'New season lamb is the taste of March turning into April. It's when lamb is at its best in this country - young, tender, spring-like. Half the trick of cooking anything has got to be the quality of the ingredients and, whenever possible, seasonal local produce is always the most tasty. It makes a complete difference to flavour. Take strawberries. You can buy them all the year round from other countries and they taste of nothing because they haven't been ripened by the sun, with proper rain, or at the right time under the right conditions. It's always better if the fruit is picked ripe as opposed to under-ripe and then ripened as it's being shipped and transported.
I try to buy British produce - and at the right time. It's just flying the British flag, isn't it? I know there are some fabulous foods from France, like foie gras, but Britain has great beef, great lamb, great fruit and vegetables, and there is no reason for us to look elsewhere unless it's out of season or you haven't got enough variety to produce the dishes that you want.
This dish is something I bring back on the menu about this time of the year. I run it for two months and it is always very popular with my customers at John Burton-Race. The recipe is based on an old Victorian method of cooking - the effect is similar to cooking in a brick. The salt crust itself isn't a pastry you eat, it's purely to hold the lamb and preserve the flavours. We flavour the salt crust, which is just salt and flour and egg white, with the herbs that impregnate the lamb so that it tastes of rosemary or thyme or whatever you use.
This used to a be a popular form of cooking, but through the years it has been used less frequently. I've always read about the history of food because I like to see how recipes develop from different countries and how they influence different styles. I first read about using salt crusts when I was 16 years old and I've been dabbling with it ever since. The twist of this recipe is that the salt crust is not usually used for lamb. You can use the method with other dishes, certain fishes for example, but no other chef that I'm aware of uses the method with lamb even though it tastes delicious. It's very simple. Once you've got a good fillet of new season lamb from the butcher you seal it and you wrap it in the pastry - it doesn't have to be flash - using whatever flavourings you want. Put it in the oven on a very high temperature and the lamb will cook in the steam that forms between the pastry. It cooks very quickly indeed and it's also a very nutritious way of cooking.'
