Ingredients
450g lamb sweetbreads
200ml chicken stock
100g flour
½ tsp ground cumin
salt and freshly ground pepper
2 eggs lightly beaten
3 cups panko crumbs (crisp Japanese style breadcrumbs)
2 Tbsp clarified butter
Spinach puree
250g baby spinach leaves
20g butter small onion, finely diced tsp garlic, finely chopped
50ml creamsalt and freshly ground pepper
To serve
6 large field mushrooms, peeled
olive oil
spicy tomato jam (such as tomato kasundi)
lamb jus
Serves 6 as an entree
Method
Heat oven to 180degC. Soak sweetbreads in cold water for 30 minutes, then strain to remove water.
Bring the chicken stock to a simmer in a small saucepan and poach the sweetbreads gently just until the liquid comes back to the simmer. Remove from heat and cool in the stock.
Drain and cool in the fridge. When cold, peel the fine membrane from the sweetbreads.
Crumb them by coating the sweetbreads in the mixed flour, cumin, salt and pepper, then dip them in the lightly beaten eggs, then the panko crumbs.
To make spinach puree: melt butter in a small saucepan, saute onion and garlic gently until soft. Heat a separate frying pan and add spinach in batches.
Stir constantly for two minutes until spinach is wilted, then add to the saucepan with the onions. Season with salt and pepper and cook for one minute.
Add cream, simmer two minutes, then process in a blender or with a stick blender until smooth.
Heat clarified butter in an oven-proof frying pan and fry sweetbreads until golden brown. Place in oven for approximately eight minutes.
In a separate pan, saute the field mushrooms in olive oil, season and finish in the oven.
To serve
Top the roasted field mushroom with sweetbreads, make a swipe of spinach puree using the base of a dessertspoon, add a spoonful of spicy tomato jam and drizzle with lamb jus.
Requested by Wallis Dixon, of Abbotsford.
This recipe comes from Helen Mason and Grant Cockroft, of Two Chefs Bistro, in Stuart St, Dunedin.
If you have enjoyed a dish in an Otago cafe or restaurant and would like the recipe, write to Ask a Chef, Features, Otago Daily Times, PO Box 181, Dunedin, fax 474-7422, or email odt.features@odt.co.nz, including your name, address and a daytime telephone number, and we will request it.
