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Noisettes of Lamb, Matignon
Procure six thick lamb chops and cut off end bones so as to have loin part almost round. Season with a level teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper, and keep on a plate until required. Cut into fine, short julienne strips a small red carrot, small white onion, two branches celery, six well-cleaned, fresh mushrooms, place in a small saucepan with half ounce butter, half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons pepper, a gill white wine, and lightly mix. Cover pan and set in oven for forty minutes, remove, add a small truffle cut in julienne shape and an ounce cooked ham cut in same way. Pour in one and a half gills demi-glace, boil for two minutes and keep hot. Heat a tablespoon melted butter in frying pan, place in noisettes one beside another and gently fry for four minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a hot dish, pour entire contents of saucepan over noisettes and serve.
A restaurant dish written in restaurant shorthand: the garnish does the work, and the lamb is only in the pan for eight minutes. Have the matignon finished and hot before the chops go on the heat.
- Gill and saltspoonA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz), so the wine is 1/2 cup and the demi-glace 3/4 cup. A saltspoon is a scant 1/4 teaspoon, making "two saltspoons pepper" about 1/2 teaspoon.
- NoisettesLoin chops with the rib and tail bone removed, leaving the round eye of meat; they are often tied into a neat circle, though this recipe does not say so. A butcher will do this in a minute; ask for six thick chops.
- The oven for the matignonNo temperature is given because the pan is covered and merely sweating the vegetables. A moderate oven, 350F, for the stated forty minutes will reduce them to a soft, sweet fondue without browning; stovetop over very low heat does the same.
- Matignon means cut fineCut fine -- Julienne here means genuinely fine matchsticks, roughly 1/8 inch square and an inch long. Coarse cuts will not cook down in the time given and the garnish stops being a sauce and becomes a stew.
- Truffle and hamA fresh black truffle is a luxury few will buy for six chops; a teaspoon of truffle paste or a few slivers of preserved truffle carries the perfume. The ham should be cooked, unsmoked and mild -- a slice of prosciutto cotto or boiled ham, not bacon.
- Demi-glaceReduced brown veal stock, thick enough to coat. Good commercial demi-glace concentrate is the practical substitute; a thin stock will slacken the garnish and needs reducing first.
- Frying timeFour minutes a side in butter should give roughly medium-rare on a thick chop, depending on pan heat and how thick the chops are. Pull the noisettes at 130-135F internal and let them rest while you finish the sauce; the hot garnish poured over will carry them a little further.
- YieldSix noisettes serves three as a main course, or six as a small course in a multi-course meal.
Matignon is one of the named vegetable preparations of French professional cookery, a fondue of carrot, onion, celery and often mushroom, cut fine and stewed slowly in butter and wine. Unlike a mirepoix, which is aromatic ballast and gets strained out, a matignon is meant to be eaten, and the version made with ham -- matignon au gras, as distinct from the meatless au maigre -- was used as a garnish or a bed for cutlets, sweetbreads and poultry; truffle appears in richer versions such as this one but is not what defines the au gras. The name is generally traced to the aristocratic Matignon family, in the same manner as Soubise, Mirepoix and Bechamel, though the connection is traditional rather than documented. Its appearance in a general-audience cookbook of this period says a good deal about the era: American hotel and club kitchens ran on the Escoffier-era repertoire, and books like this one carried that vocabulary -- noisettes, julienne, demi-glace, saltspoons -- into households that were expected to recognize it without explanation.