Braised Stuffed Lambs' Hearts (or My Food Hero)

Braise (v) (old or middle French) ~ to cook in a small amount of liquid, in a covered pan.

If I asked you to name just one person; someone who'd had the greatest influence on you as a cook, your style of cooking or, quite simply, your appreciation and enjoyment of all things food related, who would that person be?

I'd have to nominate Mrs Dorothy Merton Allen. My Grandmother on my Mother's side, Grandma Dot was a domestic goddess of seemingly boundless energy, who not only cooked, sewed, knitted and gardened, all to a very high standard, but for most of her married life held down a job, often full time. All food was cooked fresh from scratch - rich meat pies and puddings, tasty roasts and stews, delicious flans and tarts, not to mention fantastic cakes and buns. My Grandmother did the bulk of the cooking, it's true, but that's not to say my Grandfather, Tom, didn't play his part in the kitchen, assisting with food preparation and, of course, the washing up. There was always fruit to be bottled (usually obtained from an obliging hedgerow), onions, horseradish and beetroot to be prepared for pickling, or jam to be made from the fruit grown in their own garden. 

Tom always joked that he'd only married his wife for her plain and simple English cooking. Her food was simple, certainly, quintessentially English, quite definitely, but no one could ever describe my grandmother's cooking as plain! Her ability to produce richly flavoured, traditional dishes from a few simple ingredients was legendary and one of the abiding memories of my formative years. She never strayed far from what were perceived to be traditional English flavours and cooking methods (albeit these traditions stretched back generally no further than the Victorian era and Mrs Beeton) - for one, my grandfather insisted that "those strongly spiced and flavoured foreign foods" played havoc with his digestion. It always struck me as curious that he managed to consume quite so much hot English mustard, home pickled horseradish and fresh peppery watercress, and yet nothing as 'exotic' as a simple spaghetti bolognese ever past his lips! Attention to detail was the key to my Grandmother's success - onions were carefully browned for flavour, meat was generally seared before braising (this recipe being an exception), roast beef was served a deep pink in the middle, and, unusually for her generation, vegetables were steamed briefly leaving them still full of colour and flavour. No yellowing soggy sprouts at my Grandmother's dinner table, thank you very much!

What I've come to realise only recently (following conversations with my Mother and a little research into rationing and its effects during the war) is that my Grandmother had wholeheartedly embraced the Food Ministry's wartime advice to "not overcook vegetables in order to maintain their nutritional value" and then continued to cook in this style after the war; whereas, many of her contemporaries had either failed to take up the practice in the first place, or reverted to the 'old method' of boiling vegetables to death once the war was over. My Mother was nine when rationing finally came to an end in July 1954 and maintains that, as a child, she was entirely unaware that many staple foods were in short supply, such was my grandmother's ability to produce tasty wholesome food from very little.

 And so to the recipe. Now, I'm not going to pretend that, before she died, she handed me a much cherished, well worn and dogeared notebook containing all her favorite dishes. Like most cooks, she carried her recipes around in her head with little need to commit them to paper. All I can do now is make an educated guess at the ingredients and methods used to produce the dish, based on what I observed and learned from her over the years. Grandma would usually stuff hearts with sage and onion, but I always preferred her thyme and parsley stuffing. The walnuts and lemon zest are my addition, as is the port in the gravy (What can I say? I like to cook with alcohol, so, inevitably, some will find its way into the food!).  

The Recipe 

2 firm lambs' hearts

For the stuffing:
a couple of thick doorsteps of good quality bread, 1 or 2 days old (I prefer wholemeal)
1 small onion, chopped
1 good knob of butter
a handful of walnuts, chopped
5 or 6 sprigs of thyme
a small bunch of parsley
the grated zest of half a lemon
a few grates of nutmeg
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 small egg, beaten

For the gravy:
some beef or lamb dripping for frying (preferably from a roast)
1 medium onion, halved and sliced
1 small leek, sliced into rounds
a clove of garlic if you wish, chopped,
2 carrots, peeled and chopped into 1" pieces
 1 Tbsp plain flour
a glug or two of port
a shake or two of Worcestershire sauce
some good beef stock
2 fresh bay leaves
salt and freshly ground black pepper

First clean and prepare the hearts. Cut a thin slice from the top of each heart, exposing the chambers beneath and removing any pipework you don't like the look of. Wash out the chambers with cold water to remove any clotted blood and dry thoroughly with a clean tea-towel or kitchen paper. 

To make the stuffing, remove the crusts from the bread and discard, then using a convenient method (I use a food processor) turn the bread to crumbs. Don't make the crumbs too fine, though - rustic is good! Now melt the butter in a small pan over a gentle heat and add the chopped onion and let in cook until golden, being careful not to let the butter brown. Meanwhile, add the chopped walnuts (rustic again!) to the breadcrumbs, along with the thyme leaves stripped from their sprigs. Roughly separate the parsley leaves from the thickest stalks, chop  the leaves and add to the breadcrumb mixture, together with the grated lemon zest. Season with nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste and then pour in the melted butter and onion mixture. Add enough beaten egg to help the mixture bind, mix together and there you have it, stuffing!

Now to stuff the hearts (and this is where it gets messy!). Taking a heart in one hand, use your free hand to push the stuffing into every cavity, being quite forceful with your fingers, until the heart is filled with stuffing and you have formed a little cap of stuffing on top of the heart. Repeat for the second heart, obviously. If there is any stuffing left over, either bake it separately as a little cook's treat, or save it to add to the gravy later, should it need thickening.

Pre-heat you're oven to around 170 degrees (gas mark 3) 

And so to the gravy. In a stove proof lidded pot or casserole melt the dripping over a relatively high heat, add the sliced onion and hard fry until nicely brown. Be attentive and stir regularly! The idea is to caramelise the onion, giving it a good deep colour without actually burning it. Now turn down the heat a little and add the leek, garlic (if using) and carrots, letting these cook a little until the leak rounds start to break apart. Add say a tablespoon or so of plain flour to the pan, stir in and let the flour cook out a little. Then pour in the port and a few shakes of Worcestershire sauce and stir round until the mixture thickens. Add the beef stock, (perhaps half a pint initially) together with the bay leaves, stir in and bring just to the boil before reducing the heat to a simmer and seasoning with salt and a few turns of the pepper mill. 

Right, now for the difficult part! My grandmother would simply have sewn up the hearts, using a needle and thread, to stop the stuffing escaping and immersed them in the gravy. However, me being the difficult bugger I am, I prefer to stand the hearts upright in the gravy with their stuffing tops protruding above the liquid, for reasons that will become apparent shortly. To be honest, this would be much easier to do when cooking for four, than it is for two, as the hearts become self-supporting. The success of this operation depends on the diameter of you pot and your level of ingenuity. I solved the problem by pushing wooden skewers through hearts and jamming them against the sides of the pot to keep them upright (see top photo). Once the hearts are in place in the gravy, top up with more stock, if necessary. The idea is that the liquid should come just up to the shoulder of the two hearts, leaving around half an inch plus the stuffing caps exposed. Now cover the pot with a tight fitting lid and cook in the oven for around an hour and a half, after which, remove the lid, increase the heat to say 185 degrees (gas mark 5) and cook for a further 20 minutes with the lid off until the stuffing caps are nicely brown and crusty. Serve the hearts in two large bowls with, perhaps, some creamy mash potato, steamed brassicas and a ladle of the rich gravy.
(Serves 2)