Noisettes of lamb with crushed sweet potato

To make the stock, roast the lamb bones in the oven for an hour at a medium heat.
Roughly chop the vegetables and add them to a pan with the herbs, roasted lamb bones and enough water to cover the vegetables and bones. Cook for two hours.
To make the crust, tear the bread into small pieces and blitz into breadcrumbs in a food processor. De-stalk the mint leaves and finely chop; melt some butter in a saucepan. Mix the breadcrumbs, mint, blackcurrants and butter together. Add a pinch of salt and pepper. Mix the ingredients until they form a dough-like consistency
Now we need to make the mash. Peel and boil the sweet potato until soft.
Drain and mash. Add some butter, the fresh grated ginger, and some seasoning. Keep warm.
Blanch the sugar snaps, drain, toss in butter and mint, season to taste and again keep warm.
Heat some olive oil in a pan and brown the meat for two minutes on each side, top each noisette with a little crust.
Place in a hot oven for 4 minutes.
Remove the lamb from the oven, place on a plate, cover with foil and leave to rest keeping it warm.
Discard any excess fat from the pan, place on a high heat and pour in the rum (be careful as this will flame up), add the lamb stock and reduce by 1/3, adjust the seasoning.
Arrange the noisettes, mashed sweet potatoes and vegetables on the plate and drizzle with a little sauce.

Tip

© Felice Tocchini 2011

Food photography by Alex Miller.

For the crust:

100g breadcrumbs

handful of mint leaves off the stalk

50g of unsalted butter

A pinch of salt and pepper to season

50g blackcurrants

For the stock:

Lamb bones

1 leek

1 carrot

1 celery stick

1 onion

A bunch of herbs, thyme, parsley and a bay leaf tied together with string

Water

For the vegetables:

50g butter

2 medium sweet potatoes

20g fresh ginger grated

200g sugar snaps

Small bunch mint chopped

8 lamb noisettes

Salt and pepper

50ml Morgan spiced rum

300ml lamb stock

2 tbsp olive oil