Lamb Curry

I want to forewarn you that I don't have a picture of the final product, but this dish is really good.  It's probably one of my favorite things that I've cooked in the past couple of months.  I don't think Kevin is as enthusiastic about it as I am, but everyone has flaws.

I noticed there was a lamb vendor at our farmers' market that I had previously overlooked.  So I went searching for a lamb dish I could make, and found the perfect one in good ol' Joy of Cooking.

Adapted from Joy of Cooking

Ingredients

28 oz. can of whole peeled tomatoes
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 medium onion, halved and thinly sliced
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp coriander
1 1/2 tsp minced garlic
1 1/2 tsp minced fresh ginger
1 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 1/2 to 2 lbs boneless lamb stew meat (like shoulder or leg) cut into 1-inch cubes
3/4 tsp salt

Serves 4 to 6 as a main course

Let's deal with the tomatoes first.

Drain and reserve the juice, and roughly chop the tomatoes.  We'll get back to these.

Heat oil in a large skillet or saucepan over medium heat.  Add the sliced onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until golden brown.  The recipe said 5 to 7 minutes but mine took about 15 minutes.

This was at the midway point--let them get more brown than this.

Add the spices (the cumin through cayenne) to the onions and cook, stirring, for about 30 seconds.

Add 1/2 cup of the chopped tomatoes and 1/4 of the of the tomato juice along with the lamb.

Simmer until liquid is thickened, about 3 to 5 minutes.  Stir in remaining tomatoes and juice.  Add in salt.  Cover, reduce to simmer, and cook until lamb is tender, about 45 to 60 minutes.  Serve with basmati rice.

Even though I don't have a final picture this really was tasty enough that I just had to tell you about it.

Ta-da!

Lamb Tagine

My parents came over for dinner the other night, and my mom wanted to bring a red Portuguese wine (Duoro, for those of you curious) for us to try.  I had originally thought of making a linguini with clams or shrimp scampi, but changed course due to my mom's enthusiasm over the wine.  While I am not usually a stickler for matching just the right wine with whatever I'm eating, it is a general haphazard concern that becomes more pronounced when seafood is at stake.  A mismatched wine can be no big deal (at least to me), but a mismatched wine with seafood really throws a metallic off-taste to things that makes me very sad.

After a little research, I decided that lamb would be the way to go.  Somehow I settled on lamb tagine.  I used a combination of recipes I adapted from Food & Wine and NY Times.  In many of the lamb tagine recipes I saw, you brown the cubed lamb meat before braising it in a spicy fragrant mixture.  I am not a fan of browning small chunks of meat before a long cooking process--the spattering and turning of itty bitty pieces to get all 6 sides nicely browned makes me...very sad.  Apparently it's not hard to make me very sad. Anyway, what I liked about the Food & Wine recipe was that there was no browning, just a long marinade before moving onto the main event.  So yes, you do have to plan ahead to give the lamb enough time to marinate, but I was willing to make that sacrifice in order to avoid the fine spray of oil that would cover my cooktop if I had gone the browning route.

As for the NY Times recipe, there were some flavor components that I liked from that recipe, namely tomatoes and orange juice, that I decided to incorporate.

Ingredients

Marinade
1/4 cup olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 two-inch strips of lemon peel (you want just the peel, leave the white pith)
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp sweet paprika
1 1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
3/4 TBS kosher salt (less if using table salt)
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp cayenne
1 cinnamon stick or 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of saffron threads (I happened to have this, but it is $$$, so consider this optional--you know, as if you were considering any of this as mandatory with penalty of death if not followed exactly)

2 1/2 pounds lamb stew meat (like shoulder or leg), cut into 1-inch chunks

Braising...stuff
1 medium onion, halved and sliced into 1/4 inch thick half-moons
juice from 1 orange
one 2-inch strip of orange peel (this could also go in the marinade--I was kind of making things up as I went along, which is what I'm sure you want to hear if you're going to use this recipe)
one 14 oz can of diced tomatoes
2 cups chicken broth
1 medium carrot, sliced 1/2 inch thick
1/4 to 1/3 cup green olives, sliced 1/4 inch thick
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley

Serves about 6

Combine the marinade ingredients in a large bowl.  There's a lot of yummy stuff in there.

