26 December 2011

Helmer/Helmina

My friend Patsy has a sister who has a boyfriend who is a hobby farmer of sorts. Not sure exactly how that works, but they have about a dozen lambs every year, which they kindly distribute amongst friends and this year, I was one of the very lucky ones to receive the mail about the lambs.

This is a first for me and in the excitement I have been spamming Patsy with e-mails about when the lambs would arrive. It felt like the waiting was forever, but they did arrive in the end and I got myself one and filled up both my parents' and my Sister's freezers with the thing. Everything was quite civilized and the lamb arrived cut up into pieces or minced and in bags and frozen. What I couldn't find out is if it was a boy or a girl, but apparently they are all called Helmer or Helmina respectively. Perhaps for the best.

So on Lundulph's first visit after this marvellous event, I took out a bag of beautiful chops and my Mum dug out a new recipe book, which she believes to be Greek, but which actually just has a collection of fairly simple and rather tasty sounding recipes. The one I selected was called Lamb Cutlets with Rosemary. But my personal opinion is that if you are putting lamb and rosemary together, then there is no way you can skip the garlic. So I added that too.

Ingredients

2 chops per person
garlic - about 1 tsp pressed garlic per chop
olive oil for frying
fresh coarsely chopped rosemary leaves, about 2 tsp per chop
salt, pepper
dry white wine
squeeze of lemon

Method
  1. Turn on the oven to around 80 degrees C and place an oven-proof dish with a lid to warm up.

  2. Place the chops on a plate and rub with garlic and press in the rosemary, 1 tsp per chop per side, and let stand for 15 - 20 minutes.

  3. Heat up a little olive oil on high in a pan and put the chops in, but don't crowd them.

  4. Turn the chops over when they have a bit of colour and season with salt and pepper. Depending on how thick they are and how done you want them, you may need to turn them a few more times.

  5. Moments before removing the chops from the pan, pour a little white wine over each, perhaps about a tbsp or so.

  6. Remove the chops and put in the oven-proof dish to keep warm while you do the next batch. Squeeze a little lemon before putting the dish back in the oven.

  7. When all the chops are done, pour some more white wine to deglaze the pan, and bring to the boil to reduce the liquid and concentrate the flavours. If too thin, stir a tsp of cornflour in cold water and add to the gravy, it should thicken up pretty quickly.


With these wonderful chops, we had baked potatoes and salad.

I was intending to take a photo, believe me, I had my camera ready and everything, but it smelt so nice, once everything was served we all just tucked in.

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