Serves 6-7
Ingredients
1 rack of lamb
Lamb jus
375g lamb scraps
75g onion, sliced
50g carrot, sliced
250ml white wine
1l apstock
Bunch of rosemary
1kg pure olive oil for poaching
Water
Chard stems
Bunch of golden chard with large, broad stems
175ml vegetable stock
40ml pure olive oil
4ml garum
Salt
Toserve
Fruity olive oil
Champagne vinegar
Garum
Salt
Method
Rack of lamb
Trim the lamb but leave plenty of fat. Don’t like fat? choose another animal. lamb without fat is no fun. at coi we French (remove the fat and clean the bone) only about 1 inch (2cm) at the top of the bone. it’s a nod to tradition, and to show that we know how to do it, but we want to leave the best, most fatty part of the rack attached to the loin, because it tastes great.
Lamb jus
Brown the scraps of bones and meat deeply. The intensity will be tempered bythe other ingredients in the sauce. Next, add the onion and the carrot and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes, until the vegetables are softened and a little browned. Add the white wine and be sure to scrape up the fond, the bits of meat that cling to the bottom of the pan..it’s the good stuff. When the wine has reduced almostto nothing, add the aP stock and simmer until flavourful, but don’t skim. Strain through a chinois and reduce in a pot that’s taller than it is wide—you want as little surface area as possible. Reduce the mixture, skimming, until it achieves a sauce consistency, just thick enough to cling to the meat. Don’t season it. Blend the rosemary and pure olive oil, reserving one piece of rosemary for the sauce. Put the oil in a metal container and warm to 65c by setting the container inside a water bath controlled by a circulator. Put a mesh rack at the bottom. Salt the rack of lamb and let it stand 20 minutes at room temperature to melt the salt, before dropping it into the oil. Cook for approx. 30 – 45 minutes to a uniform pink inside. Remove the lamb and grill over charcoal to brown the outside; to raise the internal temperature to make it juicy; and to give the fat and meat a whiff of smoke.
Chard stems
Cut the leaves off the chard stems, and trim the leaves into 1 – 2 inch (2.5 – 5cm) pieces. Peel the stems. combine the vegetable stock, pure olive oil and garum, season with salt, and vacuum in a bag with the chard stems. Steam at 85c for approx. 45 minutes until the stems are tender. Cool and slice into 1/2 inch (1cm) pieces. reserve in the cooking liquid. While the lamb is grilling, simmer the chard leaves with the cooked stems, salt and a little water and fruity olive oil, covered, until tender. Drain on a paper towel and then arrange on one side of the plate.
To serve
Make a sauce by combining equal parts of the lamb jus and chard cooking liquid, and reduce at a rapid boil. this will temporarily emulsify most (but not all) of the oil into the sauce. reduce it until the flavour is concentrated, adding the reserved piece of rosemary towards the end. season with champagne vinegar and more garum if necessary. it should be light and flavourful, sweet and sour, complex from the fermented fish. When it’s right the parts meld into an indivisible whole—it hard to explain, but there’s an “aha” moment where it suddenly becomes a great sauce. this is a difficult sauce to make perfectly, and it has to be done in the moment, because it will change quickly. ladle a spoonful over the chard to dress it, and two more next to it for the lamb. slice the lamb into chops, and lay them in their sauce, not touching the chard. serve. »
Chef’s notes |Even though Idon’t cook (or eat) much of it, Ihave strong feelings about meat cookery. For meat that’s cooked to temperature (as opposed to braised or confit) like this lamb, Ilike to cook it once, without cooling, as you would with sous vide.I think the taste is fresher and the meat is juicer. Often at times, like here, we cook in two stages, first at low temperature and then finishing on a hot grill. This allows us to control doneness, and also the internal temperature, which should be high enough to activate the juices. Meat that’s overly rested is boring to eat, like some abstraction of perfection. Ilike a sheen of moisture and fat shimmering across the top of the meat, the juices bursting when chewed.