Home › The World's Kitchen › Emince of Lamb, Charcutiere
Emince of Lamb, Charcutiere
Cut all the meat off leg of lamb left over from yesterday, slice it very fine and keep on a plate. Thoroughly heat two tablespoons good melted lard in a saucepan, add two finely sliced onions and two ounces raw lean bacon cut in very small square pieces, then nicely brown for ten minutes, stirring once in a while. Dredge in two tablespoons flour and briskly mix while heating for two minutes. Pour in a gill broth and one gill demi-glace, mix well until it comes to a boil, then add lamb, with ten finely sliced pickles, a half teaspoon each freshly chopped parsley and salt and three saltspoons pepper. Mix well, let gently cook for ten minutes, pour into a hot dish and serve.
A leftovers dish built on a charcutière-style sauce. The whole thing hangs on the last step: the lamb is already cooked, so it is only being warmed through in the sauce.
- The hinge: keep the lamb thin and briefSlice the cold roast against the grain as thinly as you can manage, and give it only the ten minutes stated, at a bare simmer. Cooked lamb held longer, or at a boil, goes grey and stringy.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. So the sauce base is 1 cup of liquid total, half broth and half demi-glace.
- Demi-glaceReduced brown sauce, thick and glossy, sold refrigerated in tubs or as concentrate. If you have none, use a further gill of well-reduced brown stock and accept a thinner result; the two tablespoons of flour will still bind it.
- SaltspoonA quarter teaspoon. Three saltspoons is about 3/4 teaspoon of pepper, which is assertive but correct for this sauce.
- The picklesTen small sour pickles, cornichons or gherkins in vinegar brine, not sweet or bread-and-butter pickles. Sugared pickles will make the sauce cloying. A teaspoon of Dijon stirred in off the heat is the usual finish for a charcutière and is implied by the style, though this version omits it.
- Lard and baconTwo tablespoons lard is roughly 25 g; butter or oil works in its place. The bacon should be unsmoked and lean if you can get it, since heavy smoke dominates the sauce.
- Browning the rouxTen minutes for the onions and bacon means real colour, and the flour then wants its two minutes to lose the raw taste. Do not rush either or the sauce tastes pasty.
- YieldThe meat off one leg of lamb varies widely; figure on 1 to 1 1/2 lb of cooked meat, serving four, with rice, mashed potato or plain boiled potatoes.
Émincé simply means finely sliced, and in professional French kitchens it names a whole family of dishes for using up yesterday's roast: thin slices of cooked meat reheated in a sharp sauce. Sauce charcutière is a Robert sauce, brown sauce with onion and mustard, finished with julienned sour gherkins; the name points to the charcutier, the pork butcher, and the sauce is traditionally associated with pork chops before being borrowed for beef and lamb.