Lamb Cutlets & Red Wine.

Uploaded by Bergen. This is not the lamb cutlets I've got in my freezer. It's taken from a food website. The picture is to fulfil the request from AuntyN.

Whenever a recipe calls for red wine in a sauce, just go for ribena or any blackcurrant drink. You can safely bet your left ear that no one will ever know the difference. Not even the most senior members of a gastronomie connoisseur club. The moral of the story is, at least from where I am cooking which is my kitchen, red wine or any wine in a cooking doesn't significantly enhance to making the dish more tasty. I didn't learn this trick. Someone taught me, a Michelin chef, a true blue Frenchman, a Muslim convert who used to work in one of the five star hotels in this fine city of KerlaLeempoor. Don't look him up. He left the city years ago which is why I believe it is quite safe for me to write about him here. Let's hope he's not coming back to handle the same hotel and the same kitchen crew or else people are going to know. Better still, let's hope there's no big names in hospitality industry reading this entry.

In a month my friend poured down the drain cases and cases of high quality wines which the hotel had rationed for him to use in his cooking. He'd do this discreetly so you won't know. For effect, he would place a half empty bottle of wine in the work area so you'd figure, oh yea he's using the wine that's why his food is delicious. The truth is, it's the blackcurrant drink. And we laughed so hard coffee came out of our noses like a musical fountain.

Now let's get back to the lamb cutlets.

A butcher at a wet market...I won't tell you which wet market because I want this butcher to remain ignorant so I can buy the cutlets from him at least until next year at Rm14.00 per kg. I won't tell him that MAS serves cutlets to its first-class passengers. And I won't tell him that cutlets usually cost about Rm40.00 per kg. And most of all I will never never tell him, not even if you tie my hand in the back, put me in a chair under a lightbulb, that I can sell a high-class cutlet dish for Rm35.00 apiece, wine and Rydell glasses not included.

To produce the cutlets, you need to know a thing or two about loin and non-loin section of a carcass. Obviously the butcher in question doesn't know. Which is good. Every portion of the carcass to him is just meat when cut into 1 inch cubes for curry. I saw him worked on a whole leg of lamb this way. He asked whether I was there to watch him at work or else I had better get moving before he showed me what he could do with a heavy cleaver.

How much for the backbone?
Rm14.00.
Okay.

The backbone in question came attached with the tenderloin intact. I rushed home to work on it with my knives. Cleaning the section of the bone that curves like C to come up with 14 pieces of cutlets shaped neatly into a 6.

Rushed to Tesco to get some rosemary, coriander leaves, and mint. And blackcurrant juice. Rushed back to the house feeling slightly disappointed because SHE wasn't there. I had hoped to meet her so I could invite her and her family (hopefully she's a single mother) for a meal.

In the end I had four pieces of cutlets. The rest I put in the freezer, maybe for another meal with someone.

What's good 14 pieces of cutlets if you don't have someone to share them with?

Next entry: Tenderloin, striploin, sirloin, T-bone, ribeye, Kobe beef, white veal and all things beef.