Lamb Chops in Parmesan Batter

Adapted from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan (Knopf, 1992)

For 6 servings

I have a very nice food store where I shop in the country. In fact, a very famous food writer—with a name and face you would recognize—shops there, although I’ve never seen her. And this food store has beautiful loin lamb chops, which they cut 2 inches thick for me. I love them. However, they do not have rib lamb chops, and they don’t always—or even usually—have rack of lamb. So this recipe, which makes a delicious dish, is too elusive for me to make right now, although when I lived in NYC, it was on regular rotation. In fact, the butcher at Lobel’s actually asked me for the recipe the third time I had him trim the chops for me.

You need to use single ribs trimmed the way they would be for a rack of lamb, which means the corner bone and backbone have been removed, leaving just the rib, and the rib bone has been “Frenched,” which means the fat has been removed from the bone. Then the eye of each chop should be flattened. At Lobel’s the butcher used a cleaver held sideways instead of a meat pounder. I assume you could do this yourself if you bought a rack of lamb and sliced it into single rib chops, Frenched them, and flattened them—but I’ve never done this myself.

To be perfect, instead of grating the Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese myself, I used to get the cheese for this recipe grated at DiPalo’s. It was more powdery when they did it than when I used the Microplane to grate it myself, which makes lovely little shreds—what I normally want, but not here.

I liked to serve these with side dishes that are good cold or at room temperature so I could plate the chops as soon as they were done and tuck in right away. Mushrooms with garlic, olive oil, and parsley were good; so were fried red peppers and haricots verts with a lemony olive oil dressing.

Ingredients

12 single rib lamb chops, partly boned and flattened as described above
½ cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, spread on a plate
2 eggs, lightly beaten and put into a deep dish through a fine sieve
1 cup fine, dry, unflavored bread crumbs (not panko), spread on a plate
Vegetable oil
Salt

Instructions

Turn the chops on both sides in the grated cheese, pressing so the cheese sticks to the meat. Shake off any excess. Dip the chops into the beaten egg, letting the excess flow back into the dish. Then turn the chops in the bread crumbs, coating both sides, and shake off the excess. (So you can see that this is essentially a bound breading, using cheese in place of flour.)

You can prepare the chops up to this point as much as 3 hours in advance if you refrigerate them—just remember to return the meat to room temperature before cooking.

Pour enough oil into a skillet to come ¼ inch up the sides, and turn the heat to medium. When the oil is very hot, put in as many chops as will fit without crowding. As soon as one side forms a golden crust, turn each chop, and when the second side has formed a crust, transfer to a warm platter and sprinkle each side lightly with salt. They should be thin enough to be fully cooked at this point. If not, cook a little longer—you’ll get the hang of it after you’ve made this once.

The chops are so tiny to begin with, it’s easy to get them thin—it’s not like trying to smash a fat chicken breast into a cutlet. When all the chops are cooked, serve immediately.