Lamb chops with kidney & bacon

Lamb chops with kidney and bacon is both more prosaic and descriptive than the “Roastettes ‘Rosser’” Alan Koehler names this recipe from The Madison Avenue Cook Book, a 1962 study in dissembling on several levels that coincidentally describes good recipes. Each ‘roastette,’ while a bit tricky to assemble, is hardly a recipe at all, but it is inspired, a sort of English mixed grill rolled into a single crispy tender blob. Each stuffed chop serves one diner.

• about 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• about 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• heaped teaspoon or more minced fresh rosemary
• about a teaspoon each of salt and freshly ground pepper
• a boned 3 inch loin lamb chop (see the Notes)
• half a lamb kidney that has been cut in half lengthwise and cored
• a thick slice of good bacon

1. Combine the garlic, oregano, rosemary, salt and pepper; you will have enough for four chops.
2. Smear some of the seasoning mix on one side of the chop, top it with a slice of kidney and roll it up.
3. Wrap the chop with the bacon and tie it up, smearing more of the seasoning mix on the uncovered parts of the rolled chop.

Heat the broiler.

4. Blast the chop(s) until done to your liking, less than 10 minutes at first, then turned over and blasted for less than 10 minutes more; prudent to cut into the chop to ensure the kidney has cooked.

Notes:

-Boning a chop is not as easy as in theory it may appear, and although the original recipe does not say so, it probably will need to be pounded thinner to execute the kidney roll. Therefore “[h]ave the butcher,” as however Koehler warns “perhaps against his will, remove the bone and much of the fat” from each chop if you are lucky and enterprising enough to have a butcher. She can pummel the meat or you can do it yourself, with a dedicated device or the bottom of a heavy pot. Do wrap in it plastic to avoid the launch of meaty shrapnel.

-Lamb kidneys have become difficult to find in the United States, although they are not scarce in the United Kingdom. A veal kidney cored and cut into slices about half an inch thick would be equally good. Beef kidney is a lot more available in the US but its pong is too intense for most Americans and its use particularly inadvisable here, where it gets no opportunity to dissolve and tone itself down through slow cooking in a pie or pudding.

-The original recipe calls for hickory smoked salt, which is fine but unnecessary given the smoked (streaky) bacon and dried rosemary, which is anathema.