Add lamb, stir to make sure the marinade is evenly distributed.  No one should be neglected.  Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 4 to 6 hours.

Add the onion, orange juice, orange peel, tomatoes, and chicken broth to a large pot (an enameled cast iron casserole works well--it should be at least 4 quarts).

Add the lamb and scrape in any residual marinade from the bowl.  Bring everything to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and cook for 1 1/2 hours.  Add in carrots, and cook for another 30 to 45 minutes.

At some point I felt like my liquid wasn't reducing enough so I uncovered the pot and let it simmer for about 30 minutes, but it may turn out differently for you.  Anyway, at the end of cooking, stir in the olives and parsley.  Serve with couscous.

I loved this dish--the marinade packs a lot of flavor, and then you have the play of the vinegary olives against the sweetness of the carrots and orange.  I highly recommend for a weekend winter meal.

Ta-da!

Pasta with Lamb Ragu

Winter is creeping out of here, but before it completely and finally fades away, I wanted to braise something. Anything.  I haven't cooked lamb in a while, and Lidia Bastianich was on TV making a braised leg of lamb that made Kevin exclaim repeatedly "Can we have that? That looks good. We should make that. Can we have that? That looks really good." 

Lidia said the leg of lamb can also be used in a pasta dish, so I went that route.  The original recipe was for an obscene amount of lamb that requires a 7 quart french oven, which I do not have, so I adapted it for a more manageable amount.  

The general steps are to put a filling in the lamb, braise it, shred the meat, and cook down the sauce.  Then you're supposed to slice and serve, but like I said, I wanted to make it into a ragu sauce for pasta.  It occurred to me that I didn't really need the filling in that case, and the filling I made ended up slipping out of the lamb, so the filling was kind of a useless exercise.  Although guess it still flavored the meat and sauce, and overall this dish was incredibly tasty.

Adapted from Lidia Bastianich

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup crustless bread, a few days old or lightly toasted, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 1/2 grated pecorino
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 2 TBS chopped parsley
• 3 to 4 lb boneless leg of lamb, butterflied and untied (your butcher section will usually have boneless leg of lamb that is already butterflied and tied--just untie it when you get home. did I just insult your intelligence)
• Kosher salt
• 3 TBS olive oil
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 sprig of rosemary
• 2 sprigs of thyme
• one 28-oz can of whole peeled tomatoes, crushed by hand
• 1 lb short tubular pasta, like ziti

Ready?  Let's start with the filling.

Place the bread cubes in a bowl and pour in just enough water to cover.  Let them soak for a minute or so (shouldn't take long).  Then strain those soggy suckers and squeeze 'em to get out most of the water.  Put the mushy bread back in the bowl and mix with the pecorino, garlic, parsley, and a pinch of salt.

Unroll your leg of lamb and cut away any huge chunks of fat.  Don't worry about being perfect about this.  Or at least I didn't, because I generally find trimming fat to be a huge pain in the ass.

I first shimmied the leg out of its netting.

And here it is, in its splayed glory.  Wanton.

Drop mounds of the filling over the lamb, and spread evenly, leaving a 1-inch border around the edges.  I did less than 1 inch, and I regret that because there was sure a lot of filling that ended up floating in the sauce.  Good thing I wasn't going to serve this sliced.

Roll up the meat to form a roll, and secure with twine.  

 

I should have also tied a twine lengthwise around the lamb. That might help explain why I lost almost all the filling in the cooking process.  By the way those are silicone reusable strings that I received as a gift. They are cute.

Season the outside of the lamb with about 1/2 tsp salt.  Heat the olive oil in a large French oven (at least 5 1/2 quart) over medium to medium-high heat.  When oil is heated, carefully transfer the lamb into the pan.  Let brown on bottom side (about 3-5 minutes), then rotate and repeat until all the sides are browned.  Remove lamb from the pot.

