“Such food Bran had never seen; course after course after course, so much that he could not manage more than a bite or two of each dish. There were great joints of aurochs roasted with leeks, venison pies chunky with carrots, bacon, and mushrooms, mutton chops sauced in honey and cloves…” -A Clash of Kings
Lamb Chops sauced with Honey and Cloves
Thoughts:
I sort of winged this particular dish. Having such great results with the mead marinade that I used for the Robert Baratheon meal, I decided to try a similar approach with this dish.
Sometimes a dish doesn’t quite live up to my expectations.
The results, while tasty, were not as mind-boggling as the former instance. The sauce was nice, but lacked a really strong honey-clove flavor. A variation on this sauce, perhaps with some butter and white wine instead of the mead, could be lovely, and is something I’ll probably try: I hate being defeated by a meal.
Honestly, I think that literally pouring some good honey and ground cloves over a nice cut of lamb will give you as rewarding a dish as any more complicated version. Keep the pinch of cinnamon, though: it helps bring out the bite of the clove.
Any suggestions?
Recipe for Honey-Clove Lamb Chops
Ingredients:
- 2 large lamb steaks
- 1 cup plain mead
- 2 tsp. ground cloves
- 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
- 4 Tbs. honey
Preheat the oven to 400F. Sear the lamb in a dry skillet, then remove to a baking dish. Cook for 15-20 minutes, or until it is cooked to your preference. Remove from oven and allow to rest for a moment.
Combine the remaining ingredients in the same skillet and allow to simmer over medium heat until it has reduced by about a third.
Serve the lamb hot, with the sauce poured over.
The few times I’ve tried mead the honey taste had been destroyed by the fermentation process. Maybe I’ve just been unlucky, but I think I’d skip the mead and go with white wine and half again the honey.
Too much liquid. Just enough mead, vermouth – whatever – to deglaze. Then add flavors and reduce to syrup. It goes very quickly.
Seems to me that allspice should replace a lot of the clove.
Maybe as an alternative, a heavy cream (as opposed to butter) could be mixed in with white wine to make up the sauce? Not sure what proportions you would need, though, to keep up a somewhat thick consistency.
Honey and spices are used extensively in Greek cooking, not just with sweets, but in meat dishes, too. Beef, lamb, chicken and rabbit are often teamed up with cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, with plenty of onion forming the basis of a lovely rich , sweet sauce/gravy. The Greeks of Constantinople and Anatolia brought many such delights with them when they settled in Greece.
I think the original recipe with mutton, which is a much older and much tougher cut of meat, would benefit from the sauce as it is as a marinade first then using part of it to deglaze the pan or you could use it as a pan sauce. It is possible that the mutton was cooked longer in the sauce as the original idea to tenderize it and/or make it less ‘muttony’ tasting. Also, I would use whole cloves stuck into the meat to give it more flavor, rather than ground in the sauce. With the lamb, I would go with just honey and cloves and a light splash of something liquid (I don’t use alcohol, so I use white wine vinegar, some kind of fruit juice or chicken stock that will substitute for it). Just my take.
I I brought it up in a previous post but Bärenfang/Bärenjäger is a honey liquor that has an intense honey flavor that mead can not touch. Served chilled in cordial glasses or hot in warm cider it is the awesome. In this case if it was treated like a sherry or brandy in a sauce it could impart it’s strong honey flavor with better success.
I agree with Mary. Mutton has a much, much stronger flavour than lamb, so it would complement the sauce more. And Barenjager is wonderful to use in cooking. (and if you have a cold, it’s phenomenal!)
If you have any chance to get ahold of mutton, you need to do so. Mutton is as different from lamb as lamb is from beef. It has a really deep flavour, that needs an acerbic sauce to stand up to it.
I love lamb, but it doesn’t hold a candle to mutton.
I’d really love to! My local butchers already think I’m nuts, so there’s not much to lose by asking… ;)
Way too much cloves in this recipe, made it quite bitter even before the cinnamon to bring out the cloves