I love this season, some of my favourite English ingredients are sneaking into the butchers shops and grocers: peppery watercress, the first spears of asparagus, jersey royals and (drum roll...) lamb. Isn’t it lovely? It speaks volumes of Sunday lunches, celebrations and company, cooking juices and clinking glasses across a sunlit table. And despite my budget I’m not going to miss out on one of spring’s greatest ingredients. Luckily for me on monday I found the compromise too delicious to be called a compromise at the table.
Source is a newish company in the St Nicholas Market, originally known as Taste (and still called that on the St Nicholas website, tsk), the owners were hit hard by the recession and had to pull out. The management team (Joe Wheatcroft, Ross Wills and Liz Carrad), loath to see this great business disappear from the Bristol food scene, took over and have been running it ever since. Inside it’s well lit and spacious, the counters have a gorgeous selection of meat, charcuterie, fish, cheese and cakes, not to mention fresh local vegetables. The Stokes range of chutneys and sauces look very inviting and as for the jars of crab bisque, well. Clearly I could go on but lamb was my quest and I saw only ‘Salt Marsh...’ on the chalkboard before I dashed to the meat counter.
There were the classic cuts of course, and a very tempting brisket but then the breast cuts caught my eye and I realised I’d never cooked or eaten this cut. And at £5.50 for one whole breast now seemed the perfect time. I could have asked the butcher (or Joe, as I now know from the website pictures. It’s research, not stalking, okay?) to take the whole cut off the bone and roll it, then roast it quickly with some herbs and garlic, but Joe’s suggestion of marinating the riblets in spices and slow cooking them made us both hungry over the counter. I grabbed a bag of Wiltshire new season watercress, handed over my tip fund and headed home post haste.
Having shown off my treasure to Harriet I made up a marinade, toasting 1tsp coriander seeds and 1tsp cumin seeds, crushing them with the mortar and pestle. Then I added 1 heaped teaspoon harissa paste, 4 anchovy fillets, a small handful of toasted almonds, lots of olive oil and a little honey. I left it for as long as I could, in this case about 4 hours, covered, seasoned with salt flakes, ground pepper and whole garlic cloves. While the main marinated I made a loaf of bread for mopping up juices later, and for table decoration.
Dinner was set for 8.15 so at 6.00 I browned the riblets in the faithful Le Creuset, then drained the fat and scrubbed off any burnt excess.
Then the riblets went in layered with finely sliced red and white onions. At the last minute I remembered the apricots (one packet dried whole apricots). After an hour I added a sliced lemon and some young thyme.
After a further 30 minutes the riblets were tender and delicately flavoured. Company arrived, wine was opened and dinner commenced, with a little honey served at the table for a quick glaze and the watercress.
The lamb was juicy, the fat had rendered out well and the honey offset the gentle spices. The apricots had soaked up some of the meat juices and matched the savoury meatiness of the lamb. Add the peppery watercress, light bread to mop up the juices and conversation flowed in the way that simple food cooked well encourages. For me the payoff is in the happy, well fed people at the table, chatting happily over the quiet clink of cutlery and glass.
Dinner was finished off with small squares of chocolate brownie, from Tristan Welch’s recipe for Delicious Magazine, an intense little brownie best served fridge cold so it resembles fudge.
As for the leftovers the lamb held up well in the fridge and kept its flavour, though I had to trim the meat from the bone and fat and shred it. This is going to sound prissy but it’s lovely in chicory leaves with a little oil and balsamic. The leftover apricots I blitzed up with some white wine vinegar and put in jars, I look forward to using it as a sweet chutney with a mature cheddar.
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