How many people actually follow recipes? Read them over, gather ingredients, and go through them step by step? Anyone with an interest in food writing will find themselves – through books, magazines, blogs – inundated with “new” recipes (which are almost the only accepted form of food writing now) for seasonal this or exotic that, but how many ever make it from page to plate?
There are, I suppose, two (very) broad categories of recipe – those designed to teach us technique, and those intended to suggest flavours. The first – a baking recipe, or for hollandaise, perhaps – does by its nature need following more closely, and might have something new to impart, a suggestion or explanation that clarifies a mystery of craft. The latter kind of recipe, though, barely needs to exist at all. When you read a recipe for a beef and orange ragu, you are really just reading the suggestion that Marsala and citrus go as happily with beef as claret and allium; the rest of the recipe is just padding, or to put it more kindly, a formal construction which allows the meat (sorry) of the recipe to be communicated.
With this in mind, here is today’s recipe.
SPRING LAMB, WILD GARLIC, YOGHURT
Pink, seared lamb, wilted ramson leaves, rich, seasoned yoghurt. Serves as many as you like.
Thom Eagle 