A serve of nostalgia on the menu

Seems I was all overcome with nostalgia when I craved for some good old-fashioned comfort food in the form of lamb cutlets.

The chilly nights have become a constant now after such a mild and gloriously sunny spate of days, and I just fancied nudging up to a crumbed cutlet. I fondly recall having these as a child and whilst we certainly eat a lot less meat these days, I just had to have some lamb! But, as is my wont, served them up this time with a twist with the addition of sumac.

Just to digress for a moment, I just absolutely loved the first episode of Annabell Crabb’s current television series, Back in time for dinner.

With her usual on-camera vitality and extensive research, this clever doco places us in a time machine and whips us back to the 1950s. Oh my, how things have changed. I urge you to check this program out. It’s truly enlightening, educative and amusing and a source of much post-viewing family discussions on just how different our lives are today.

Can’t wait for the next episode, cruising into the 60s. And I hasten to add, that even if you “weren’t there” you will be beguiled I’m sure to learn just how we ate, dressed, house-kept, and decorated our homes all those decades ago!

Perhaps this was the catalyst for my yearning for some nostalgia food? Of course, the starting point was the really lovely looking, lean and trimmed lamb cutlets at the butcher’s, and yes, I know, they are a bit of a treat in terms of the weekly food budget. I used panko breadcrumbs but you could use, as those dutiful housewives of the 50s would have done, made the breadcrumbs from (at least one) day old bread.

Unlike our mums and aunts of the 50s, they wouldn’t have had access to a food processor, but would have hand grated the bread on the coarse side of one of those cylindrical or box-shaped metal graters, which do a very fine job. It’s important to keep a watchful eye on the job as these grates do a great job on your knuckles if you’re not careful.

But by pulsing roughly torn stale bread in the food processor to make the crumbs, you can then combine them with some lemon zest, shredded parmesan, salt, pepper and parsley – especially tasty on veal or chicken. The age-old process of crumbing food involves three steps – flour, egg wash and the crumbs.

If I am crumbing pieces of food, I usually toss them in a light coating of seasoned flour – that is flour to which I add a little salt, and some freshly ground black pepper, then a wash of milk to which I add a tablespoon or so of olive oil, (instead of using an egg), and finally the crumb coating.

Sumac is a spice used mostly in middle-eastern and some Asian cuisine and is a reddish – purple powder with a delightful lemony, tart flavour. I often use it just as is on a backstrap of lamb, like a dry rub, before barbecuing or pan frying the meat. The spice is made by grinding the fruit of the plant. In some North American cuisines a drink is made by soaking the fruits (drupes) in water, and sometime the dried powder is combined with tobacco in traditional smoking mixtures. I think I’ll pass on that idea. Better to simply sprinkle the sumac onto a salad, or onto hummus, even sprinkling some onto your home-made bread dough could be tasty. Sumac is readily available in supermarkets and specialist delis.

Another variation of my favourite crumbed cutlets is to jazz them up a little by smearing a whisker of seed mustard onto each cutlet before crumbing them as described above. I top each cutlet with a small knob of butter and bake them no more than eight minutes in a hot oven. Simply served with some green beans, or asparagus and creamy mashed potato – a comfort food dish that never goes out of fashion!