Fine Friday Dining

To be honest, it wasn't that fine, but the way that Le Gourmand complained about me going to excessive lengths of cooking for a Friday night, you might have expected a five course meal. Instead what we actually had was lamburgers. What a delightful word! The main reason we had lamburgers was that we had defrosted the lamb mince for Thursday and I had been overwhelmed with the tiredness accompanying the third trimester of pregnancy so Le Gourmand had raced to the rescue with his frozen Spaghetti Bolognese sauce and salad. Otherwise I would have been equally happy to indulge Le Gourmand in his vision of pizza/Thai, beer and football (although choosing not to join him in the latter two endeavours). Given my ambitious purchase of 5 kgs of potatoes that week, they were on the menu again as potato salad. Burgers and potato salad - not really even a little bit fancy!


Menu
Fricadelles de Gigot, Farce aux Herbes
Carottes À La Concierge
Pommes de Terre a L’Huile

The burgers were actually a ploy to start making some of the lamb stuffings without have to roast a whole leg of lamb. Using the stuffings to season lamburgers is a suggestion by Julia in the book, so there was no actually rule-breaking and it meant we were not inundated with lamb leftovers and could eat out on Saturday night with minimal guilt. So basically lamb mince was mixed with garlic, parsley, rosemary, shallots, ginger, salt and pepper. I then refrigerated the patties until ready, then floured them and slowly cooked them in butter until they were medium. I then deglazed the pan with white wine (or was it beef stock?) to make a sauce for them.

The potatoes were boiled (skin on, to at least try for some nutritional value), then sliced and "marinated" in white wine. Shallots were added (for what would a french recipe be without shallots and parsley) and I made an white wine, wine vinegar, lemon juice, mustard and olive oil dressing right before serving.

I had been waiting for ages to make the carrots - which were basically carrots and onions cooked slowly in milk and beef stock, thickened at the end with egg yolk and cream. Just in case the rest of the meal didn't have the richness to which we have become accustomed.

Not a bad end to a week in which we had tried to eat our weight in meat at the Brazilian restaurant on Wednesday night.