Food: lamb à la Boulangère with Caper Sauce

In many ways the French and the English are one people divided by the channel. Saying as much will not earn me friends on either side of course but post 1066 their histories have been entwined enough that for all the differences we see, an alien might mistake them for being the same. I am reminded of the Latin exchange students when I was at high school who couldn’t believe we couldn’t understand German as to them it was the same language as English. As recently hit the culture war headlines (“English is a bastard language”) English is one-part old French, one-part old German, and a light seasoning of the Nordic and old Celtic Britannic languages. Anyway, enough contentious linguistics.

The history of peasants, villagers or workers being too poor or too concerned with subsistence toil to run an oven exists on both sides of the channel. In Lancashire workers dropped their pots of sheep meat, potatoes and onions into the bakery where they were cooked in the cooling oven after the bread had been baked. In France they dropped pots of sheep meat, potatoes and onions into the bakery after the bread had been baked… you get the picture.

The French even tell the history in the name, Boulangère is French for bakery.

lamb à la Boulangère

Ingredients

Leg or shoulder of lamb (hogget or mutton even better) that will fit a casserole or deep roasting tin

2 or 3 large potatoes sliced thin (I use the slice side of an old school standing grater)

3 large onions sliced

1 head of garlic crushed

1 head of fennel bulb sliced (optional)

500ml meat stock

10 anchovy fillets

1 sprig thyme

1 sprig rosemary

Salt, pepper

Olive oil

Knob of butter

Melt the butter in a pan and briefly sauté 1/3 of the garlic in it, don’t let it brown you just want to infuse the butter.
Toss the potatoes in the garlic butter
Layer potatoes, ,fennel, and onions up in your casserole or roasting tin
Blitz the remaining garlic, herbs, 4 anchovies and a little olive oil together to form a paste
Make 6 incisions in the lamb, just through the skin, slide an anchovy into each
Rub the lamb in the paste, season and place onto the potato/onion mix.
Pour in stock.
Roast in a hot (200c-220c) oven for 30min, cover, turn down to 160c and cook for a further 2.5 hours.
The lamb should be falling apart tender by this point but keep going if a fork doesn’t go through like butter. Once it does remove the lamb, turn up the oven to 180c and return the potato ‘base’ to the oven uncovered for 30m to reduce and brown a little.

Caper Sauce

1 small onion diced

2 tablespoons of capers roughly chopped

1 teaspoon of mustard

1 clove of garlic crushed

100ml meat stock

100g sour cream or crème fraiche

handful of chopped parsley

Salt and pepper

Splash of oil