Côtelettes Laura

Côtelettes Laura (lamb cutlets cloaked in creamed macaroni and pig’s caul) teaches a very classical piece of grammar: the first heat builds colour, and the second finishes the dish. Grill the cutlets only until they bronze. If you cook them through before wrapping, the fierce final oven gives you dry lamb beneath a handsome crust, and handsome is not enough.

The original assumed several cooks moving at once, a saucier on staff with a stock never off the fire, long macaroni cut into half-inch lengths, and a salamander waiting overhead. For one cook, one stove, one evening, the work becomes sequential: bind and cool small elbow macaroni, warm a good prepared veal demi-glace with tomato, pan-grill four cutlets, then use the upper rack of a very hot oven. The synchronized hands and cutting of long macaroni are brigade scaffolding; elbows already have the prescribed length. The caul, cream binding, 2½ ounces of garnish per cutlet, buttered crumbs, fierce heat, and tomato half-glaze are the dish, so they stay.

When it is right, the caul has nearly vanished into the crumb, the macaroni remains creamy without running, and the lamb stays juicy beneath a bronze shell. Work with cold, pliable caul and completely cooled filling; if the netting tears, overlap it and continue. The step that decides the result comes earlier: the first grilling is for colour only, never doneness.