a woman's place

46. Loin of lamb a la bonne femme

I cooked loin of pork bonne femme the other day and here I am today cooking a similarly named dish. Just what is this bonne femme business? The little bit of French I've picked up from the Rosetta Stone software tells me the name has something to do with women. The 'bonne femme' entry in Larousse Gastronomique tells me bonne femme dishes are the sort of things a 'good wife' would prepare. They are simple, homely preparations. How quaint. I'm sure, if pushed, I--an old media and communications student--could write a couple of thousand words on cultural notions of gender and food. The man and his barbecue or paella. The woman and her ... meaty loins.

The lamb version of the recipe is a little different from the pork one. The pork was prepared as a straight roast, the lamb is prepared as a pot roast. You brown a loin of lamb and then throw it in a casserole with some browned pearl onions, browned chopped potatoes and crisped-up diced bacon. You spoon a little bit of extra fat in for good measure and then place it in a 180 degree oven for a hour or so.

A word on the cut: if you're in Australia and go to a butcher or supermarket and look for loin, you'll probably see chops. Individual chops. What I'm working with is a single piece of loin. It wasn't on display but the butcher had a few such pieces out the back, each weighing somewhere between 700 grams and a kilogram. A lot of the loin roasts that you'll turn up via Google image search have been rolled and tied attractively. Mine didn't come like that.

I scored the fat as one might with a piece of pork belly and then placed some roughly chopped fresh rosemary and bay (I would've included parsley and thyme, too, but those two plants are looking a bit sad and the last thing I think I should be doing is picking their leaves) inside and then rolled it and tied it.

Incidentally, if you do a Google image search for 'loin', the very first image that appears is of a well-built man wearing naught but a few strategically-placed lengths of chain.