Ingredients
Ingredients
Method
- The night before, cover beans with at least three times their volume of cold water and soak overnight.
- Drain and rinse. Cover with twice their volume of cold water in a saucepan. Add one peeled, halved onion and bouquet garni. Cook 60–90 minutes, depending on bean age, until completely tender. Salt near the end, drain and reserve.
- Heat oven to 180°C fan. Coat lamb with 3 tablespoons olive oil, Espelette, salt and pepper. Make about twelve slits and insert garlic, anchovy and little pieces of rosemary or thyme. Roast about 45 minutes, basting regularly with wine after the first 20 minutes.
- Remove lamb, raise oven to 250°C, wrap lamb in foil and rest 20 minutes. Collect the juices and deglaze the roasting tray with a little water or stock. Whisk in mustard and reserve the sauce.
- While lamb cooks, soften the remaining chopped onion and diced pork in the last tablespoon of olive oil. Season and add cooked beans, a few tablespoons water and some lamb juices. Add rosemary and quartered olives; simmer 10–15 minutes.
- Return lamb to the very hot oven for 5 minutes to colour. Carve and serve with beans and sauce separately.
Equipment
Large bowl; Saucepan; Roasting tray; Sauté pan; Foil; Whisk; Sauce boat
Notes
- The night before: soak the beans. For more fragrance, you can also wrap the seasoned, studded lamb and refrigerate it overnight.
- Beans: cook until completely tender before the final sauté. Their age affects the 60–90-minute cooking time. Julie also suggests bringing them to the boil and replacing the cooking water if you find beans troublesome to digest.
- Herbs: rosemary or thyme is offered for the lamb. The Method also calls for a bouquet garni in the bean water, but gives no composition or quantity.
- Roast and rest: follow the 180°C fan roast, twenty-minute rest and five-minute 250°C finish in the Method. Keep the resting juices for the sauce and beans.
- Sauce: deglaze the tray with a little water or stock, whisk in the mustard and serve separately.
- Timing: the forty-five-minute cooking headline covers the main roast. Allow for the overnight bean soak, 60–90-minute bean cooking, lamb rest and hot finish; no complete elapsed total is supplied.
Photos
1 photo
About this dish
Roast lamb and flageolets are an established French pairing: a garlic-studded leg of lamb, tender beans and the juices from the roasting tray. The beans make the roast a complete meal and give its juices somewhere to go. Julie Andrieu develops that combination with anchovies in the meat and black olives among the beans.
Andrieu puts little pieces of anchovy, thin garlic slices and rosemary or thyme directly into slits in the meat. Black olives and smoked pork or a piece of cured ham enrich the beans, while a touch of Espelette pepper seasons the roast. These ingredients give the familiar lamb-and-bean combination a stronger, saltier accent.
The meat rests before a final blast of heat colours its surface. During that interval, the roasting tray yields a separate mustard sauce and the beans take up some lamb juices. The garnishes remain distinct, but the roast connects them: nothing valuable in the tray has to be left behind.
Recipe and cooking notes adapted from Julie Andrieu.