NAVARIN PRINTANIER: A French Lamb Stew

A really, really, really delicious lamb stew!!!  Thank you for this recipe Ms. Dorie Greenspan, it's a keeper.  Navarin printanier is French for lamb stew.  Navarin refers to stew which contains lamb, and the word printanier alludes to spring and to the first tiny vegetables that appear in the garden and are kind enough to offer themselves up for cooking.  This stew is made with meat from lamb shoulder, a tougher cut of meat which becomes truly flavorful when properly cooked.  The stewing method tenderizes tough pieces of meat and allows the flavors of the ingredients to blend deliciously.  The dish needs to cook for about 2 hours, partly on the stove top and partly in the oven. In the end, the lamb comes out very tender, the vegetables are sweet, and the sauce is perfect! Meat from the shoulder of lamb is fatty, so a good amount of fat trimming needs to take place before it's ready for cooking. This type of meat also contains some bones.  I discarded a few and I saved a few. Adding bones to the pot makes the dish that much more flavorful. It was good to eat a stew made from lamb. All too often making stew means cooking with beef.  This was a welcome and delicious change.  Everyone in my family loved it!!!  We ate an early dinner.  I had a plateful, but this stew had a kind of stick to your ribs quality.  I wasn't hungry for anything else during the rest of the day. There are some leftovers though, and I know I'll be eating navarin printanier tomorrow, as well.  With a slice of bread and some salad.  Oh, yes!  Sounds good to me!

Ingredients:

about 5 tablespoons olive oil
3 pounds lamb shoulder, excess fat removed, most bones discarded

3 tablespoons flour

4 cups beef broth

3 large tomatoes chopped well after the skin and seeds have been removed 
1 tablespoon tomato paste 

4 garlic cloves chopped
1/2 medium red onion, chopped
1 pound small onions, such as pearl onions, skins removed
3 carrots sliced into 3/4 inch pieces
1 turnip cut into 3/4 inch wedges
3 medium Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and quartered
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup frozen peas
salt and pepper

a bouquet garni made up of 5 thyme sprigs, 8 parsley sprigs and two bay leaves
salt and pepper
1/2 cup of beef or chicken broth
a few thyme leaves, a few rosemary leaves and 1 tablespoon chopped parsley 

Directions:

• So you have removed the fat from the lamb.  Now cut it into 1½ inch pieces.  Discard most of the bones, but keep a few.  Bones left in the meat give added flavor to the sauce.  Once the stew cooks, the lamb will be very tender, and the bones will just pop away from the meat so that they can be discarded before serving.   Use some paper towels to dry the meat well.  It will not brown if it is left damp.  
• In a Dutch oven heat 2 tablespoons olive oil and brown the lamb on all sides.  Brown it in batches without overcrowding the pan, and add more olive oil to the pot as needed.  Remove the browned lamb to a plate. 

Here is a batch of stew meat, browning along with a few bones.

• If there is a lot of fat in the pot, discard it. If the pot has just a little olive oil and a lot of brown bits in it, by all means leave it alone.

Hardly any fat left in the pot.  All those brown bits add lots of flavor to the sauce.

• Season the meat with salt and pepper and sprinkle the flour on top.  Stir the meat so that it's coated with flour. Return the meat to the pot and cook, stirring for 2 minutes.

Flouring the meat after it has browned and then sauteing it again for a few minutes... This will help to thicken the sauce.

• Add the beef broth, chopped tomatoes, tomato paste, red onion,garlic, and the bouquet garni.  Mix and bring to a boil.  Make sure you gently incorporate into the broth all that brown goodness stuck to the bottom of the pot. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 45 minutes.

Adding the garlic, the herbs and the tomatoes.  I didn't tie the herbs into a bouquet garni, chiefly because the recipe didn't specify to do so.  Big mistake.  At the end of cooking, it was difficult to remove the stems from the stew.  Lesson learned.  

• While the lamb is simmering prepare the vegetables.  First, remove the onion skins.  When dealing with small onions there is a very easy way to do this:  cut off the root and stem ends.  Let the onions cook in boiling water for about 2 minutes.  Drain them, and when they are cool enough to handle, pick them up one by one.  You'll be able to squeeze their skins right off.  

The onions have to be cooked separately.  If added along with the other vegetables, they will melt away in the sauce.

• In a skillet, heat a little of the olive oil and sauté the onions until they turn brown.  Add the 1/2 cup of broth, a few thyme leaves, a few rosemary leaves a bay leaf and the tablespoon of parsley. Simmer slowly until the liquid evaporates, about half an hour.  Add the peas and 1/4 of the sugar.  Stir for about a minute or two and then remove them to a plate and cover to keep warm.  Discard the bay leaf.  

Turnips, carrots and potatoes.  Being sautéed with sugar!  The only way to cook turnips and like them.  (Perhaps I should try this when I'm making Brussels sprouts.  So that I can like them).

• In the same skillet heat a little more olive oil and add the carrots, turnip,  potatoes, a few thyme leaves and a few rosemary leaves.  Stir for about 2 minutes and then add the sugar.  Cook, stirring, for another 5 minutes until the vegetables are browned.  
• When the lamb has cooked for 45 minutes, add the all the vegetables except the peas and onions.  Mix, cover the pot and place it in a preheated 375º F oven.  

Here's the stew ready for the oven.  I just need to find the lid and cover the pot.

• Cook for another 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the lamb is really tender.  Make sure there is enough liquid in the pot.  You may or may not need to add a little bit more.  
• Discard the bouquet garni and the bones.  Or, you may choose to discard the bouquet garni and keep the bones.  
• Stir in the peas and onions, and serve.  Like all good stews, this lamb stew will need to be ladled into a soup plates.  

Perhaps it's a cliché to mention it, but stew tastes better the next day.  It tasted great on day one, but I can't wait to see how it will taste on day two.  I don't think I'll be disappointed.

This post is my contribution to French Fridays with Dorie, a weekly event with recipes chosen from Dorie Greenspan's book "Around my French Table." 

I am also linking this post to Souper Sundays, at Kahakai Kitchen, an every Sunday event featuring recipes of soups, salads, or sandwiches (sometimes, stews too).