Lamb loin with charred onion petals & mint sauce

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Serves 4  

Preparation time: 40 minutes
Soaking time: 1 hour 
Cooking time:
1½ hours   

Ingredients
2 lamb loins  
2 sweet white onions 
2 small/medium potatoes 
12 morels, dried 
12 asparagus spears 
Bag of baby spinach, washed 
Olive oil 
Mint jelly 

Gravy 
500g lamb bones 
2 large onion 
2 sticks of celery 
2 carrots
200ml Madeira 
1 litre of lamb stock  

I served this by placing the food in a ring around the plate, 3 pieces of everything, the lamb with the raw asparagus shaving on the top, the crisp, the morel with the asparagus tip draped over it, the onion petal filled with the mint jelly and the spinach in the middle.  The sauce should then be drizzled around the circle. 

Method
Soak the morel mushrooms in hot water for at least an hour. 

Remove the lamb from the fridge to bring to room temperature. 

Brown the bones on a medium heat (this will take around 10 minutes). Add the chopped vegetables and cook for a further 5/10 mins until soft. Add the alcohol and bring to a hard boil to burn off the alcohol. Add the stock, bring back to the boil, cook hard for a minute or so and then lower the heat and cook for 1-1½, hours stirring occasionally until reduced and full of flavour. 

Heat the oven to 180c. Without trimming the onions, cut in half through the root ends. 

Heat a frying pan that can go into the oven on a high heat. Add the oil and the onions, cut side down and reduce the heat to medium low and cook until the onions are charred (15 minutes or so). Put into the oven for 15 minutes. 

Slice the potatoes thinly with a mandolin and put in a single layer on kitchen paper to dry out.  If you do not have a mandolin just cut your potatoes very, very thinly. 

Prep the asparagus.  Discard the woody ends.  To do this, take the asparagus in both hands and bend each stalk slowly, your spear will break and in one hand you will have the tip and some stalk and in the other hand you will have the woody end of the stalk that is not nice to eat.  Cut off the tips with about 2½ cm of stalk.  Carefully with a knife or vegetable peeler peel away the outer green.  With the remaining stalk take the vegetable peeler and peel down the asparagus spear.  You want thin shavings of asparagus. 

Carefully sieve your sauce into a small pan.  Push the now soft vegetables and bones against the sieve to extract as much flavour as you can into your sauce.  Check for seasoning and adjust if needed. 

Season the lamb and to pan fry, sear on a high heat for 2 minutes each side and then put into the oven for 6-8 minutes until done to your liking.  The loin has no fat so you need to be careful not to overcook or it will dry out. Leave to rest and turn off the oven. 

Take out the onions from the oven and leave to cool enough that you can separate each layer into ‘petals’.  Put back into the turned off oven to keep warm while you finish the dish. 

Warm your sauce.  In a frying pan wilt the spinach with a knob of butter, season and put into a warm bowl  in the oven.  In the same frying pan add a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of water, the asparagus tips and the morels and gently heat for a few minutes. 

Fry the potatoes in oil until crispy. This can either be in a deep fat fryer at 180c or you can do it in a pan or wok with a few inches of hot oil.  Just be careful not to put the heat too high and make sure it does not get too hot.  Drain and season. 

Slice the lamb loins.