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Breaded Lamb Chops, Bearnaise
Neatly trim and flatten six French lamb chops, season all around with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Mix on a plate two ounces finely grated, cooked lean ham and four tablespoons bread crumbs, roll chops in flour, dip in beaten egg and then roll well in the mixture. Thoroughly heat a tablespoon melted butter in frying pan, lay in chops one beside another, gently cook for five minutes on each side and arrange on hot dish, one overlapping another crown-like. Arrange six slices of broiled bacon around dish, adjust a curled paper at end of each chop and serve with a Bearnaise sauce separately.
A straightforward breaded chop, with cooked ham worked into the crumbs to season the crust from the inside. Two things need attention: the fat is undermeasured and the cooking time assumes a thin chop.
- French lamb chopsRib chops with the bone scraped clean for an inch or two, sold as "frenched" rib chops or as a rack you cut down yourself. Six chops from a single rack serves three as a main course, or six as a first course.
- Flatten with carePound the meat of the chop to about half an inch between sheets of plastic, working from the centre out and keeping the bone clear. An unflattened 1-inch chop will not cook through in the time given, and a bruised, torn one loses juice into the pan.
- The hamAny cooked lean ham will do; grate or pulse it very fine so it binds with the crumbs rather than falling off in shreds. It is already salty, so cut the teaspoon of salt back to about half.
- Bread crumbsDried fine crumbs, not fresh soft ones. Fresh crumbs hold too much moisture and steam rather than crisp. Press the coating on firmly and let the chops rest 10 minutes before frying so it sets.
- One tablespoon of butter is not enoughFor six breaded chops in one pan you want 3 to 4 tablespoons of fat, and butter alone will darken before the meat is done. Use clarified butter, or half butter and half neutral oil, over medium heat.
- Time and temperatureFive minutes a side is right only for a chop pounded thin. Lamb is at its best at 130-135F in the centre for medium-rare to medium; check with an instant-read thermometer at the thickest point away from the bone and pull the chops early rather than late.
- Curled papersPaper frills, or papillotes, slipped over the exposed bone. Purely decorative and safely skipped.
- Bearnaise, served separatelyNo recipe is given here: it is an egg-yolk and butter emulsion finished with a reduction of vinegar, shallot and tarragon. Keep it barely warm in a warm bowl or thermos; too much heat curdles it and cooling stiffens it and may split it, and it does not reheat well.
Breaded chops finished with a paper frill and a separate boat of bearnaise belong squarely to the restaurant grammar of the late nineteenth century, when the French kitchen supplied the vocabulary for hotel and club cooking across Europe and America. The ham-and-crumb coating is a version of what French cooks called a la milanaise when cheese was used and a la maréchale or similar when it was not: a device for giving a plain grilled cut a crust, a colour and a name. Bearnaise itself is generally traced to the Pavillon Henri IV at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the 1830s, its name often said to be a nod to Henri IV of Béarn. Presenting the chops overlapping "crown-like" with bacon around the edge reflects the period's insistence that a dish be built on the platter, not on the plate.