Recipes

France's cleverest roast — the lamb bastes the potatoes, and nothing is wasted

Before home ovens were common, French villages carried their Sunday dish to the baker — the boulanger — and slid it into his cooling bread oven, the lamb sitting right on top of the potatoes. Every drop the roast let go landed exactly where it should. That's the whole trick, and it still works: thin-sliced potatoes and onions drink up stock and lamb drippings from below, while the roast above comes out blushing medium. One dish, one thermometer, and the best roast potatoes you'll never have to make separately.