Baa Baa Invisible Sheep, Have You Any Thyme?

As we all know, there’s been a lot of over-blown hype around the nursery rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep in recent times. First the PC brigade got on their high horse (of no pre-determined colour) over alleged racial slurs (I think inter-breed slurs would have been over the top, let alone what actually happened) and then certain headline-grabbing tabloids got involved, at which point I decided to ignore the whole thing, rather than risk saying something that might suggest I read/agree with the Daily Fail et al. I imagine, however, that they were stunned that ethnic sheep had been allowed into the country, promptly blamed the government and started a campaign to get them all deported.

Anyway… before I go off on a tangent (ahem…) I think I should get to the point. I would like to suggest a new nursery rhyme: Baa Baa Farmers’ Market, have you any lamb?

This somewhat tenuous suggestion comes after I visited the Castle Terrace farmers’ market on Saturday and didn’t find a whole lot of lamb. Sure, I didn’t really expect the stalls which specifically sell pork, venison or buffalo to be overrun with it, but I did expect more than one stall to have some. Perhaps I was just being blind (a realistic possibility), but there didn’t seem to be a whole lot about.

I actually began to question my whole concept of when lamb was in season to the extent that I looked it up (one site helpfully told me in their ‘biology’ section that “lambs are the offspring of domestic sheep” – I think we can all say that we’ve now learnt something today…). Thankfully I haven’t entirely lost the plot, and managed to find some – even if it was more for stewing and not quite the chops I’d been after.

Thinking about it now, it’s probably not surprising that there doesn’t seem to be much lamb about. Given that it comes about with the arrival of spring, I should have realised that it would be late this year, if we get much at all – the cold snap at the end of March has caused widespread losses across the farming board. My own slight stupidity (I’d like to blame it partially on devoting a lot of my energy to expunging Friday night from my system) seems the perfect opportunity to really focus on something that is clearly a serious problem, sure we can get lamb from New Zealand and it’s liable to be cheaper than our own home-grown stock this year; but it’s also about helping out our farmers, if we can, in what is clearly quite an extraordinarily difficult year for them.

Bizarrely, this means that my new nursery rhyme might just catch on (OK, it won’t, but I like to dream big): Baa Baa Farmers’ Market have you any lamb? A little bit sir, but certainly not three bags full!

I really love lamb, it’s one of my favourite meats, so here’s hoping we can continue to get good, local lamb – even if it’s not in the quantities we might like.

If you enjoyed this post you would love The Usual Saucepans’ Facebook page, it’s got loads more like this and lots of pictures too!

Light Lamb Stew with Thyme and Mint

This is an original recipe from The Usual Saucepans, it takes quite a while to make, but mainly because it’s cooked slowly to fill it with flavour and make it tender. I used a lamb stock cube for my stock, but you can get fancier, if you have the time and inclination. It serves 4 as a main course with potatoes and veg on the side.

Ingredients

400g of diced lamb (mine were from the leg)
1 onion
1 large carrot
handful of mint leaves
7/8 sprigs of Thyme
600ml lamb stock
2 cloves of garlic
knob of butter
2 tbsp plain flour/cornflour

Directions

Put the oven on to about 150 and get out a good casserole dish.

Slice the onion into chunks and do likewise with the leeks and carrots – they will cook in the stewing, so don’t worry too much about size, just make it all roughly equal. Crush the garlic and wash the thyme gently. Make sure all your cubes of lamb are about the same size and then coat them in the flour.

Heat up a pan with about half of the butter in it and seal the chunks of lamb (but don’t cook them). Take them from the pan and allow them to rest. Then add the remaining butter along with the onions and garlic, when these start to soften add in the leeks and carrots and cook for about a minute before adding in the stock.

Once the mixture is combined, add in two-thirds of the thyme and transfer into an oven-proof casserole dish. Batter about two-thirds of the mint and add this in as well, then stir in the herbs before adding the meat. Season well and place in the centre of the oven for 2 hours.

After the allotted cooking time – I did mine in two stages, as I had to go out; if you do this, just leave it in the turned-off oven whilst you’re out – take it out of the oven and make sure the meat is tender and the vegetables cooked. At this stage you should also taste it and add more thyme, mint or seasoning as required.

Reheat gently in the oven before you dish it up. I served mine with minted carrot batons and boiled new potatoes, however some spring greens would go quite well too, so long as they don’t clash with the mint.

Craig (247 Posts)

Edinburgh-dwelling, baking and food-obsessed, twenty-something adventure enthusiast. Runs on liberal amounts of coffee, cheese, cake and gin; bribable with same.