Côtelettes à la Champvallon (10 Cutlets)

Côtelettes à la Champvallon (lamb cutlets baked with onions and potato roundels) teaches control through reduction. The one true thing is this: the stock must nearly disappear at the same moment the potatoes soften and the lamb yields. Too much liquid and you have soup; too little, too soon, and the potatoes never finish.

The original entry assumed ten cutlets, white stock never far from the fire, a cook free to baste repeatedly, and a separate pan and earthenware baking dish. Here, the ten cutlets become four, the onions become 90 grams, and the potatoes 270 grams, preserving the book's one-to-three proportion exactly. A good low-sodium white chicken stock stands in for the stockpot, while one shallow ovenproof braiser handles both stove and oven. One cook, one stove, one evening.

Fashioning the potatoes into corks before slicing them was brigade presentation scaffolding, so it can go without harming the dish. Cut even roundels from ordinary peeled potatoes instead. Browning the cutlets in butter, keeping the onions pale, giving the meat its twenty-minute head start, basting the potatoes, and reducing the stock almost away must stay. Those steps are the dish.

When it is right, the potato edges are butter-gold, the onions have melted beneath them, and only a glossy spoonful of cooking juices remains around the bronzed cutlets. Before touching the pan, choose a shallow vessel in which the cutlets fit snugly in one layer. That decision governs the reduction.