It’s been another busy week in the kitchen, as I prepared to enter the cookery demonstration tent, alongside GBBO winner Sophie Faldo at for the Weald Country show in Essex. The brief; to create a scrumptious dish in under 50 minutes. No pressure then!

I was confident that my recipe for lamb Puttanesca wouldn’t fail to delight the Essex crowd, and it can easily be created in under an hour (although some pre-planning and marinating of the meat will add a little extra joy). Puttanesca is a sauce most commonly served with pasta, and as with most Italian recipes, there are some regional variations. I have endeavoured however to retain the classic flavours of rich tomatoes with salty capers and olives. The sauce is topped with succulent lamb cutlets and finished with a crispy anchovy crumb. I hope that you give this one a go and that you enjoy as much as the crowd did in the food tent.

Lamb Puttanesca with anchovy crumb

Serves 4

Ingredients:

For the lamb:

12 lamb cutlets

6 – 8 garlic cloves

Salt and pepper to season

A good glug of olive oil

For the Puttanesca sauce

8 large vine tomatoes

Olive oil

4 – 6 cloves of garlic

1 – 2 tbls chopped black olives

1-2 tbls chopped capers

1 red chilli, deseeded and finely diced

Juice of half a lemon

Handful of torn basil leaves

Salt and pepper to taste

For the anchovy crumb

1 slice wholemeal bread

8 anchovy fillets

Olive oil

Handful of torn basil to garnish.

Method

Start by preparing the lamb, which is ideally done the night before and left to marinate. Place the cutlets in a plastic sandwich bag with the olive oil and seasoning. Roughly bash the garlic cloves and add these to the bag. Massage the garlic and oil into the meat and refrigerate until required. Remove the meat from the refrigerator about an hour before you plan to cook it, to allow it to come to room temperature.

To make the sauce, start by peeling the tomatoes. For an easy method, cut a criss-cross into the top of each tomato, penetrating just below the skin. Place the tomatoes into a bowl and cover with boiling water. Leave them for a couple of minutes before draining. The boiling water will penetrate under the skin and this should now easily peer away. Once skinned, quarter the tomatoes, removing the core and the seeds, which can be discarded. Heat some olive oil in a wide-bottomed saucepan before adding the roughly chopped tomato flesh. Cook this for a couple of minutes until soft, before adding the garlic, olives, capers and chilli. The quantity of garlic, olives and capers will depend on your pallet, so  keep tasting your sauce – you can always add more if you prefer. Reduce the heat and simmer the sauce gently.

The anchovy crumb is incredibly simple. Blitz the bread and anchovy in a food processor. Heat a small amount of oil in a frying pan and toast the crumb until crisp and golden – keep an eye on it as it can easily burn; as I discovered in the cookery demonstration tent, much to my embarrassment. Keep the crumb to one side until you are ready to plate.

You want to cook the lamb at the very last minute. Heat a griddle pan until hot – you don’t need any oil as you oiled the cutlets in the marinade. You want to start the cutlets upright, with the fat in contact with the pan. I’ve tried various methods of keeping them upright and I generally achieve this by wedging them in-between some heat-proof metal rings. Depending on the size of your griddle pan you may need to batch cook the cutlets, in which case keep them warm under some foil until you are ready to plate the dish. The majority of the cooking will take place on the fat, as you want this to be rendered down and the skin crispy; which will take between 5 and 10 minutes. Remove the metal rings and cook the cutlets for 2 minutes on each side. This should give you succulent pink cutlets with unctuous crispy skin.

Finish the sauce with the torn basil and a squeeze of lemon juice; adjusting the seasoning with salt and pepper if necessary. The olives and capers are salty in flavour; as is the anchovy crumb, so go careful with the salt. You are now ready to serve the dish. Spoon the sauce into the centre of the plate or bowl. I like to create some height by leaning three pieces of lamb upright against each other – imagine a totem pole. Finish the dish with a scattering of the anchovy crumb and some torn basil to garnish.