Lamb Scaloppine with Babaghanouj

Chef Michael Ballon

Castle Street Café, www.castlestreetcafe.com, Great Barrington, MA

Ingredients:

• 2-2½ lbs leg of lamb, boned out
• Plastic wrap
• Meat mallet
• 2 medium sized eggplants
• 2 Tbsp tahini (sesame paste)
• 1 bunch parsley leaves
• ½ teaspoon garlic, minced
• Juice 1 lemon
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp shallot, minced
• ½ tsp fresh rosemary, minced

Method:

Trim the meat of any sinew, cut into thin slices, and place meat in between 2 sheets of plastic wrap. Use a meat mallet to pound the scaloppine into uniformly thin slices.

To make the sauce, drizzle a little olive oil over the eggplants and bake in the oven at 300 degrees for approximately 50 minutes. Turn the eggplants over once while baking.
When cool, cut the eggplants in half, and remove the soft pulp from the inside. Discard the skin.
Combine the eggplant, tahini, parsley, garlic, lemon juice and olive oil in a food processor, and puree.

Heat a little olive oil in a large skillet on medium heat and brown the lamb pieces on each side for 2 minutes. Season the lamb with shallots and rosemary. Remove the lamb from the pan.
Place the eggplant puree in the pan to warm it up for approximately one minute.

To serve, spread the eggplant puree along the bottom of the serving plates, then place the lamb pieces on top of the puree. Serve immediately. Serves 8.