A famous Greek dish made à la minute style. We can substitute endives with chicories!
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 8 € pp)
- Salt
- 800 g boned lamb leg, cut in 4 pieces
- EV sunflower oil
- 1/2 liter vegetable stock
- 1 carrot
- 4 egg yolks
- 1 lemon
- 500 g curly endives
- White pepper
The avgolemono is a sauce of Greek origin, but catalogized by Escoffier as one of his great sauces. It can be made following the rules for the egg binded sauces, mixing lemon juice with the egg yolks. In Greece they use to put a very big amount of juice, but the sauce I propose is more “rounded”, helping the other ingredients of the dish to be present in each mouthful.
So, first of all we prepare the meat, starting the day before, when we pre-salt it and leave it in the fridge, till the cooking time. We pat it dry and we mark it in some EV sunflower oil.
We then slowly roast the lamb leg, putting it in the oven (140 C) by aluminum foil. We can also use our Duch Oven and one of our stoves. The important is the lamb to be very very tender, humid and juicy and to have a casserole roast look.
Meanwhile, we peel the carrot, we cut it in small pieces, we baste it with some oil and salt and roast it for 15 mins in the oven (140 C). We just want the carrot to get its aromatic compounds concentrated.
We also prepare the endives, boiling them in batches in plenty of salted water for 2-3 mins.
Last but not least: The sauce.
First of all we beat the egg yolks with the lemon juice. Then, beating continuously, we start adding the stock very slowly. When all the stock has been used, we may reduce the sauce (if needed) and add salt and white pepper.
We put in each plate a piece of lamb and the endives. We pour over the sauce and decorate with the carrot pieces.
