The Welsh Dresser
Rack of Welsh lamb with pea and mint sauce recipe
I’m sitting at the dining table in my Mum and Dad’s house, and directly in front of me at the opposite end of the table is an imposing piece of furniture. It has two low cupboards with intricately carved wooden doors, two drawers above these and a set of shallower shelves above these, covered by two glass doors. It sits about seven feet tall. It’s beautiful and the dark polished wood glistens in the light. It’s a classic Welsh dresser. But what makes it Welsh?
This type of piece of furniture has existed for centuries, and there are versions of dressers found all over the world, but research suggests that these pieces were so prolific in Wales (and still are to an extent) that they became known as Welsh dressers. It’s said that in Scotland, one of the drawers of the dresser would often be a porridge drawer. The cooked porridge would be poured into the tin-lined drawer to cool and then cut into slices and served throughout the week.
Originally, the Welsh dresser would have taken pride of place in the kitchen alongside the range or open fire. They were an all-in-one food preparation and storage solution – not unlike those classic 1940s Formica larder cupboards. The shelves could hold crockery, jugs, glasses and serving plates, the drawers for cutlery and utensils, and the cupboards for pots, pans and food. The small counter top could be used for food preparation or serving or eating.
The Welsh dresser was also used as a place to show off your finest highly polished pewter or best china to visitors who came calling. The kitchen was often the only room in the house to entertain guests and was usually the warmest, so as your visitors were sitting at the kitchen table, they could marvel at your fine Welsh dresser display as you rustled up some quick bakestone cakes over the hearth.
The dresser in front of me belonged to my Nanna Lena and Poppa (who themselves bought it from someone else, so I’m not quite sure how old it is). It was my Nan’s prized possession and sat proudly – for the best part of 60 years – in the dining room of my grandparents’ house.
As children we were never allowed to go near it in case the entire top half came crashing down on us. As I say, it lived in my Nanna and Poppa’s dining room – just off the kitchen – along with the fridge freezer, a drop-leaf table and chairs, a teak sideboard, and my Nan’s cherished foot-pedal Singer sewing machine. Oh, and the bottles of pop (lemonade, dandelion and burdock, orangeade) that the pop man had delivered, and were always kept behind the curtain on the long rust-coloured painted concrete step of the door that led to the back garden.
Inside the dresser were my Nanna’s other prized possessions: cut-glass anniversary gifts, porcelain souvenirs and painted earthenware plates from family holidays, china memorabilia from royal jubilees, weddings and other events, the cut-glass tankards that Poppa gave us ice-cream floats in, a set of Babycham glasses, and other bric-a-brac of sentimental value collected over a family’s lifetime.
In the drawers were papers, old birthday cards (we’d use these to make woollen pompoms with Nan), placemats and coasters. In the bottom cupboards were various willow-pattern tea sets, stainless steel serving dishes, and canteens of cutlery – none of which ever got used.
When my grandparents passed away, the Welsh dresser came to live with my Mum and Dad (who painstakingly cleaned and restored it). It now takes pride of place in their dining room and is filled with glasses and crockery sets reserved ‘for best’ – just in case anyone visits! Some things never change.
The Recipe
Rack of Welsh lamb with pea and mint sauce
Thinking of it now, my Nannie Gwen never had lids for her saucepans. Nor did she ever cover anything with foil, to my memory. Pots and roasting trays were always covered with a plate or another pan, or mostly, nothing at all – which might explain why meat often came out of the oven a third of the size it went in. Full chicken breasts emerging as batterless chicken nuggets.
I think there’s always a temptation to overcook meat especially if you know it’s not the best cut, and it’s a really hard habit to shake. It's taken me years (and being served what can only be described as former steaks, through to the positively mooing variety) to find – quite literally – a happy medium. Of course, I'm not advocating rustling up a lovely pink chicken with a side of campylobacter, rather remembering that particularly with red meat, slightly under is often better than slightly over.
I would never have considered eating pink pork anything short of insanity – even for my stomach of iron – until I went to José Pizarro’s Spanish restaurant for the first time and had the most glorious presa ibérica cooked medium. I've tried the crude meat extreme in Japan: chicken sashimi (thinly sliced raw chicken). Surprisingly, it’s something that I could get very much on board with (it tastes wonderfully… well, chickeny) if it weren't for my tongue sending the same texture signals to my brain as my hands do preparing raw chicken. This in turn would trigger the voice of my high school food tech teacher Mrs Stinchcombe in my head, talking of the lethal dangers of uncooked fowl.
Pork and poultry aside, the meat that I've most come to appreciate less well done is lamb. Gloriously pink lamb chops slathered with some sort of herby green sauce is something that I could eat buy the rack full, and I would find it hard to think of eating them cooked any other way now. So with that in mind, here’s this week’s recipe.
Ingredients
For the lamb:
1 rack of Welsh lamb
Olive oil
1tbsp of fresh rosemary, chopped
For the sauce:
150g frozen peas
100g (roughly half a can) cooked cannellini beans
1tbsp mint sauce or 1tbsp freshly chopped mint
2tbsp crème fraîche (or cream)
Method
Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 6/200°C/400°F.
Rub the lamb all over with olive oil, rosemary and black pepper and leave to stand while the oven heats up. When the oven is ready, place onto a baking tray fat side-up and sprinkle with salt before placing in the oven for around 30 minutes.
While the lamb is cooking, defrost the peas in warm water and drain. Drain and rinse the cannellini beans. Pop them both in a food processor (or pestle and mortar or use a potato masher) and blitz until smooth.
Add the mint sauce, crème fraîche and a generous pinch of salt and whizz again until combined into a think dip.
Once the lamb is cooked (it should still be a bit pink in the middle although if you want it more well done, leave in for an extra five minutes), remove it from oven and place on a chopping board. Cut down between each bone to create little chops.
Serve hot with the sauce smeared over as part of a main course, or as part of a selection of tapas-style dishes with the sauce as a dip. Either way, eat straight away for the best taste!
The pea and mint sauce is really versatile and is great as a replacement for hummous with crudités or tortilla chips, or stirred thought boiled new potatoes as a side.
If you try them out, don’t forget to tag any photos with #mywelshkitchen.
The Playlist
To me, cooking and music go hand in hand, whether that’s singing at the top of your voice using a wooden spoon as a microphone while waiting for pasta to boil, or dancing around with the oven gloves on as the oven timer counts down. Here are this week’s ideas for your Welsh Kitchen playlist.
This week we have two very different tunes. Firstly, we have a beautifully mellow song by well-known Welsh singer-songwriter Caryl Parry Jones. The second is a bit more up-tempo to get you dancing around the kitchen table. It’s by Band Pres Llareggub, whose name you might recognise as the fictional village in Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood. The village name should of course be read backwards!
Hwylio Drwy’r by Caryl Parry Jones
Gweld y Byd Mewn Lliw by Band Pres Llareggub
The Pantry
Good food is nothing without good ingredients and thankfully there are plenty of fantastic Welsh products on the market. Here is where you’ll find recommendations to stock up your cupboard, fridge or fruit bowl.
Welsh Brew Tea
I was asked recently which I would give up if I were only allowed to drink tea or wine for the rest of my life. As much as a love my red wine, I could not give up tea – in fact my body would probably go into severe withdrawal if I were to shun my habit of 10 cups a day. But then who doesn’t love a good cuppa? And they don’t come much better than a spot of Welsh Brew (Paned Gymreig). The family-run Swansea-based business has been brewing up their unique blend of African and Indian teas – specifically blended to complement the fabulously fresh Welsh water – for more than 30 years.