A Classic French Easter Tradition: Lamb & Spring Vegetable Stew

Now if you're looking for a dish to make that is not a leg of lamb, then the classic Navarin Primer that we call the lamb Navarin with spring vegetable is really the way for it. In my view, it is one of the most versatile and easiest dish there is. It is an ultimate French classic and you've got the lamb now that is stewed, that has a beautiful sauce and it is served with an array of beautiful colored spring vegetables. You have everything, you don't need to scratch your head for a side or anything like that. Plus on top of that it's easy to make, about one hour and you can make it in small portion or large portion. The technique is always the same and it's always a winner. Let's do it! The Navarin of lamb with spring vegetables aka the Navarin Primer is a favorite dish that is being taught in culinary school. Why? Because it covers lots of ground in terms of techniques and it is extremely straightforward to make. So all what you need, lamb shoulder 1.2 kilo, cut into large cubes, make sure you remove the excess of fat and sinew and for the rest, for the cooking of the meat, onions, garlic cloves, bay leaf and thyme, a bit of flour, tomato paste and if you want you can only use water. The base recipe is a simple one, you can use water. I'm going to make a little improvement, I'm going to use half water and half stock. So this is a veal stock, you can use a chicken stock if you want. It's not a problem, I'm going to use two cups or half a liter. Now let's have a look at the vegetables. So the other reason why this dish is so praised in culinary school because in terms of techniques you've got the making of the stew but you also have the cooking of the vegetables in all kinds of ways. So this is the classic garnish that you have for the Navarin Primer, carrots, turnip, green bean, peas, onions and potatoes. These are waxy potatoes but we're going to be cooking these in all kinds of ways but we'll cover this when we get there. For the time being make sure you wash and peel all the vegetables, you peel the potatoes and you keep them in cold water. And now we've got everything we can begin. We're going to start here first by cooking the meat and the first step is to season the meat not in the dish. Always take a good habit and with a good sprinkle of salt and pepper on a chopping board like this. If you put this in a dish directly you're going to over salt everything and you don't want that. So good grind, salt and pepper to prepare the meat. Once your meat has been seasoned the first thing we're going to do is to brown the meat. This is a crucial step when you make a stew, any french stew it starts here. So I'm using a casserole dish that I never used before so it's not exactly pristine and the color like a white dish but because it's got a lot of surface it's really nice for that kind of purpose. If you have one this is a great time to put it to good use. So what we're going to do is to take our pieces of meat and we're not putting the meat on top of each other like this. Okay this is the first thing. Always when you brown, very important, put them flat. I've used two tablespoons of oil and I've got my pieces and you can do this in batch. So I'm going to see how much space I've got. Fill my pan and color these on all sides without overcrowding the pan. So that's enough. So let's look at the meat. Important here is patience. Okay so let's have a look at the meat. So it can stick a little bit but we want to see this nice coloring. You want to have this nice brown coloring. This is crucial to have the taste we need in our stew. So I'm going around, I'm scrapping, turning things around and I'm putting this on the other side. It took me almost four to five minutes and you can use a medium high heat. Okay and there we go. Keep on going. We turn and we arrange. Okay so when you're done, when you've gone the other side, I'm going to take the pieces. I've got a tray on the side and I'm going to start to reserve the bits of meat and do my second batch. My second batch is now done. I'm reducing my heat and I'm going to remove the meat, put it in a tray and we're going to start to put the onions just to leave them to sweat in that beautiful brown juicy that we've got there. You see all the caramelized juices and we need to give these some flavor. So this is off. Okay and what I'm going to do on here immediately, taking all the onions. So reduce your heat. You don't want to burn anything and then I'm going to put this slowly and just for a few minutes I'm going to leave them to gently cook like this so that they release their flavor. Nothing special. After a few minutes I'm raising my heat and I'm going to put back all of the meat that I've got. You don't put the juices of the meat yet. Okay there's juices in my in my tray on here but all what I'm doing first I'm picking the pieces of meat and I'm putting them back in. I don't want the whole thing to be wet for now because we're going to have to add the flour. Perfect. So now it is kind of nice and hot. I'm going to take my flour on here and you want to be quite generous on the flour because this is really what's going to kind