Spring feast, French-style: Leg of lamb with flageolet beans

By Leslie Brenner

Ever wonder how the French mark Easter at the table? Traditionally, it’s with something fabulous starring lamb, such as gigot d’agneau flageolets — roasted leg of lamb with flageolet beans.

It’s an impressive presentation that will earn you oohs and aahs — slices of rosy, boneless lamb set atop saucy flageolet beans that are tender, and creamy inside. Pronounced “flah-zho-lay,” they are known as the “caviar” of beans; in France, they’re lamb’s frequent companion.

Gigot d’agneau flageolets is actually pretty easy to prepare, requiring more time than effort (the dried beans need to simmer). The lamb is a boneless leg that you unroll, rub with a paste of herbs, garlic and a little anchovy, roll back up and tie, let sit so the flavors and salt penetrate the meat, then brown on top of the stove and roast in its sauté pan. While the roasted lamb rests, make a quick, lamby pan-sauce that you’ll stir into the beans.

The last-minute act of slicing and plating the whole thing is pretty laid-back (since there’s no bone to contend with), so it’s great for entertaining. And gloriously delicious.

More about flageolets, and how to sub

Pale green when they’re dried, and about the size and shape of a kidney bean, those flageolets are one of my favorite beans — almost elegant, with a beautiful texture. Soak them for four to six hours and they cook up fairly quickly — last time I made them, it was about 90 minutes to tenderness. But you don’t even need to soak them; you can just simmer them a little longer and they still wonderful. If you don’t find them in your local fancy grocery, you can order them from Rancho Gordo.

But you can still approximate this dish even if you don’t have flageolets; navy beans or cannellinis, while not quite as elegant, make a good stand-in. And if you don’t have time to simmer dried beans? You could even used canned cannellinis or navy beans. Just drain three cans of them and use them in place of the cooked flageolets in step 7 of our recipe. In place of the reserved cooking liquid, use some purchased chicken broth or vegetable broth.

Just the lamb, please

Or maybe you’re just not a bean person, but you want to make the lamb. Go ahead and follow the lamb part of our recipe. When you get to the part where you deglaze the pan to make a quick pan sauce, use that to drizzle over the sliced lamb, or pass it at the table for everyone to sauce their own. You can serve the lamb with roasted potatoes and asparagus.

Easter, Passover, any spring celebration

With or without the flageolets, the dish is great for any spring celebration or special dinner — including Passover. (For that holiday, if you serve the lamb with asparagus, as suggested above, you’ll want to leave off the butter, if you you want to keep it kosher for Passover, of course.)

And if you’re only two or three at table, it’s still very much worth doing: You’ll wind up with some pretty spectacular leftovers. Lamb sandwich, anyone?

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Can’t wait for spring? Head to the freezer! Open a jar! Favas, peas and artichokes know how to act fresh

Medley of Spring Vegetables from ‘The Food of Spain’ by Claudia Roden

By Leslie Brenner

Asparagus! Favas! Peas! Artichokes!

Excuse the over-the-top enthusiasm, but you know how it is when you’re a cook — a murmur of spring in the air, and your mind goes straight to the vegetable garden.

By the time March blows in (or even before), asparagus arrives from Mexico and California, and sugar snap peas, usually ubiquitous, do a great job of evoking a springlike mood.

But until we’re in full-on spring (which officially begins in the Northern Hemisphere this year on March 20), and fresh English peas, favas and artichokes fill the market bins, feel free to accept an assist from the freezer section or even a can. We won’t tell. In fact we’ve been known to keep cheating from time to time with frozen peas and canned artichoke hearts all season (and even all year) long.

A medley that evokes spring

Assemble the whole cast — peas, favas, asparagus and artichokes — and you can make the fantastic spring veg medley shown above. Adapted from Claudia Roden’s The Food of Spain, it’s based on a traditional menestra de primavera — a spring vegetable soup — but Roden’s spin is more like a soupy side-dish. Or read on for ideas for dishes featuring solo frozen peas, artichoke hearts or favas.