 

Hello, you turgid piece of meat, you.

Place the chopped onions into the pot--stir and scrape the brown bits of the bottom of the pot.  Cook for 4 to 5 minutes until onions are softened, then drop in the bay leaves, rosemary and thyme.  Cook for another minute or so.

 

My mixture was looking a little dry so I added a bit of red wine.

Transfer the huge honkin' leg of lamb back to the post.  Pour in the crushed tomatoes and enough water to submerge the lamb by three quarters.  Sprinkle in about 1/2 tsp of salt.  Stir the ingredients around the lamb, and ladle some on top of the lamb.

Cover pot tightly and bring braising liquid to a boil  Then reduce the heat to a simmer.  Braise for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, checking every 40 minutes to make sure that the lamb is still submerged and rotating the lamb.

Remove the lamb and let rest for 20 minutes.  Remove bay leaves and herb stems from the braising liquid.  Skim off fat with a wide spoon.  Bring liquid to a boil and let reduce while the lamb rests.

Um, so here's the part where I realized something went wrong with the filling. Prepare yourself for an ugly picture that is rather gory.  You know how you're supposed to get a lovely roll of lamb with circles of filling? Hehe.

Not so much. Fuggit.

When lamb is cool enough to handle, chop/shred the meat into generous bite-size pieces, about 1/2 to 1 inch.

Cook pasta according to package instructions.  Drain, add to braising liquid.  Place chopped meat back into pot and stir around.

Ta-da!

Again, I'm not really sure the filling was necessary and it was a fail anyway, so if I make this again, I'm going to make some tweaks.  But I would definitely make this again on a lazy Sunday.

Stir Fried Lamb with Cumin

Mark Bittman, the popular author of The Minimalist column in the New York Times and various cookbooks (and one food manifesto, which seems to be de rigeur these days), recently said goodbye to the column.  As he was walking out the door, he took a moment to recap his 25 most favorite recipes.


A few of them appealed to me, including this recipe for Stir Fried Lamb with Cumin, Chili and Garlic.  Maybe it's because I've recently had lamb noodle dishes at X'ian Famous Foods, but I had a serious love at first sight moment with this recipe.


Adapted from Mark Bittman/New York Times

• 1 1/2 pounds lamb shoulder, cut into 1/2 inch cubes (pretty small)
• 1 TBS cumin seeds
• 1 TBS Szechuan peppercorns (optional)
• 1/2 tsp crushed chili pepper
• 1 TBS chopped garlic
• 1 TBS soy sauce
• peanut or high smoke point oil, like peanut or grapeseed or safflower or what have you
• about 1 lb broccolini (or broccoli, or string beans, or snow peas, or whatever), trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 slivered garlic clove
• about 1/2 cup of chicken broth or water
• 1 c roughly chopped scallions

Place the cumin seeds and Szechuan peppercorns (if using), into a small saucepan or saute pan (or skillet--whatever, use a cooking vessel) and toast over low heat until fragrant, about 3 minutes. 

In a bowl, combine the lamb, toasted cumin, Szechuan peppercorns (if using), garlic, chili flakes, and soy sauce.  

Toss to coat well.  If you have time, let it marinate in the fridge for up to 24 hours.


Prep your broccolini.  

Cook in a similar fashion to this recipe, which is basically to heat about a TBS of oil in a skillet over medium high heat, add a slivered garlic clove, let the garlic lightly brown, throw in the broccolini, toss to coat, add the broth or water, cover and simmer for a few minutes until it becomes crisp tender, about 5 minutes.


Remove broccolini from skillet and wipe the skillet dry with a paper towel.

Heat about 2 to 3 TBS of oil over high heat in the skillet you just used (okay, I used a saute pan, you got me).  Place the lamb in the skillet, and cook for about a minute without disturbing. Take that minute to enjoy the aroma.

After you're done enjoying the aroma, stir the lamb a bit and then cook for another minute.  Add in the scallions.

Give another stir, and cook until scallions are wilted and lamb is about medium, which should only take 1 to 2 minutes top.


Serve over rice.

Ta-da!