Casseroled Lamb Cutlets with Garlic Mash

A very Happy Halloween to you all! Thank you to all of those who have commented in various different ways upon the Halloween recipe suggestion I shared on this blog a few days ago, my Fiendishly Hot, Gruesomely Garlicky, Halloween Ghoulash. I hope that you have had a chance to try it out for yourself, or are perhaps doing so tonight, and that you enjoy it every bit as much as I did. Today's recipe is another one featuring garlic, to help keep those Halloween vampires at bay, but in a considerably more subtle fashion than its predecessor...

Ingredients per Person

3 small lamb cutlets
1 small white onion
1 small carrot
2 medium potatoes
1 pint of fresh chicken stock
Pinch of dried mint
1 clove of garlic
2 tbsp frozen peas

Method

Put your oven on to preheat to 325F/170C/Gas Mark 3. Peel the onion and quarter it and scrape and roughly chop the carrot. Add them to a large casserole dish and lay the lamb cutlets on top. Scatter the mint over the lamb and pour over the (heated) chicken stock. Put the lid on the dish and place it in the oven for one and a half hours.

The potatoes should be peeled, roughly chopped and put on to a high heat in some cold water around half an hour before the lamb is due to come out of the oven. When the water begins to boil, the heat should be reduced to let it simmer until the lamb is ready. The lamb should be removed from the oven and the potatoes drained. The garlic clove should be peeled and grated before being added to the potatoes with around a tablespoon of the lamb stock. The potatoes should be mashed, spooned on to a plate and arranged in a mound to support the lamb cutlets as shown.

The frozen peas take only two to three minutes to cook in boiling water and should be started when the lamb and potatoes are ready and being arranged for the plate. The lamb cutlets should be gently leaned against the mashed potato and the peas arranged alongside. Some of the carrot and onion from the lamb stock can be added as additional garnish if desired.

Pork and Leek Sausages with Garlic, Coriander and Sun Dried Tomato Mash

Sausage and mash? Have I lost all my inventiveness? Am I now resorting to including on this blog blase meals from my childhood?

Hopefully you will see from the photograph to the right alone that this recipe is not just for any old bangers and mash! This is a recipe incorporating high quality, high meat content pork and leek sausages, with mash which has more than just a little bit of a twist and a lightly poached egg just to round it off. I very much hope that you will try it out - or at least a similar version of it - for yourself.

The recipe described below is for one person.

Ingredients

4 pork and leek sausages
2 large potatoes
1 egg
1 clove of garlic
4 pieces of sun dried tomato (about 2 tsp when chopped)
2 tsp freshly chopped coriander/cilantro (plus a little bit extra for garnish)
Sunflower oil
White wine vinegar
Pinch of paprika for garnish

Method

There is often much argument surrounding how best to cook sausages. The way I do it is to cook them in a little oil in a frying-pan on as low a heat as is possible. This will prevent them from bursting as you should never prick sausages prior to cooking them. This serves only to allow the juices (thus the flavour and moisture) to escape and for the sausages to be served like something akin to hot, dry, tasteless sawdust in dried out, wrinkled skins.

The sausages should therefore be the first item to be put on to cook. When they are gently sizzling in the pan - to be turned occasionally - the potatoes may be peeled, chopped and added to a pan of boiling, salted water to simmer for around twenty-five minutes until moderately soft.

A large pan of water with a little white wine vinegar in it should then be brought to the boil for poaching the egg. When the water has reached a rolling boil, it should be stirred carefully but firmly to create a whirlpool effect, in to the centre of which the raw egg should be carefully deposited to cook, before the heat is reduced and the potatoes are drained and mashed.

It is important to drain and mash the potatoes before adding any of the other ingredients, except perhaps a little butter. This prevents the other ingredients becoming entangled in the potato masher. The sun dried tomatoes which I used in this recipe came in a glass jar, preserved in olive oil. The tomatoes must be dried thoroughly in paper kitchen towel prior to being chopped and added to the potatoes or the olive oil will spoil the overall effect.

The garlic, coriander and sun dried tomatoes may then be stirred in to the mash, which should be arranged on a circular plate as shown in the picture to the left. The sausages and the egg should then be added on top, with the coriander and paprika garnish sprinkled on last of all.