Recipe LXVI - Lamb Steaks and Mint Sauce with Garlic Potatoes

The Olympic Games are but ten days away, and I am crawling up the walls with excitement. There will be thousands of children performing at the opening ceremony, and I heard that there will be live animals, including cows, chickens and sheep (remember that famous actor's slogan "never work with children or animals"? Watch this space...). But what to do with all those delicious animals after their performance? Eat them, of course, what else?! And to commemorate what will be the defining moment in 21st century British history, I would like to present to you a truly British dish: lamb, mint sauce and potatoes.

Homemade mint sauce is truly different to that from a jar, although the jarred version is not bad at all. But making it at home provides you with an alternative, and it is very, very easy. Five minutes' work, an hour's wait.

Ingredients:
2 lamb steaks
5 medium-to-large potatoes
6 cloves of garlic
Some olive oil
For the mint sauce:
2 sprigs of mint
Wine vinegar (e.g. red)
Fine white sugar

Instructions for the mint sauce:
Take the leaves off your sprigs of mint and roll them into a ball. Wit a knife or a pair of scissors, chop into small pieces in a bowl. Take your wine vinegar and pour it over the mint until it is saturated. Do not use too much, just enough to cover the mint and a little extra. I used red wine vinegar, because it is sweeter, but other wine vinegars go well too. Then start to slowly add sugar, until you are happy with the taste. And that's it.



Make it before the rest, as leaving it for a minimum of an hour will give it time for the flavours to run.

Instructions for the lamb and potatoes:
Turn the oven on to 200°C. Peel and slice the potatoes into half-centimetre-wide slices, and boil them in salted water for no longer than 5 minutes to soften them up, but not until they start breaking into pieces. Whilst they are boiling, put three roughly diced cloves of garlic into a frying pan with hot olive oil and fry gently until the pieces go dark.



Remove the garlic and put the oil in a baking tray. Drain the potatoes and put them into the baking tray with the hot oil. Pay attention at this point, as any excess water from the potatoes will spit in the oil. Splash the potatoes all over in the oil, and put it in the oven until the lamb is prepared.



Take some of the mint sauce and lightly spread it over the lamb. Put the remaining three cloves of garlic into the frying pan with more olive oil, and repeat frying the garlic, then removing it. Whilst it is still hot, put the lamb into the pan and fry vigorously for five minutes on each side, no more. Lamb should under no circumstances be cremated, incinerated or even overcooked.
For presentation, put a spoonful of mint sauce on the end of each piece of meat.
Finally, remove the potatoes, and with the oil from the baking tray, the juice from the meat and a little water from the potatoes, make a purely natural gravy to pour on the plate.



An old sheep is a failure. So let's give the Olympic sheep a proper career highlight: being the heroes of our fine agricultural and gastronomical heritage!

Recipe LVIII - Peppersteak and English-Style Chips

It's the greatest vegetable in the history of the world: the potato. You can do everything to it: boil it, roast it, bake it in cheese, steam it, wrap it whole in tin foil and chuck it on the barbecue... the Elizabethans even smoked it. But nothing compares to the potato of the fried variety for succulence, crispiness and pleasurable texture. Except maybe the roast potato, but that's quite similar. The chip is a most maligned foodstuff, and suffers from an extremely bad reputation. Certain fast food outlets have added to its notoriety. But for me, they're not chips. I mean, not chip chips. They're matchstick-thin, chemical-ridden, factory-made monsters, and have no place being fed to kids. Why people even queue up for them in food dispensary outlets with all the charm and sophistication of a hospital's surgical department is beyond me.

Ingredients:
600g frying steak
5 large, long potatoes**
A pestle & mortar, 20 peppercorns
A pinch of salt
One large onion
3-4 cloves of garlic
**Make sure your potatoes are suitable for frying when you go to the supermarket. It should be written on the packet. If you buy the wrong item, you could end up with fluffy, broken potatoes in a mess.



Instructions:
Peel and cut your potatoes lengthwise, not forgetting to make sure they are at least a centimetre thick in the middle. Put them in water until required. This stops them reacting with the air.



Cut off the excess fat from your steak (or ask the butcher to do it if you are unsure) and give it to a suitable and extremely grateful animal. In a suitable deep pan, heat up some vegetable oil until it is piping hot, but not at burning point. You can tell by breaking a very small piece of potato off and throwing it in the oil. If it is ready, it will truly sizzle. Putting the potatoes into very hot oil is important, otherwise they won't crisp up.



Having put your sliced potatoes in water until ready for use, you need to dry off the excess water with a towel. Get a lot of it off, or you may have an awful shock when you put the chips in the oil.



Properly salt your steaks. People are concerned by the amount of salt they eat. There is no need to worry if you aim the salt effectively. Too much salt is bad, but the steak doesn't have to be tasteless.



With your oil on, your steak sliced according to size and preference, and your raw chips ready in their deep-frying basket, put a knob of butter, no more, into a decent metallic frying pan.



Cover one side of the steak with pepper (the side you will put downwards in the pan) and when the butter is sizzling (also pipng hot or the steak will not cook properly), drop the steak into the pan. Now put the other half of the pepper on the raw side of the steaks. Halfway through cooking, cut up an onion and some garlic and put them in to soften.



Very important: the secret to not just nice chips, but great chips is the amount of times you fry them. Some say two. I say three. Or four. In the beginning, put them in for about 3 to 4 minutes. Remove them, shaking the excess oil back into the pan. Leave them for at least two minutes, at most half an hour. Put them back in, this time for a little longer. Take them out once more. Leave them for a while, then put them in once again. When they start getting brown edges like in the photo below, it is almost time. Leave it for as long as you dare, then move them into a bowl with two layers of kitchen towel in it.



Serve up the steak and onions, then let guests help themselves to chips. I like Mayonnaise with mine, and have done ever since I went to the Netherlands in 1990. But relish, chutney, mustard, even ketchup would go well.

Recipe XXIII - Pork Pepper Steaks with Honey & Mustard Sauce

Sorry for not posting this weekend - I have just returned from Prague. But whilst I was there, I came across this extremely simple recipe by chance in a super restaurant called "Chapadlo", or in English "The Tentacle", in a suburb called Nusle. I sometimes just get on a tram to anywhere I haven't been in Prague, and get off when I see something interesting. I'm glad I got off there, right next to tram stop "Horky", as I'd recommend the place to anyone.

Ingredients (feeds two):
2-4 Pork steaks, depending on the size
Some salt
Whole peppercorns and a pestle & mortar




Instructions for the pork steaks:
Take a pestle & mortar and crush the pepper. Sprinkle salt on the pork on both sides. Then, take a large, flat-ish frying pan and heat up the oil to a high temperature. Fry the pork and towards the end of the cooking process, pour your pepper on the surface of the pork.

For the sauce:
Half a yoghurt pot of crème fraîche
3 spoonfuls of Dijon mustard with medium whole seeds
3 spoonfuls of semi-sweet honey
Take a small saucepan, spoon in the crème fraîche, the mustard and the honey and mix together well. Simply heat but do not boil and pour on the plate wherever you like!



I had mine at home tonight with steamed broccoli and boiled potatoes, but in Prague, I had it with chips and whole princess beans with onions.