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Lamb Brochettes
Take the skin from a raw leg of lamb; take out the bone, and cut the meat into pieces of uniform size. Put them into a bowl and add 2 shallots, chopped fine, a teaspoonful each of pepper, chopped chives, and parsley, a teaspoonful of salt, the juice of half a lemon, and a grating of nutmeg. Let this steep for two hours, turning the pieces of lamb occasionally; then take them out, and run a skewer through the centre of each piece, larding it with a strip of salt pork; roll in bread crumbs till well covered, and broil for five minutes.
A simple marinated lamb skewer, French in name and technique. The one thing to get right is heat: the crumb coating wants a very hot broiler or grill so it colours in the few minutes the small cubes need.
- Cut size governs the timingFive minutes only works if the pieces are roughly 1 to 1 1/4 inches. Larger cubes will scorch the crumbs long before the centres are done.
- DonenessLamb is at its best pink; pull the skewers at about 130-135F internal for medium-rare, closer to 145F if you prefer it faintly rosy. Cubes this small carry over a few degrees off the heat.
- "Broil" here means direct high heatIn this period broiling was done over coals or under a gas salamander. A modern broiler set to high with the rack 3-4 inches from the element, or a hot charcoal grill, gives the same result.
- The pepper is heavy-handedA full teaspoon of pepper is a lot for the meat off one leg. Half the pepper is closer to modern taste.
- Larding with salt porkCut the pork into thin strips and thread them onto the skewer alternately with the lamb, or lay a strip along each cube. The fat bastes the meat as it renders. Thick-cut bacon is a workable substitute, though it is smokier and sweeter than plain salt pork.
- Crumbs stick better if the meat is patted dryLift the lamb out of the marinade, blot it, then roll in fine dry crumbs. Wet meat gives a pasty coating that slides off on the grill.
- SkewersMetal skewers conduct heat into the centre of the cubes and are the better choice here. Wooden ones need a 30-minute soak and will still char at this heat.
- YieldA bone-in leg of lamb of 5-6 lb yields roughly 3 to 4 lb of trimmed meat, enough for six to eight servings on skewers.
Brochette is simply the French word for a small skewer, and its appearance in an American household compendium reflects the late-nineteenth-century habit of borrowing French kitchen vocabulary for dishes that were otherwise plain grilled meat. The method itself is much older than the name: cubes of mutton or lamb steeped in seasonings, threaded with a fat to keep them moist, and set over coals is one of the oldest ways of cooking sheep anywhere it is raised. The crumb coating and the salt pork are both of their moment; salt pork was a common American larding fat.