of thicken your sauce. Okay put about 30 grams. Be careful not to burn yourself and we're going to gently mix the flour with the meat the juices and everything. So you leave this to cook for a few minutes. Typically you put it in the oven but I'm doing the home version and when we're done with the flour we're going to add all the tomato paste and again trying to be very careful. I'm going to take my two tools. I'm going to try to mix that in so really to spread the tomato paste everywhere through the meat. So you see using a casserole dish is not something I'm doing a lot and what I would say you know my my feedback is that it's not high enough. So when you do things you always have to be careful. It's all kind of flat you know you have to it's very it's very difficult sometimes to work with because here once we're a few minutes on high heat we have to add the liquid. So as I said I'm using a mix of stock and water. So typically we just about cover the meat. So I'm going to start here with the stock and very gently again I'm going to start to mix everything and so we get almost like a brownish kind of tomato base on here with the meat. So we're pretty good so that's half a liter and here I'm going to add another two cups of water. So barely so when you make a stew like this you want to barely cover the meat. So you can see how these pieces of meat sticking out everywhere. So I kind of want that. I don't want to fully fully submerge. It's kind of just submerge the meat just enough. So I can see here you see a liter in total is actually spot on. Okay so I'm going to wait for this to come back to a light boil. I'm going to add the aromatics and then I'm going to cook this into the oven. So right now you're going to have to preheat an oven fan force on at 200 degrees celsius about 400 degrees Fahrenheit. We've got a lovely little boil on here so I'm taking all the garlics here and there a few bay leaves. First of all you can put two ones. Some thyme in here. Put this under the juices and from here I'm going to take a lid. I'm going to cover this and I'm going to leave this to cook for 30 minutes in the oven. So covered. Okay so lid on and that goes into the oven. Let's go. As soon as your meat is in the oven and we start the vegetables. So I've been talking about like these different ways of cooking. I'm going to show you really the no first version of making those. Starting with the onions. We take a pan and we just need to slightly caramelize the onion. So for that we're going to be taking all the onions. You can use more if you want. I'm going to add some water in here. They take time on this one. It can take 30 minutes or more. So I just cover the onions like this. Then we're going to add some butter and some sugar. So typically the sugar a good teaspoon is enough. And I'm first going to bring this to a boil. Next the turnips. Now typically you're going to be asked to take these quarters and you know shape them in a kind of an olive kind of shape. There's a lot of ways so unless you're in a restaurant and you get you know something to do with the offcut it's great. But here at home quarters is fine. So you just take your turnips and you cut them in quarters and that's going to be it. We're going them like that. So once you've got your quarter exactly the same treatment as the onions that we have. Turnips on here. We're going to be this time covering with water but not much this one because they cook faster. So just barely cover the turnips like that. And for the rest same thing. Butter and then a little bit of sugar because sometimes turnips they can have a slight bitterness. And same thing. The goal is to bring this to the boil and have all the water pretty much to evaporate and then we'll be done. We'll have glazed turnips. But this one we're going to be wide glazed meaning we're not looking to have any coloration compared to the onion that we want to really caramelize. Now the water is boiling on here. I'm reducing my heat so gentle boil and I'm going to leave this on the side of my stove until the water is gone and that's going to be it. Let's look at the onions here. So I'm just leaving this on a light boil on the side of the stove. I don't even cover it and that's it. And it's typically way enough for whatever you do at home. So now let's look at the carrots. So the carrots exactly the same technique. So I've got the carrots on here. I've left a little bit of the stem. I've got butter. But I'm using a larger pan because I try to keep the whole length. But if you want you can cut them smaller and use another smaller pan. It's not a problem. So same thing here. I'm going to add my little bit of sugar. Bring this to a light boil and exactly the same thing. The carrots are now boiling and same thing. I'm going to reduce my heat. Put this on the back of the stove and by now our meat should be just about ready for the 30 minutes. So we're going to be adding the potatoes into the stew. So after 30 minutes this is what you've got. So we've got a nice sauce. Look at this color. Kind of nice and brown. So after 30 minutes this is what we have. I mean look at the result. Look at that sauce and we get a nice consistency. Almost