We often find favas — even out of season — in our local Middle-Eastern market. They’re large, fuzzy green pods, usually at least six inches / 15 centimeters long. Choose the ones with smaller beans inside the pods (just feel them with your fingers). The large beans are too hard; the small ones cook up sweet and tender, and they’re also delicious raw. In France, they’re eaten with crusty bread, sweet butter and a little fleur de sel. (Do try this!)

Whether you eat them raw or cook them, you’ll need to peel them — twice. Once by removing the favas from those fuzzy pods. And then, pierce the skin of each bean with the tip of a small knife and slip off the jacket to liberate the shinier small bean inside. (Discard the skins and pods.) It’s labor-intensive, but worth it, if you’re up for it. (You can also drop them, still in their jackets, in boiling water, blanch 10 seconds or so, shock in cold water and they come off pretty easiily.)

If you do want to cheat (and I heartily recommend it!), it’s not always easy to find frozen favas — again, I find them in our Middle-Eastern market. Sometimes they’re peeled (yay!), and sometimes they’re out of the pods, but still wear their jackets, which is a drag. (These I run hot water over to thaw, then peel.) And sometimes it’s hard to tell from the bag whether they’re peeled or not.)

For the artichokes, I usually choose canned — those in jars are usually marinated in olive oil, and for Roden’s dish, we’re looking for plain ones. You can also sometimes find them frozen. To make the dish, you gently simmer the spring veg, then separately make a light white sauce with onion, garlic, white wine, a little serrano or other ham and some of the broth from the veg. Cook that sauce till velvety, and pour it over the brothy vegetables. It’s really nice.

RECIPE: Claudia Roden’s Medley of Spring Vegetables

A Levantine way with favas

Or maybe you want to take that nice bag of frozen favas and turn them into something easy and delightfully Lebanese. In that case, try this recipe adapted from Reem Kassis’ wonderful 2021 cookbook The Arabesque Table. Kassis has us warm olive oil with garlic, add the just-thawed favas, cook briefly and toss with lime juice and a lot of chopped cilantro.

Also from The Arabesque Table, I love this super quick and easy recipe starring canned or frozen artichoke hearts. They mingle with shrimp, along with fresh and preserved lemon and turmeric, for a dreamy main course.

RECIPE: Artichoke Shrimp with Preserved Lemon and Turmeric

Eat your peas!

Frozen peas? Oh, please — I eat them all year long. So do most chefs I know, even really famous ones.

My favorite frozen pea trick is turning them into a ridiculously easy yet surprisingly elegant soup based on traditional French potage Saint Germain.

Frozen peas and fresh mint also star, along with ricotta and lemon, in this adorable dip. Set it out — on a day that feels like spring, or almost — with toasted dark rye, crostini or crackers. No matter what the calendar says, spring will have arrived.

RECIPE: Pea-Ricotta Dip

Spring has spring

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Spring has spring 〰️

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For Pi Day, consider the Provençale onion tart known as a pissaladière

By Leslie Brenner

Looking for 78.5 square inches or 2,026 square centimeters of Pi Day deliciousness? Consider this pissaladière — an onion and anchovy tart that’s traditional in Provence, France.

Its base is a surprisingly easy pâte brisée (savory pastry) that comes together in a flash in the food processor. No need to blind-bake it. Fill it with slowly caramelized sliced onions, then top with a lattice of anchovy fillets dotted with pitted niçoise (or kalamata) olives and sprinkle with fresh thyme. Pop it in the oven and bake till golden brown. Those anchovies melt dreamily into the onions, which have already cooked down to rich sweetness.

A nice slice makes a wonderful light dinner, or a superb first course when friends come for dinner. Or take the whole tart — room temp — on a picnic.

At their home in Provence, pissaladières are sometimes built on bread rather than pastry crust, but I favor the pâte brisée tart-crust version, which is what qualifies it as a Pi Day treat. I learned it from a remarkable French cook (and old friend), Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch.

It’s a dish I’ve been making since Danièle taught it to me more than 30 years ago, and still one of my favorites.

The onions need to caramelize low and slow — which can take a couple of hours, or more. They don’t need much minding, though, just a stir every now and then. Maybe not something you want to tackle on mid-week Pi Day, but doesn’t it sound great for the weekend?

RECIPE: Pissaladière