CATALAN RAGOUT OF MUTTON ELIZABETH DAVID

2 lbs. of leg or loin of mutton, an onion, 2 cloves of garlic, a tablespoon of concentrated tomato purée or ½ lb. of fresh tomatoes, ½ lb. of bacon, herbs, ½ lb. of chick peas (see p. 139), white wine or port.

Cut the meat and the bacon into thick squares; brown them on each side in pork or bacon fat or oil; add the garlic and the tomato purée or the fresh tomatoes, skinned and chopped, and plenty of thyme or marjoram or basil, and 2 bay leaves. Pour over a glass of sweet white wine, or port. Cover the pan and cook very gently for 2 hours, until the meat is tender.

Have ready the chick peas, soaked and cooked. When the mutton is about ready put the drained chick peas and the meat mixture together into a fireproof dish, put a layer of breadcrumbs on the top and cook in a gentle oven for an hour until a slight crust has formed on the top, and the chick peas are absolutely soft.

This is how I “followed” the recipe: I cooked the whole thing in an ovenproof skillet from the start. I used leg of lamb and regular slab bacon, though I suspected that the bacon in the Catalan region of France would not be smoked. I cooked chickpeas according to her directions later in the book, but did not include the salt, which can make beans hard; they took less time to cook than she said (maybe she had old chickpeas), plus I was concerned they would turn to mush after cooking for another hour in the oven. I added the onion, missing from the instructions, chopped, before the garlic (which I also chopped; she doesn’t say) and sautéed until translucent; for “herbs” I used two tablespoons of fresh thyme leaves. I deduced that the white wine should be a Muscat, based on David’s information that the dish can be made with either port or sweet white wine, presumably from Catalan France, where the grapes would be Muscat. A glass of wine she says elsewhere is six ounces, but I used one cup and added more when I saw the dish getting dry. For the final cooking, I used about three-quarters cup of coarse breadcrumbs, and I decided on a gentle oven of 250 degrees F. I admit that I was a little skeptical of using Muscat with the delicate lamb, but it yielded a ­delicious and not overly sweet dish with much more depth than the many lamb stews I have made with dry white wine.

By contrast, sometimes David wrote a recip