the lamb. Sorry about that.
Whatever, assuming that time is up, remove the lamb from the oven and put it back on the dish and cover with tinfoil again. We want it to rest, remember, so that the blood gets redistributed evenly around the joint. While that's going on, I'd put the potatoes and the aubergines under the grill so that they go nice and brown and bubbly (you might want to check the level of liquid with the potatoes at this point).
When it comes time to serve, just cut the lamb into thick slices against the grain and down to the bone, then slice along the bone to free the slices. Arrange on top of the potatoes, pour the juices over the top and serve right now. Hot pink juicy lamb = nirvana; cold greasy lamb = blech.
If you're still hungry, you might want to consider raisin pudding with rum - comes from Bocuse, my least-favourite chef of all time but never mind that. Its proper name is Pudding Gaston Lenôtre, and him I like.
At any rate, start off by thinly peeling a lemon (you'll have to make lemonade or something, we only want the peel for this), putting the peel into 25cl of milk and bringing that to the boil. At which point you should take it off the heat and let it cool down. Go have a drink. When that's done and the milk is cool (well, not too hot) remove the lemon peel, add 50gm of cornflour, 25gm of sugar, a pinch of salt and 15gm of butter in small pieces - then bring to the boil, stirring constantly.
If you've ever made choux pastry you'll recognise the procedure - turn the heat down and keep stirring until the mixture forms a soft ball which comes away from the sides of the saucepan. Once that comes about, remove from the heat and let cool for a couple of minutes, no more, then incorporate two eggs one by one, beating very vigorously as you do so. I suspect that this would be a lot easier if you happened to have a Kitchenaid or Kenwood Chef: I do not. The object of the exercise is to wind up with a very smooth, soft light dough.
Assuming that happens, you can now beat in 60gm of raisins/currants, and 1 tbsp of good rum. Then pour it into a thickly buttered and floured (or sugared) mould (charlotte mould, loaf tin, whatever) before putting it into the oven - in a bain-marie - for about an hour at 170°C. Remove, unmould, eat. (If, about 10 minutes before eating it, you melt 6tbsp of redcurrant jelly with 25gm of sugar and then add 1 tsp cornflour mixed with as much rum as you like then let simmer until syrupy, your dinner guests would probably thank you. I know I would.)
Start off with a 1kg leg of lamb. I could do a shameless plug for the New Zealand product here but will refrain, get what you can. Do remember to defrost it first, and leave enough time for it to be done completely - I recall going up to Pesselière for the traditional family Christmas some years ago with two frozen legs of lamb in the boot of the car, thinking that after the five-hour trip and a day in the cellar they'd be fine. I was wrong. It must have been pretty close to freezing in the boot, and the cellar was a balmy 8°C or so. We did not eat lamb on the day initially planned - luckily, as every year, the place was bursting with food and swapping menus around was not a problem. Probably turned out for the best anyway, as it might have been a bit too much after the soup, the oysters, the smoked salmon, the foie gras ...
And thinking of defrosting brings to mind the time I went off to see a client and had a wander in his cold store. Fifty thousand cubic metres at a nice steady -25°C, much of it full of frozen industrial croissants and pain au chocolat. Which were stashed away until called for and then delivered to a supermarket near you, ready to be put on the shelves. Whatever, I'd like to point out that -25 is bloody cold: not only do you lose any notion of your ears after a short while, but after about a minute your jeans become stiff and actually crackle as you move. I'd guess it's the humidity (from the outside air, I'm not saying you sweat) freezing virtually instantly in the weave of the fabric - whatever the explanation it's quite impressive. Kind of gives you the urge to go to Antarctica.
Anyway, now that I've impressed upon you the importance of proper defrosting when preparing food, we can perhaps get on with it. Take as many cloves of garlic as you feel like (say, six or seven), peel them and crush lightly with the flat of your knife. Then insert them into the meat - you can either stab the poor thing with a pointy knife (it won't feel a thing, it's already dead) and put the cloves in the slits, or just use a finger to poke pockets between the various muscles.
Now, having preheated the oven to 200°C, stick the leg into a large flat earthenware dish (or if you don't have one, a good heavy metal roasting dish will do, albeit less aesthetic), pour over 50gm of melted butter, sprinkle it with sea salt, add a couple of tbsp (hell, add a wine-glass) of white wine and bung it all in the oven for 20 minutes.
