On the heat. No chilli — this is a garlic and herb dish

Ingredients

• 4 lamb chump chops, fat cap scored
• Coarse salt, black pepper
• 1 whole head garlic, halved across
• 6 sprigs thyme
• 3 tbsp butter
• 100 ml white wine
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• Squeeze of lemon

Method

1. Salt the chops an hour ahead and leave them out. Pat the fat cap properly dry before it goes anywhere near the pan.
2. Chops fat-edge down in a COLD heavy pan, then bring the heat up slowly. Starting cold is the whole trick: the fat renders out instead of scorching, and you finish with a crisp cap and a pan of clean lamb fat to cook in.
3. Eight to ten minutes on the fat edge, tongs holding them upright. Pour off all but two tablespoons of the fat and keep it — it is the best thing you will roast a potato in this month.
4. Lay them flat. Four minutes, turn, three. Garlic halves cut-side down alongside, thyme in, butter in, and baste hard for the last two minutes.
5. Chops and garlic out to rest, 6 minutes.
6. Wine into the hot pan, scrape everything up, reduce by half. Off the heat, whisk in the mustard and a squeeze of lemon. Do not boil it after the mustard goes in.
7. Sauce over the chops, the softened garlic squeezed out alongside.

Cook's note. The chump is the muscle where the loin meets the leg, so it eats like both — the tenderness of one and the flavour of the other. It is the chop butchers take home.

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