Easter Lamb (Drob de miel)

Recipe & photo by Romanian Food for Foreigners

Timing: 2 hours

Servings: 10-15 slices

Ingredients

About 1kg of trimmed lamb’s organs (heart, lungs, liver, kidneys)

4 eggs

2 medium onions

4-5 spring onions

1-2 green garlic stems

1 bunch of parsley

1 bunch of lovage

A handful of wild garlic leaves

A couple of slices of white bread, crusts removed

Large knob of butter or lard for greasing the pan

Salt and pepper

Method

1. Trim and wash the organs and cut them into large chunks, about 3-4cm square. Soak them in just enough water to cover them to which you’ve added a good few glugs of vinegar (about 25% of the total volume of liquid, but you don’t need to be too accurate). After soaking them (about a quarter of an hour), drain them well and put them into a pan, and cover them with cold water.

2. If you are using a lamb’s caul, you should soak it in cold water for about an hour, changing the water once or twice.

3. Bring the water with the organs in it to a boil and simmer for about 20 minutes until the chunks of organs have turned brown. At the start of the boil, it’ll make a disgusting brown scum on the top so skim this off and discard.

4. Once the organ chunks are done, pour into a colander, and leave to drain and cool for 10 minutes or so.

5. While the organs are cooling, sauté the finely chopped onions (the regular ones, not the spring onions) and then start chopping up all the greenery. You can use whatever herbs you like, but I recommend uses spring onions (it’s a springtime dish after all) and whatever herbs you like (parsley, lovage, dill, wild garlic, etc.)

6. Beat the four eggs together and put to one side.

7. By now the organs should be cool enough to handle so you can chop them up. You can either chop them up by hand using a knife to get a thick-cut texture, whiz them quickly in the mixer to get more of a pate-style drob, or run them through the wide-gauge mincer to get something in the middle (which is what I did).

8. However, you chop your organs, put the resulting mixture into a large bowl, and add the bread (softened in milk and crumbled in), the sautéed onion, the spring onion, whatever herbs you are using, and salt and pepper. Mix these thoroughly and then mix in the beaten eggs to get a moist, but not runny, mixture.

9. Now it’s time to prepare the tin. I used a loaf tin, which is about the right size and shape. Drob is usually served in slices and so this is the best kind of tin to use. However, you can use something else instead, like a round one, if you don’t have a loaf tin. The only thing is that you might not want the drob too thin or it’ll dry out quickly when baking.

10. Grease all the sides of the tin thoroughly with the lard or butter. If you are using a lamb’s caul, lay it in the tin, with enough hanging over the sides so that you can fold it over the top once the tin is filled. If you don’t have or don’t want to use a lamb’s caul, you can just butter the sides of the tin and sprinkle it with breadcrumbs.

11. Now fill the tin with the organ mixture* and firm it down reasonably well. Lay the remaining caul on top (or put on the pastry lid if using pastry, or just butter it and sprinkle on more breadcrumbs) and smear on a little more butter or lard (or brush with egg, if you’ve used pastry).

12. The drob is now ready to cook and can be put into a pre-heated oven at a moderate temperature (about 190-200C) for about 30-40 minutes or until it looks well cooked.