Recipes

Chosen from British Regional Cooking by Mark Hix, this is a lovely old-fashioned recipe for lamb cutlets.

Serves 4

    60-70g fresh white breadcrumbs
    50g cooked ham, very finely chopped
    1 tbsp chopped parsley
    Salt and freshly ground black pepper
    8 lamb cutlets, French-trimmed and flattened slightly
    2 eggs, beaten
    Vegetable oil, for frying
    Good knob of butter

For the sauce:

    2 large shallots, finely chopped
    ½ garlic clove, crushed
    Good pinch of cayenne pepper
    60g butter
    2 tsp flour
    ½ tsp tomato paste
    2 tbsp tarragon vinegar
    1 tbsp redcurrant jelly
    300ml beef stock (or half a good quality stock cube dissolved in that amount of boiling water)
    40g sliced tongue or ham, cut into thin 3cm strips
    1 small cooked beetroot, about 70g, peeled and cut into similar-sized strips
    2 large gherkins, cut into similar-sized strips
    white of 1 large hardboiled egg, shredded into similar-sized strips

Method

First make the sauce: gently cook the shallots, garlic and caynne pepper in half the butter for 2-3minutes, stirring every so often. Add the flour and the tomato paste, and stir well. Add the vinegar and redcurrant jelly, and simmer for a minute, then gradually add the stock, bring to the boil and simmer very gently for 15 minutes. Season to taste and whisk in the remaining butter.

While the sauce is simmering, mix the breadcrumbs with the ham and parsley. Season the lamb cutlets and pass them through the egg and the the breadcrumbs.

Heat a couple of tablespoons of the vegetable oil in a frying pan over a medium heat and cook the cutlets for 3-4minutes on each side until golden, adding the butter towards the end of cooking.

To serve, add the shredded tongue, beetroot, gherkin and egg white to the sauce, or mix and serve separately.