The method is unorthodox, but the results are excellent and it has the further advantage that much of it can be prepared in advance. As cooked by Louisette, one of the best cooks we know. This quantity serves 8 to 10 people.
Category: Main Course
Orange-glazed guineafowl
This makes a nice change from a plainly roasted bird. You can of course use chicken instead. Putting a couple of petit-suisse cheeses inside before roasting is an excellent idea — they disappear during cooking, but leave the flesh very moist.
Mini Beef Wellingtons
A quick and simple recipe for a special occasion à deux … Serve with a simple green veg such as green beans or courgettes.
Magrets de canard aux figues
For 6. Excellent score on effort versus results.
Mackerel à la Lyonnaise
From ‘The Pauper’s Cookbook’ by Jocasta Innes, a mainstay when I was a student. Serves two.
Le Cassoulet
There are three sorts of cassoulet, from Castelnaudary, Carcassonne, and Toulouse. Naturally each place claims its version is the best. They all have lots of beans and goose or duck fat in them, it’s the other ingredients that vary. Anyway this is the ‘quick’ version that I make (doesn’t include separately cooked stewed lamb), which is probably closest to the Toulouse version. If you are going to make it, make plenty — it freezes well, and it’s one of those things that’s better reheated. Credit: the infallible Mireille Johnston.
Lapin à la moutarde
There are many ways of combining rabbit and mustard, many of them complicated and most involving cream. This one is a bit different, and it’s my favourite as well. It may look fiddly at first sight, but you can cook the vegetables, and even fry the rabbit, well in advance, leaving only the roasting and reheating to do at the last minute.
Caution: it will only work with a nice fat farmed rabbit — if you’ve got a wild one, make something else! Here you can buy packs of ready-jointed rabbit — for two of us, I use a saddle cut into four pieces. If you use a whole rabbit, you will need to leave the legs in the oven a further ten minutes after you have taken the rest out. For 4.
Source: the Roux brothers’ French Country Cooking.
Lapin à la moutarde
A more traditional version of this classic dish than my roasted version, and good for serving in winter, when choice of vegetables is more limited.
Lamb shanks with apricots
Still trying to recapture the flavour of the wonderful “seven-hour lamb” I had at Le Manchot d’Henri in Paris … this isn’t quite it, but it is delicious. Like all casseroles it’s even better kept for a day and reheated.
Most recipes seem to assume one shank per person; that’s too much meat for me, but carnivores may differ.
Lamb boulangère
An easy way to delight your guests. If you want extra vegetables, grilled or baked tomatoes are an excellent choice; we had tomates à la crème.