Rick Stein’s Cornwall: Lamb Navarin recipe

As seen in series two episode two of Rick’s Stein’s Cornwall on BBC2 – Rick’s lamb navarin (casserole) recipe is a comforting spring classic that’s easy to cook at home for your friends and family. One to save for glorious spring lamb and seasonal vegetables like peas and carrots.

Happy cooking.

Serves 6

Ingredients

1 x  boned shoulder of spring lamb weighing about 1.5kg
50g butter
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
2 medium onions cut into 6s
4 garlic cloves
1 large carrot, peeled and roughly chopped
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon tomato purée
2 thyme sprigs
2 bay leaves
1 litre chicken stock
8 button onions or small shallots, peeled
8 spring carrots, tops trimmed and scraped
2 small turnips, cut into quarters
8 small new potatoes, scraped
50g fresh peas
50g French green beans, topped, tailed and halved
8-10 mint leaves
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Serve with mashed potato, your way.

Method

The fat on a shoulder of spring lamb is not excessive and has a good flavour but you do need to trim most of it off – say about 70%. Then cut the meat into 50g pieces.

Take a flameproof casserole, add a tablespoon of the butter and the oil, and when smoking add the meat and turn it over briskly until well browned.  pour off the excess oil. Add the rest of the butter and the onions, 3 of the garlic cloves, thinly sliced, carrot and sugar and fry until the onions are golden brown.

Add the flour and tomato purée and fry for another couple of minutes, then add the thyme, bay leaves, stock and 1½ teaspoons of salt. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer very gently for 40 minutes.

Tip the stew into a strainer and pick out the lamb and return it to the pan with the cooking liquid. Discard the vegetables; these were just to flavour the stock.

Add the potatoes and button onions then after 5 minutes add the carrots, cook for a further 10 minutes until they are all cooked, then add peas and beans and simmer for 5 minutes, Finely chop together the mint leaves with the remaining clove of garlic and stir it into the stew. Serve from the casserole with the mashed potatoes and carrots.