Leaven

In the beginning of this week, I received one of the nicest e-mails one can probably get. It was entitled 'Leave' and came from my manager: 'you have an excess of unused leave. We appreciate your dedication, but from now on, we would like you to stay home one day a week...'

Since sitting still is not really my thing, from the evening I received the e-mail, I started doubling my sourdough starter (natural leaven) every day and decided to bake a larger batch of Portuguese mountain rye bread today, just like the ladies in Sabugueiro, a village in the Serra da Estrela would do it:

Talking about leave and mountains, I went on a splendid hike in the Magaliesberg mountains the other day:

After a long hike, there is nothing better than a good meal. A Karoo leg of Lamb for instance. I received the nicest compliment about the below recipe from a lady I recently invited for dinner: "Normally I don't eat lamb, but this is simply delicious".

Slowly roasted leg of lamb and sweet potato gratin

Description

This is a perfect dish to serve if you are inviting people for dinner as everything can be prepared well beforehand and is cooked in the oven; this leaves you with a clean stove and kitchen while your guests arrive.

Ingredients

• a leg of lamb (1,2 kg)
• 6 cloves of garlic
• 2 onions
• 1/2 kg potatoes
• 750 g sweet potato
• 400 ml cream
• 150 ml milk
• olive oil or grapeseed oil
• 50 g of butter
• 5 bay leaves
• 3 juniper berries
• fresh rosemary (2 branches)
• fresh hyssop (3 branches)
• ground cumin
• ground curcuma
• dried or fresh savory
• thyme
• dried oregano
• sweet paprika powder
• nutmeg
• salt
• pepper 

Tools

Two oven dishes: one for the leg of lamb and one for the gratin.

Preparation

The night before, mix 5 tablespoons of olive oil with 5 crushed cloves of garlic, a full teaspoon of cumin, a tablespoon of salt, a teaspoon of curcuma, a teaspoon of paprika, the freshly chopped rosemary and hyssop leaves, a tablespoon of oregano, some thyme, the crushed bay leaves and juniper berries and some freshly ground pepper.

Rub this mixture well into the leg of lamb, cover and let rest in the fridge overnight.

Take the leg of lamb out of the fridge 6 hours before serving.

Peel the potatoes and sweet potato and make slices of about 2-3 mm thick.

Mix the remaining crushed clove of garlic with the cream and the milk, season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Place the slices in a buttered oven dish in alternating layers: potato - sweet potato - potato... and poor the cream liquid over it until all the slices are completely covered (if needed, add a little more milk/cream to the mixture) 

Cooking

4 hours before serving, drizzle some olive or grapeseed oil into an oven dish and place the marinated lamb on it. Cover with thin slices of butter.

Place in the lower part of a preheated oven at 180 °C.

Reduce the heat to 140 °C and let roast for about 2 hours. Spread the roughly cut onions around the roasting lamb; they will release their unique aroma to the lamb and the juice. Regularly spoon some of the juice over the lamb to prevent a dry crust.

After 2 hours, remove the lamb from the oven, cover it with some foil and put the gratin in the oven at 200 °C. After 20 minutes, reduce the temperature to 160°C and leave for another 40 minutes. Remove the gratin from the oven, turn off the oven and put the lamb inside to heat it again (25 minutes). You are now ready to serve; if reheating is needed, leave the gratin with the lamb for another 10 minutes.

Serving

Slice the lamb on a preheated plate; it should be beautifully pink and tender; spoon some of the roasting jus over it. Serve with the sweet potato gratin and seasonal vegetables. 

Hints and tips

• Add enough salt to the gratin cream mixture. Taste the mixture; it should be very hearty. Alternatively, replace the milk with chicken or veal stock.
• Use freshly ground nutmeg
• Freeze the remaining meat jus if any is left; it can serve as the perfect sauce for your next roast.
  

The art of frying red meat

If you are reading this paragraph I assume that you are not following a vegetarian or a vegan diet and that you enjoy a tender, juicy steak that is grilled to perfection. Anyway, I promise that I will disclose some of my favorite vegetarian tofu and seitan recipes in the future.

Few disciplines in the kitchen require so much attention to detail and many years of experience as the frying of red meat does. Every cow is different, and so is every piece of meat that resulted from its grazing; hence we can not treat two steaks as if they were exactly the same. What I am trying to say here is that there is no standard formula as the one we know for boiling an egg (and still, we would have to take variables into account such as the size of the eggs, the altitude at which we are cooking, the food the hens were fed (as this will affect the thickness of the shell and the composition of the egg)). Frying meat is more than throwing a steak on a frying pan. The art of frying meat is: meeting the perfect frying conditions.

1 Preparing the meat

Call this my first meat-secret: take the meat out of the fridge at least 2 hours before frying time so it can adapt to the room temperature. Unpack it and put it on a little grill to make sure any blood can leak away in a plate without the meat resting in the blood.  For large portions such as roasts, you can take the meat out of the fridge up to 4 hours in advance. Just make sure the room temperature is not too high and cover the meat with a towel to prevent contamination by insects.

2 Choosing the right tools

Meet secret two: a (usually black) cast iron frying pan with a relatively thin base. Make sure the base is level and choose a pan that is just big enough for the job; there should be no free space while frying, as this will result in burned, carcinogenic fats and smoke.

3 Seasoning

Generously rub both sides of the meat with salt and freshly ground pepper 10 minutes before frying time.

4 Using the correct grease in the right amount

Nothing can replace the taste of real butter, that should not be a secret anymore. Ideally, you should use clarified butter. Normal butter contains approximately 18% Milk solids, and these burn easily when heated, almost as if you were pooring low-fat cream in heated olive oil.

5 Frying technique

Heat the pan very well before you add the clarified butter and before you start frying. After having added a small spoon of butter, immediately sear the steaks by pressing them against the pan. Do not use excessive butter, but rather just enough to avoid meat sticking to the pan. Leave at the highest stand for approximately one minute, then lower the heat so the steak continues to fry without burning. If the temperature drops too much, the meat will start cooking in its own juices; if the temperature is too high, the meat will most likely burn and become dry. Leave the meat frying on this one side for at least two thirds of the frying time. Once you turn over the meat, put the stove on full heat again for half a minute, then remove the pan from the heat and spread a few chunks of fresh (unclarified) butter over it. For big portions, put the meat in a pre-heated classic oven at 155°C until the point where another 5 extra minutes would take it to perfection (= the way you want it). Remove the meat from the oven and follow step 6.

6 Let it rest

Frying drives the juices from the exterior of the meat to the center and the sides. The result of this sudden heat  is that the meat tends to be dry and hard. By letting the meat rest on a warm spot (in the opening of the oven) on a little grill (make sure the meat does not rest on a flat surface), the juices will redistribute evenly over the meat and the meat will become tender.

7 Serve

Serve the meat on a hot plate. Add few fresh grinds of pepper if required.

Enjoy!