Home › The World's Kitchen › Balotine of Lamb, Macedoine
Balotine of Lamb, Macedoine
Carefully bone entirely a shoulder of lamb; season with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg. Place in a mortar two skinned sausages, two chopped shallots, half bean chopped garlic, one ounce raw, chopped beef marrow, half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, three tablespoons bread crumbs, one egg yolk, half gill cream, half teaspoon salt, a saltspoon cayenne pepper and a saltspoon ground thyme; pound the whole together for five minutes; then evenly spread this force over the inside part of the shoulder. Neatly fold it up and tie all around. Place in a roasting pan a sliced carrot, sliced onion, sliced leek and an ounce of lard trimmings. Lay the balotine on top, pour half a gill cold water into the pan, spread a tablespoon melted lard over the balotine and set in the oven to roast for fifty minutes, frequently basting with its own gravy and turning it over once in a while. Remove, untie and dress on a large dish. Place a mace doine at each end of the dish, arrange the balotine in the centre, pour a gill hot demi-glace over the balotine and serve.
A boned, stuffed and rolled shoulder of lamb, roasted on a bed of aromatics and served with diced vegetables. The original assumes a professional kitchen where forcemeat, demi-glace and macedoine are all standing preparations.
- The hinge: the forcemeat must reach temperatureThe stuffing contains raw sausage meat and egg yolk, sealed inside the meat where heat arrives last. Fifty minutes may not be enough for a thick roll — take the centre of the forcemeat to 165F, the usual figure for stuffing cooked inside meat, before you untie it, whatever the clock says.
- Archaic measuresA gill is half a cup, so the cream is 1/4 cup, the pan water 1/4 cup and the demi-glace 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon. "Half bean chopped garlic" means a piece roughly the size of a bean — in practice half a small clove.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A roast of this kind wants a moderately hot oven, 375-400F, hot enough to colour the lard-brushed surface without drying the shoulder while the stuffing catches up.
- Skinned sausagesThis means fresh, uncooked pork sausages with the casings slit off — plain seasoned sausage meat, not smoked or cured links, which would throw the salt and spice balance.
- Beef marrowAn ounce of raw marrow, scooped from a split marrow bone, is the fat that keeps the forcemeat succulent. Ask a butcher for canoe-cut marrow bones; softened butter or finely chopped pork back fat stands in, though with less of the gelatinous quality.
- The mortarFive minutes of pounding is there to emulsify the fat and bind the crumbs and yolk. A food processor pulsed briefly does the same job; stop while the mixture is still coarse rather than pasty.
- Lard trimmingsScraps of pork fat laid in the pan to keep the vegetables from scorching and to start the basting fat. Any hard pork fat, or simply an extra spoonful of lard, serves.
- Macedoine and demi-glaceA macedoine is a small even dice of mixed vegetables — carrot, turnip, green beans, peas — cooked separately and buttered. Demi-glace is reduced brown stock; the pan juices, strained, degreased and reduced with a little stock, are the practical substitute.
- YieldA boned lamb shoulder with this much stuffing should serve about six, and carves best in thick slices after ten to fifteen minutes' rest.
Ballotine is generally traced to French ballot, a bundle or pack (itself a diminutive of balle), and the name describes what the technique produces: a boned joint spread with forcemeat, rolled, tied and cooked as a compact parcel, so that every slice shows meat and stuffing together. It belongs to the classical repertoire that French chefs carried into American hotel and restaurant kitchens in the later nineteenth century, where boning, farcing and tying were everyday work for a large brigade. The garnish is named for Macedonia, and the usual explanation — traditional rather than documented — is that a jumble of many small different pieces recalled the many peoples of Alexander's empire. A dish requiring a mortar, raw beef marrow and a saucepan of demi-glace suggests something of the period's ambitions, in which the home table was measured against the restaurant one.