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  • Navarin d'Agneau

    1 vote
    Navarin d'Agneau
    Prep: 1 hours Cook: 3 hours Servings: 6
    by Phil
    5 recipes
    >
    Wonderful spring lamb and vegetable stew that defies stew stereotypes. This is a remarkably light and fresh celebration of the best spring foods. Unlike winter stews (tasty, but the meat and vegetables are all the same mushy, pasty consistency) this recipe has you cook the meat and the vegetables separately, combining them at the finish. The resultant tastes and textures are distinct and clean. The meat and vegetables share a liquid that's more broth than stew, making it light and modern. You can also play with the meat to vegetable proportions to skew it more vegetable so that it's meat flavored rather than meat centric. Serve with a crisp salad and crusty bread. Feel free to improvise on the vegetables in the ingredient list. I put in some fava beans, for example.

    Ingredients

    • 2-3 pounds of 1 inch lamb cubes, from leg, shoulder or breast.
    • Canola oil
    • 1 quart chicken stock
    • Tomato paste
    • Flour
    • Thyme, fresh, 1/2 bunch
    • Bay leaf
    • Garlic, one clove, chopped
    • Baby turnips, quartered
    • Pearl onions
    • Small (marble sized) potatoes
    • Carrots
    • Tomatoes, cherry, or regular ones cut up
    • English peas
    • Other early spring vegetables
    • Creme Fraiche

    Directions

    1. Salt and pepper the lamb cubes well, then brown them. Use all the right browning techniques: Hot oiled pan, dry the meat with paper towels first, work in batches to not crowd the pan, etc. Brown them first in oil in a skillet, then take them from the oil, dust them in flour, and brown them again in a dutch oven. Get them crusty.
    2. After the browning, add about 4 cups of chicken broth to the dutch oven holding the meat. Add tomato paste, thyme (about half a bunch, garlic and a bay leaf. Cover the dutch oven and put it in an oven at 325 for 3 hours.
    3. Prepare the vegetables about when there's about an hour of oven time left. Mis them to the size and shape you like Then parboil them in salted water. Cook them in sets to get the cooking time right so they come out done but still crisp: roughly 10 minutes for the potatoes and turnips, 5 minutes for the carrots and onions, 2 minutes for peas, etc. This parboiling step is the only real cooking time the vegetables will get, so sample them and get them done the way you want. Set the cooked vegetables aside. ( I didn't cook the tomatoes in this step, but instead just combined them later in the next step)
    4. In the final assembly step you take the meat and broth from the oven, spoon out the meat and set it aside momentarily, and strain the broth. Add a few dollops of creme fraich to the strained broth, re-combine it with the meat and the vegetables (including tomatoes). Heat until everything is heated through, and, check your seasoning and serve.

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