Recipe 26: Lamb, greens and anchovy dressing

Sunday in autumn and it’s time to start roasting meat again! A slight departure from the traditional Sunday roast but with the magical pairing of lamb and anchovy, this is one to savour and repeat. I think anchovy is fast becoming one of my surprise favourite constituent ingredients used in this blog. Adds tremendous depth of flavour. Super tasty!!!

  

This one serves 2.

Ingredients:

125g butter	Salt & pepper to taste
1 onion, thinly sliced	100ml lamb sauce base (see recipe 25)
4 sprigs rosemary (tied together)	For the anchovy dressing
150 cream (double if you can)	150 ml rapeseed oil
Splash of truffle oil (if you can!)	2 tablespoons of dried herbs
2 rumps of salt marsh lamb	1 tablespoon fennel seeds, toasted
2 tablespoons of rapeseed oil (or other lightly flavoured oil)	Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
200ml water	8 salted anchovy fillets, finely chopped, plus extra to garnish
Greens (broccoli stalks are very good but this time I used cabbage – it needed eating up)

 Melt 50g of butter in a pan over a low heat. Add the onion, rosemary and a good pinch of salt. Cover and sweat for 20-25 minutes until softened, but not coloured. Pour in the cream and bring to the boil, reducing until 1/3 original amount of liquid. Now discard the rosemary.

Transfer mixture to a food processor, add the truffle oil (or suitably flavoured oil) and blend until you have a smooth onion puree. Now leave to one side.

To make the anchovy dressing, mix the rapeseed oil, dried herbs, fennel seeds and lemon zest and juice together in a non-metallic bowl. Stir in the anchovies and leave until needed.

Season the lamb with salt and pepper. In an ovenproof frying pan, heat some rapeseed oil and add the rumps, cooking for about 8 minutes until caramelised and brown. Spoon over some of the anchovy dressing, place the pan in the oven and roast the rumps for 5-6 minutes, becoming medium rare-medium. Remove from the pan and spoon over more of the anchovy dressing. Now leave them to rest, covered in foil, for 10 minutes.

Melt the remaining butter with water and cook the broccoli stalks. If using cabbage, steam in a frying pan with a drizzle of fish sauce to add a zingy flavour.

To serve, place a pool of puree on each plate, slice the lamb and put on the puree. Put a little more anchovy dressing on the lamb, drizzle some lamb sauce around the lamb. Add the greens and garnish with anchovy fillets.

Today’s learning:

1. I now know what ‘salt marsh lamb’ is. Check out this description from the BBC’s ‘Good food’ page:

The lambs are born between March and April and live first of all on their mother's milk, then after four to six weeks, grass is added to their diet. They graze on the estuary salt marshes and coastal pastures that are flooded by the spring tides and doused by the sea. The lambs feed on a rich variety of plants and minerals growing in the salt marshes, which give the meat a superb flavour. Surprisingly it doesn't taste at all salty or of seaweed as you might expect; instead the richly flavoured meat has gentle hints of the coastal flora and fauna, such as glasswort, sea purslane, samphire and sea lavender.

I just used lamb shoulder and it still tasted good – just choose some lamb you’re fond of, I think.

2. Broccoli stalks are delicious. I always used to through them away and just eat the florets but the stalks, peeled and julienned are very tasty. No more ‘going in the food waste’ for them. They’re going in my stomach!

3. Onion puree is fantastic. Sweet and amazing!

Recipe adapted from: Kerridge, T. (2013). Proper Pub Food. Bath: Absolute Press.