Navarin of Spring lamb

Ingredients

• for the lamb:
• 1 kg shoulder of lamb in fist-sized pieces
• 50 g flour (seasoned)
• 6 tomatoes (de-seeded, skinned and chopped)
• 1 onion (roughly chopped)
• 3-4 cloves of garlic (chopped)
• 1 bottle of white wine
• 500 ml stock
• bouquet garni
• oil
• salt and pepper
• for the spring vegetables:
• 100-150g of spring vegetables (the more colour and variety the better, such as: broad beans, peas, asparagus, baby turnips, quartered)
• 50 g butter
• 50 ml oil
• salt

Method

1. For the Lamb:
2. Coat the meat in the seasoned flour, shake off the excess flour.
3. Heat some oil in a heavy based casserole dish (Richard used a Stubb casserole dish) and brown the lamb really well on all sides.
4. Remove the lamb from the pan and pour in the bottle of white wine, scrape any meaty bits off the bottom of the pan and reduce the wine by half.
5. Add the stock, onions, tomatoes, garlic and meat to the wine and heat through gently on the hob. Check seasoning and adjust if necessary.
6. Cover the casserole dish and put into a preheated oven for about an hour-and-a-half at 180°C.
7. Once the cooking is finished, take it out of the oven.
8. With a slotted spoon take the meat out of the sauce and put on a plate to one side.
9. Pass the sauce through a sieve; discard the vegetables and bouquet garni what is in the sieve.
10. Return the sauce to the pan and reduce slightly and thicken it with a little flour if necessary.
11. Check flavour and adjust seasoning to taste if you need to.
12. Once the sauce has been corrected and cooked through, return the meat to the sauce, gently heat through and add the spring vegetables.
13. Note: The sauce is corrected for both consistency and flavor once the casserole has been removed from the oven. The sauce once corrected will be of a pouring rather than coating consistency, clear of lumps and a red/brown colour. This is a slow and gentle cooking process; the meat should be really tender but still held together in chunks.
14. For the Spring Vegetables:
15. Note: When the sauce is being adjusted, the prepared spring vegetables need to be cooked.
16. Have a saucepan of water boiling, to which you add oil, butter and salt (so that when you are removing the vegetables from the water they are glazed with the butter and oil).
17. Cook the vegetables in this pan. Stagger the cooking of the vegetables as you don’t want to overcook the vegetables.
18. Add the cooked vegetables to the lamb casserole and finish with some olives.