Le Cordon Bleu - Lesson 8

After my rocky start to this week with my over done Sirloin of Beef Roast (not my fault - just putting that out there!), it was now time to get focussed to to get back on track!  Today's menu was Roast Rack of Lamb, and Ryan has been licking his lips for a whole week waiting for me to come home with this dish.   The rack was served with a Roasting Jus (meaning we're to scavenge any left over trimming and veggies we can afford to loose from our other ingredients to flavour our jus) and a Ratatouille Provençal.

Provençal is a province in the south of France where they like to use seasonal veggies.  It has a warmer climate and egg plants, zucchinis, herbs and lavender can be found there in plenty during summer months.  So today, we're pretending all these ingredients are 'in season' here too.

Our first job was to 'French' the lamb rack.  Initially when you buy a rack (that has not already been frenched) it is covered with sinew, meat and fat all the way to the top of the bones and it takes a good amount of time and somewhat gruesome effort, as well as wasted meat trimmings to get it looking like this.   Lamb rack is a premium cut of lamb, so all the extra bits that we chopped off were used in our jus.  Nothing was wasted, well maybe a bit of sinew and fat, which add nothing but extra grease and be strained off later.

The picture above is Chef's demonstration rack, notice how in this rack there is a large piece of sinew in the middle of the meat.  This is because this is one of the top ribs and the turning into the next cut of meat (separated by sinew), I think it's the shoulder blade.  I was luck to get one of the bottom 4 ribs, where there is now sinew present.  This means less trimming for the jus, but more yummy meat to eat!  So when ordering or buying lamb, ask for the bottom 4 ribs to get more meat for you money!

The ribs were encrusted with a parsley, breadcrumb and butter crust.  We sealed the lamb, layered on the crust with a bit of dijon mustard, roasted it until it was 55 degrees internal temp (this time using my thermometer) and then crisped it up in the salamander.  The lamb then rested for 5 minutes before we served.  This relaxes the meat and prevents it bleeding onto your plate.

Some more interesting facts (skip if you're sensitive about where your meat comes from):  Normal lambs are reared for under a year and are therefore called 'Yearlings'.  Spring lambs are normally reared for 3-5 months before slaughter.  Mutton is meat from a sheep more than 1 year old.  Lambs are not aged by time but instead by the number of teeth they have.

This is Jon, who has his workbench next to mine.  After presenting his lamb to Chef for assessment, he promptly walked back to his workbench, picked up his lamb and ate it!  I thought he was only joking, but no, he ate it all up.  Luckily for Ryan I waited until I was home to share mine with him.

Here is another picture of my lamb with the ratatouille.   For the ratatouille we fried all the ingredients separately in oil, so that there weren't too many in the pot at once, then added them all together with some chicken stock, seasoning and herbs and finished it off in the oven with a cartouche (wax paper shield) on top.

Tip:  Salt is a flavour enhancer, so adding it while you are cooking can help to extract taste from your meal.  Adding it after you have cooked will still help, but will not do as good a job and can just leave your meal tasting salty.

Anyway, today was definitely more successful than yesterday.  My jus was a bit black because I scrapped the sediment off pot with my whisk, but tasted good.  As for injuries, today I had 2 :( One burn on my poor left thumb, from the oven (ow!) and one cut from picking up chopped veggies with my 9" chef knife, and have now learned the hard way why you should instead use a pastry scraper to pick up your chopped items.   Luckily no blood was shed on my knife or food and after a little blue plaster patch up, i was ready to continue on.

I was so exhausted after coming home that I fell asleep around 9pm on the sofa waiting for Ryan to come home from after dinner drinks.  I am starting figure out why you're supposed to do this studying when you're 19!