Where potatoes and sheep collide ...

My grandmother was in her early thirties when the Depression hit. She grew up on a farm out of Daysdale near Corowa, but was now married in Ascot Vale amid massive unemployment. She used cheap cuts of meat to feed two of her own children, their adopted cousin whose mother had died, their live-in grandmother, and a husband. One such cheap cut (not the husband) was called the ‘scrag end’. This was a mutton or lamb neck, thrown into a large pot with potatoes, onions and carrots; and finished with milk and flour and parsley to make a kind of Irish stew.

Obviously the Irish can’t claim the concept, which has worldwide variations wherever sheep and potatoes collide. For example, you could make following recipe and give it a fancy title for your dinner party: Bracioline Di Agnello al Forno con Gratin Di Patate e Aromi. The Italians entitle their recipes literally - lamb chops baked in the oven with potatoes and herbs. Of course, this is a peasant dish borne of necessity, availability, and hunger. Elsewhere, the upper classes would have been dining on something more artfully prepared, possibly masked with herbs or spices imported from further east.

Bracioline Di Agnello al Forno con Gratin Di Patate e Aromi.

Mix a teaspoon each of lemon zest, minced mint and rosemary and spread across four or five oiled and salted lamb chops. Slice four or five potatoes thinly and line a baking dish with half of the slices. Arrange chops on top in a single layer; top with the rest of the potatoes and dot with butter. Bake 30 minutes. So simple; but so delicious and filling after a day of herding sheep or digging potatoes out of the hot hard Sicilian soil. Or churning butter in County Sligo, for that matter.