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Shoulder of Lamb, Turquoise
Remove blade bone from a tender shoulder of lamb, then shorten end bone. Season shoulder all over with teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Heat two tablespoons melted butter in a braising pan, lay in the shoulder and fry ten minutes on each side. Cut in very small square pieces one medium carrot, one medium onion, one green seeded pepper and one pound raw liver of lamb and add to the shoulder, then lightly brown five minutes. Moisten with three-quarters pint broth, two gills demi-glace, and two gills tomato sauce. Cover pan and cook fifteen minutes. Add four ounces rice. Dilute one saltspoon saffron in tablespoon lukewarm water, strain and add to the saucepan; mix well, re-cover pan, set in oven for forty-five minutes. Remove, dress rice, etc., on a large hot dish, place the shoulder over and serve.
A braised, boned shoulder cooked over a saffron rice that finishes in the same pan. Most of the work is in the first twenty minutes; after that it looks after itself, provided the liquid is right.
- The hinge: liquid to riceFour ounces of rice is about half a cup, and it is going into roughly three and a half cups of liquid (1.5 cups broth plus half a cup each of demi-glace and tomato sauce, doubled as written). Some of that reduces during the fifteen-minute simmer and the 45 minutes in the oven, but check at the halfway point: the rice should be moist and loose, not soup. Add broth if it tightens too early, and leave the lid ajar for the last ten minutes if it is still slack.
- Gills, pints and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup. Three-quarters of a pint is 1.5 cups. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, which is a generous amount of saffron and the right order of magnitude for this quantity of rice.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as is common in books of this kind. A covered braise of this size wants a moderate oven, roughly 325-350F, for the 45 minutes specified.
- Demi-glaceA reduced brown sauce built on veal or beef stock, kept as a standing item in a professional kitchen of the period. A cup of well-reduced dark lamb or beef stock, or good commercial demi-glace, does the same job. Skip it entirely and the dish tastes thin and tomato-forward.
- Lamb liverA pound of it, in small dice, is not a garnish but a structural part of the rice. Order it in advance from a butcher; supermarket lamb liver is uncommon. Note that liver diced small and cooked a full hour goes firm and slightly mealy: it becomes a seasoning for the rice rather than something you eat in pieces. If you want it tender, hold half back and stir it in for the last ten minutes.
- Green seeded pepperAn ordinary green bell pepper, seeded. "Seeded" here means seeds removed, not a variety.
- Boning the shoulderAsk the butcher to remove the blade bone and shorten the end bone, as the recipe directs; the shoulder keeps that shortened bone and is not fully boned or rolled. A typical bone-in shoulder of about 4-5 lb is the right size.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; a shoulder of this size will serve four to six, though four ounces of rice is a modest amount of starch for that number.
"Turquoise" is an older French feminine adjective for Turkish. The Turkish i dotless pilav family combines rice with diced lamb liver, currants and pine nuts folded through the grain; the French version here drops the sweet elements and re-anchors the dish with demi-glace and tomato sauce, which is what makes it read as hotel cooking rather than home cooking. The name and the saffron were kept, the technique was French, and the result went onto a large hot platter with the joint set over the rice for the carver to work at the table.