Far from a sheepish campaign
Restaurants and pubs throughout Britain celebrated Mutton Renaissance week by putting the meat back on the menu.
At acclaimed French restaurant Racine in Knightsbridge, chef/proprietor Henry Harris, included a mutton dish on the lunchtime set-menu, which costs £15.50 for two courses.
"I did poached leg of mutton with caper sauce and mashed potato with buttered leeks running through it. We had 50 people in for Tuesday lunch and 12 of them ordered the mutton.
"I sourced the mutton very carefully and got it from lamb farmers David and Daphne Tilley at Elwy Valley, north Wales. It's delicious, so succulent it just goes to show that good animal husbandry produces the best meat.
"Mutton is such a rich, dense meat that I look to the Pyrenees for inspiration to cook mutton it needs strong aromatics such as oregano, lemon, garlic, fennel, even lavender."
Pub chef Sandra Jefferies, who runs the Fighting Cocks at Stottesdon, Shropshire, regularly puts mutton on the menu. "So far this month, I've done a mutton pie with lambs' kidneys, mutton with rosemary suet dumplings and a roast leg of mutton with home-made gravy. It's been very popular."
Matt Tebbutt, at the Foxhunter near Abergavenny, joined the celebrations by putting boiled mutton with white onion sauce on his menu. The mutton had come from Herefordshire and had been hung for six weeks.
Neil Clark, head chef at the Linnet in Great Hinton, Wiltshire, has been using mutton on his menu. His dishes have included braised mutton and baby vegetables in a cider and rosemary gravy.
