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Ribs of Lamb, Prentanier
Procure a nice rib of young, tender lamb. Remove the bone opposite the loin. Neatly trim off the meat about one inch from the end bones of the ribs. Cut into leek form two sound carrots and two medium turnips; place them in a small saucepan with one ounce butter, one teaspoon salt and one teaspoon fine sugar, well sprinkled over. Gently cook the vegetables until of a nice light brown colour, tossing them well meanwhile. Lay the lamb on top of the vegetables, and place in a hot oven for fifteen minutes. If by that time it has obtained a good colour, moisten with a wineglassful of white wine, one gill tomato sauce, half a gill demi-glace, adding to the vegetables ten very small, sound, white onions. Cover the pan and place in the oven again for twenty minutes more. Remove from the oven. Dress the lamb in the centre of a hot dish, arrange the vegetables around the lamb and serve.
This is a rack of lamb roasted directly on a bed of glazed root vegetables, finished with wine, tomato sauce and demi-glace. The whole thing runs about 35 minutes in a hot oven, so everything else needs to be ready before the meat goes in.
- What cut to buy"A nice rib of young, tender lamb" is a rack of lamb, seven or eight ribs. "Remove the bone opposite the loin" means taking out the chine bone, and trimming the meat an inch from the rib ends is French-trimming; a butcher will do both, or you can buy the rack already frenched.
- A hot ovenRead this as 425F. The first fifteen minutes are for colour on the meat and vegetables, the second twenty are a covered braise-roast.
- Watch the internal temperature, not the clockThirty-five total minutes at 425F will take a small rack well past pink. Pull it at 125-130F at the thickest point for medium-rare and rest it 10 minutes; a large rack may need the full time, a small one considerably less.
- "Cut into leek form"The carrots and turnips are to be cut into uniform batons, roughly the size and shape of a trimmed leek stem; the recipe gives no dimension. Even sizing matters here because they cook in the same pan as the meat.
- Liquid measuresA gill is a quarter-pint: 4 fl oz (half a cup) in American measure, 5 fl oz imperial, so half a gill of demi-glace is roughly a quarter cup. A wineglassful in this period is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, a quarter cup.
- Demi-glaceA reduced brown veal stock, sold refrigerated or frozen in tubs and concentrated pots. It is there for gloss and body; a well-reduced homemade brown stock does the same job, but plain broth will leave the sauce thin.
- The panUse an ovenproof sauté pan or shallow braiser wide enough to hold the rack flat on the vegetables, with a lid. If the pan is crowded the vegetables steam instead of browning.
- The onions go in lateThe ten small white onions are added only with the liquid, for the covered twenty minutes. Peeled pearl or small cipollini onions work; they need that much time and no more or they collapse.
- YieldA seven- or eight-rib rack with this quantity of vegetables serves three, four if the ribs are large and there is a substantial first course.
"Prentanier" here is printanier, French for "of the spring" — the classical garnish name for young carrots, turnips and small onions turned to neat shapes and glazed in butter and sugar, the vegetables a kitchen garden gave up first in the year. The printanier garnish was long established in professional French practice, and a rack of lamb was a natural partner: spring lamb and spring vegetables arriving together. The instruction to roast the meat directly on the vegetables, then moisten with wine, tomato sauce and demi-glace, assumes a kitchen with those two sauces already standing in the larder.