caught the spoon. Not enough. So what we need to do here. Now we're going to be learning and just the cooking of potato. Not in water but in sauce. So I'm taking all my potatoes and directly I'm going to plate these here and there. Oops. Feel this. It's going to absorb some of the sauce and give some beautiful flavor to the potatoes. The same as before. Lead on in the oven. So our carrots are already done and this is the result. The result of the glazing. So you can see my carrots here. They're quite fragile so I don't want to touch them too much with the fork but they're bathing now in the butter and they are cooked and they got that nice shine and that's all we need. So I'm going to turn the heat off because I don't want to have any coloring. They are cooked. They're slightly sweetened and they got that nice kind of buttery aspect. I'm turning my heat off for the carrots. Turnips are done too. A little swirl and I'm going to add them in the same pan with the carrot to keep them warm. So the onion when the water is gone. You can see these colors on here. That's kind of caramelized color and you're making a caramel. There's plenty of sugar. There's more sugar in the rest and I'm raising the heat and I'm typically kind of rolling them like this a little bit but we don't want them totally brown. So I'm doing a light caramelization. You see there's some light coloring on here. So I'm almost done. Just two or three minutes more and that's it. Would you look at this? The lamb navarin is just out of the oven. I just want to check these lovely potatoes. So now the sauce has reduced. So you see you get a nice consistency. The pieces of meat. All the lovely potatoes that are in here. I don't want to break them apart. I'm just going to check but I'm pretty sure they will cook. So we take a knife and I'm going to plunge the knife. You see yeah it's floating up. It's floating through like butter. Just the right consistency and basically from here you are done. So you see we spend more time preparing these glazed vegetables which is basically an exercise in culinary schools for students to learn to do it. But as I said you can just boil the stuff. It's not a problem. And what we need to do now is to arrange this these lovely things on here. Okay I'm going to detach everything. You're going to arrange your dish. You can do what's called decanter. That means to take the meat out and filter the sauce and transfer this to another dish and make a presentation. That's what I'm going to do. Or just put the vegetables that we have the glazed vegetables and all the rest on top and serve it as is. That's it. Okay so we've got one last thing to do. So we're going to leave this to rest a little bit. Just time for us to cook the green beans and the peas and then we serve. So once all the vegetables are ready and the meat is cooked like we've seen we're just waiting the last minute to do the simple stuff. So the green beans, salty water, boiling about 12 minutes in there and then we're going to do the peas on the side. Finally the last piece of the puzzle. All of the little frozen beans. It's going to take time so take your time put them in and we're going to wait for the water to come back to the boil in there. Perfect. The peas. The boil is back. I'm turning this off. I'm going to drain that. Same for the bean and that's it. I'm going to assemble everything and I'll show you the result when it's all dressed up. So as soon as your peas and green beans are ready you can scatter them with the other garnishes with all the vegetables on top of the meat when it's really really hot. And this is what you see in the picture. So this is just to show you the kind of presentation that is typically done with the dish on this before you serve. But I also wanted to show you the more realistic picture because this is just a static picture but once you serve it this is what you have on here and we're going to have this typical kind of french stew but it's full of these vegetables. We've got the carrots you get the peas and you got some of the the onions on here that are caramelized and it's it's a simple dish but really honestly it works. It is full of flavor. The meat is perfectly cooked and you don't have to do any side and you dish that up into a plate and it's absolutely tender and beautiful. Now to finish if you want to make this much more simple you do not have to glaze all the vegetables like I said. You can make the Navarin, boil the vegetables, put them on top and you are done. If you want to jazz this up add a bit of more tomato sauce a bit of more garlic maybe some extra herbs maybe a bit of tarragon or something and perhaps a bit of white wine. But away from that it doesn't really require anything special. It is you know a classic dish that doesn't need to be changed too much. Once you try it you will see that it is very easy very convenient and I would not be surprised if that becomes part of a meal on your on your weekly rotation. Okay but for the first thing try it for Easter if you can and tell me what you think in the comment section. Happy Easter everyone and I will see you next time on the French Cooking Academy for another video. Take care. Bye bye.