Home › Sauces and Meats › Lamb with Peas
Lamb with Peas
(Agnello ai piselli) Take a piece of lamb from the hind side, lard it with two cloves of garlic cut in little strips and with some sprigs of rosemary. Chop fine a piece of lard and a slice of corned beef. Put the lamb on the fire with this hash and a little oil and let it brown after seasoning with salt and pepper.
When it is browned add a piece of butter, some tomato sauce, or tomato paste dissolved in water or soup stock and complete the cooking. Take away the lamb, put the peas in the gravy, and when they have simmered a little and are cooked put back the lamb and serve. 79
A stovetop braise of one piece of lamb, finished by cooking peas in the pan juices. The instructions assume a cook who knows how long a leg takes; the notes below fill in the numbers the original leaves out.
- The cut"A piece of lamb from the hind side" means a chunk off the leg, typically 2 to 3 lb, bone in or boned and tied. Shoulder works and is more forgiving, though it needs longer.
- Larding with garlic and rosemaryThis is not larding with fat but studding: pierce the meat with a thin knife and push slivers of garlic and short rosemary sprigs deep into the slits. Doing it before browning matters, since surface garlic scorches in the pan.
- "Lard" and "corned beef"The "piece of lard" is fresh pork fatback or salt pork, chopped to a paste with the knife. The "slice of corned beef" translates an Italian salt-cured meat, and pancetta or prosciutto scraps give the intended result; American canned corned beef does not.
- SaltWith cured pork in the pan and possibly tomato paste as well, season the lamb lightly and taste at the end.
- TomatoEither about a cup of light tomato sauce or a tablespoon of concentrated paste loosened in a cup of stock. It should moisten and glaze the meat, not submerge it; a bare simmer, and a lid if the pan is drying out, will see it through.
- Cooking time"Complete the cooking" is roughly 1 1/2 hours for a leg piece over low heat, turning it two or three times, until a fork slides in easily. Add stock or water if the pan threatens to dry out.
- The peasThe hinge of the dish. Fresh shelled spring peas want 8 to 10 minutes in the gravy; frozen peas want 3 or 4 and will collapse if given the full simmer implied here. The lamb goes back only to reheat and carry its juices into the peas.
- ServingFeeds four to six. Carve at the table or slice and spoon the peas and gravy over; bread or plain boiled potatoes suit it better than pasta.
Lamb with peas is spring food, and in Italian home cooking the pairing is often treated as almost calendrical: young lamb and the first shelled peas arrive together around Easter, and versions of agnello ai piselli in more or less this form are associated with Rome and the south. The technique here is the ordinary Italian pot roast, stufato or in casseruola, browned in a battuto of chopped cured pork and fat and then held at a simmer on the stovetop rather than roasted, stovetop cooking being usual where oven access was limited. The book itself is a 1919 English rendering credited to Maria Gentile, aimed at American cooks curious about Italian food, and the awkward "slice of corned beef" is most likely a translator's shot at an Italian salt-cured meat with no tidy English name.