Those twenty minutes are going to require a bit of organisation, as you will probably want to have a glass or two just to check that you've used the right wine, you'll need to baste the meat once or twice, and you have to get the potatoes ready. Which is not, I admit, that difficult, but it does need to be done.
So, you start off with 1kg of potatoes, peel them and slice thinly. Then peel and finely chop a large onion, ditto another couple of cloves of garlic. Mix the whole lot together. You should have a large pile of feculent on the chopping board, and about 10 minutes to finish your glass and perhaps start on another.
Once time's up, take the lamb out of the oven, put it on a plate and cover with tinfoil so it doesn't cool down too much whilst you spread the potato/onion/garlic mix over the bottom of the baking dish. Which you will then place on a very very low gas flame (no point in cracking the dish, is there?) and add enough white wine (or water, your choice) to come about three-quarters up. Sprinkle with thyme, add a bayleaf or two, and let it slowly come to the boil.
When this happens - which it will, eventually - replace the lamb on top of the potatoes, pour another 50gm of melted butter over the meat, and then put it back in the oven. For forty minutes, no more. During which time you could usefully turn it twice, but that's about all. (The rule is that lamb has to be pink inside: count 20 minutes plus 20 minutes per 500gm. If the lamb is dry and gray because you've overcooked it, there will be a reckoning. One day.)
You now have all that time to bemoan the passing of the bottle, perhaps open another and, who knows, get some vegetables ready? Something like aubergines au trois fromages would be good, and as you have the oven on anyway ... it's not complicated. Cube or slice aubergines (your choice) and fry till golden in olive oil. Depending on the size of your frying pan, you may - evidently - have to do this in several batches. Once that's done, grate about 100gm of gruyère and another 100gm of parmesan, cube 200gm of feta or curd cheese.
Now just put a layer of aubergine in a baking dish and sprinkle with cheese. Repeat the performance until it's all gone, ending of course with a sprinkling of cheese. Then take a small tin of tomato purée, mix the contents with two or three times their volume of water, and pour down the sides of the baking dish, which then goes straight into the oven. Coincidentally this'll take about 45 minutes to cook. Which probably means that you really should have started getting it ready before starting on the lamb. Sorry about that.
Whatever, assuming that time is up, remove the lamb from the oven and put it back on the dish and cover with tinfoil again. We want it to rest, remember, so that the blood gets redistributed evenly around the joint. While that's going on, I'd put the potatoes and the aubergines under the grill so that they go nice and brown and bubbly (you might want to check the level of liquid with the potatoes at this point).
When it comes time to serve, just cut the lamb into thick slices against the grain and down to the bone, then slice along the bone to free the slices. Arrange on top of the potatoes, pour the juices over the top and serve right now. Hot pink juicy lamb = nirvana; cold greasy lamb = blech.
If you're still hungry, you might want to consider raisin pudding with rum - comes from Bocuse, my least-favourite chef of all time but never mind that. Its proper name is Pudding Gaston Lenôtre, and him I like.
At any rate, start off by thinly peeling a lemon (you'll have to make lemonade or something, we only want the peel for this), putting the peel into 25cl of milk and bringing that to the boil. At which point you should take it off the heat and let it cool down. Go have a drink. When that's done and the milk is cool (well, not too hot) remove the lemon peel, add 50gm of cornflour, 25gm of sugar, a pinch of salt and 15gm of butter in small pieces - then bring to the boil, stirring constantly.
If you've ever made choux pastry you'll recognise the procedure - turn the heat down and keep stirring until the mixture forms a soft ball which comes away from the sides of the saucepan. Once that comes about, remove from the heat and let cool for a couple of minutes, no more, then incorporate two eggs one by one, beating very vigorously as you do so. I suspect that this would be a lot easier if you happened to have a Kitchenaid or Kenwood Chef: I do not. The object of the exercise is to wind up with a very smooth, soft light dough.
Assuming that happens, you can now beat in 60gm of raisins/currants, and 1 tbsp of good rum. Then pour it into a thickly buttered and floured (or sugared) mould (charlotte mould, loaf tin, whatever) before putting it into the oven - in a bain-marie - for about an hour at 170°C. Remove, unmould, eat. (If, about 10 minutes before eating it, you melt 6tbsp of redcurrant jelly with 25gm of sugar and then add 1 tsp cornflour mixed with as much rum as you like then let simmer until syrupy, your dinner guests would probably thank you. I know I would.)
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