The menu for the penultimate week of my Leiths course was lamb with pan-fried new potatoes, beans and parma ham, onion and chili chutney for main course, followed by a passionfruit and Muscat syllabub

Lamb fillet with pan-fried new potatoes, beans and parma ham, onion and chili chutney

This recipe was adapted from New Zealand Food, Wine and Art. It was nice but a bit of a fiddly, fussy recipe and it took us most of the lesson. It’s a nice way to prepare lamb but I thought the Parma-wrapped green beans and fried potatoes were overkill.

First we made the chutney but before we could do that we had to make the basil oil. This involved blanching (plunging into boiling water for a minute) and refreshing (running under cold water) the basil leaves and patting dry, then blending it in a food processor with sunflower oil and finely straining through muslin or a fine sieve. It made a lovely pea-green oil and the leftovers were great as a salad dressing.

To make the chutney, we cooked onion, chilli and garlic in the basil oil and then added treacle and vinegar. When it was reduced and cooled, we stirred through chopped chives.

Meanwhile, we topped and tailed beans and blanched and refreshed. We made parcels by wrapping slices of Parma ham or prosciutto around small handfuls of beans. This was difficult because the ham kept breaking into small pieces.

The recipe said to peel and parboil the potatoes and then cut into discs. We saved time by cutting them into discs first, about the thickness of a £1 coin, then boiling them for less time.

We took the fillet off the bone and trimmed the meat of fat and sinew. Apparently it’s quite hard to buy lamb fillet but it was also an opportunity for Leiths to teach us knife skills or basic butchery. One of the other women in the class took the bones home for her dog.

We browned the fillets, rubbed with a clove of garlic and then roasted for 6-10 minutes until pink.

To finish off, we reheated the jus and panfried the potato slices and beans, until the potato was golden and the ham was crisp. We rested the meat and then sliced thickly on the diagonal.

The lamb and the chutney was tasty but I found the dish a bit heavy. I don’t think there is any need for frying potato for home cooking and the Parma ham was a bit salty after cooking. I could imagine this on a restaurant menu but I don’t think I would make the dish in its entirety at home.

Passionfruit and Muscat syllabub

After a complicated main course, it was nice to have a really simple dessert. This is a good one to have up your sleeve because it’s easy to make, yet still really delicious and impressive looking. No need to break your back making a pie.

We halved the passion fruits, scooped out the seeds and juice and set it aside. Then we mixed marscapone, creme fraiche and Muscat together, adding sifted icing sugar and a little lemon juice. We folded in most of the passion fruit.

We layered the syllabub with the remaining passion fruit in glasses and chilled before serving. It really was quite delicious and would be especially nice with biscuits - perhaps a nice almond biscotti.