On Saturday I visited a specialist butcher on very well-appointed premises next to the Mosel at Temmels, a small yet lively village facing Luxembourg, where I picked up a couple of lamb steaks to have with my mint, honey and mustard marinade (check recipe LXXIII from 24/09/2012). I was actually surprised to come across a place in Germany selling meat where pork made up only one half of the total fare on offer. Usually it's about three-quarters. In warm weather periods, Germany is a country with butchers obsessed with painting their meat red, yellow or orange to flog to customers, and this place was no exception. That's how you know it's for the barbecue, and they think everyone wants the same colour meat. I still had to ask politely for the butcher's assistant to give me some without the reddish hue having been daubed all over it. I feel so sorry for the animal who gave up its life for someone's dinner, only to end up covered in an over-salted, oily marinade.

Ingredients:
Enough potatoes to feed your guests
Some sprigs of rosemary
4 cloves of garlic
A 5mm-thick layer of olive oil
Some salt to taste



Instructions:
Heat up the oven to 200°C. Take your potatoes and dice them into pieces roughly 7mm to 15mm across. You can either wash them and leave on the skins or peel them. I chose to peel them, even though it is not the purest form of the recipe. Then chop up the garlic into thin slices and the rosemary into tiny pieces. 


Heat up the oil in a pan or baking tin, either in the oven or on the cooker. Once the oil is piping hot, transfer the potatoes to it, put some salt on top and fry for a couple of minutes. Then add the rosemary and garlic, stir it in fully and transfer to the oven. Now is the time to cook the rest of your meal.


Keep it in the oven for a minimum of 30 minutes. If you turn down the temperature to 150-170°C, you could leave it in the oven for a much longer time.

But if you're just having it with lamb steaks you won't need long.