I took delivery of my whole lamb from F&B a wee while ago and set about thinking of wondrous thinks to cook with it. My only (small) disappointment was that both shoulders appeared to be minced or diced so no slow cooked shoulder for me. Boo... Everything else was divine. The most amazing thing of all though it that this particular lamb appeared to have 4 shanks instead of 2... Weird lamb but I’m not complaining...
So I started with Moussaka – since I had an abundance of mince I decided this would be a wise course of action. I haven’t actually cooked it before so cruised the interweb looking for some recipes to inspire me. I decided that I wanted to spice it up and not add too much tomato so it didn’t just taste like lasagne with eggplant.
I made a white sauce as opposed to a cheese sauce, and added lots of nutmeg for flavour. Then for the mince I really ramped up the herbs and spices; browned some onion then the mince. Then I added clove, nutmeg, garlic, chilli, oregano, cinnamon; basically anything I could think of to give it a Grecian spicy edge, I added a bit of tomato, but not too much.
Fried off the eggplant then layer, layer, layer... Success! The mince was superbly spicy and the whole not too rich. My wee girl is not a huge fan of eggplant (textural thing) but she also wolfed it down. My BFF dropped around for a walk and ended up walking out with lunch for the next day – what a friend I am...
I also went with a Lamb Slow Cooker dish jobbie. Diced Lamb, Port & Cranberry surprise cooked by Henri. Henri is our slow cooker, I fill him up in the morning and at the end of the day he produces mouth watering dishes for us. This is another super easy dish. Brown Lamb, add stock, port, cranberries, cranberry sauce... simmer for 8 hours, serve with mash. Yum.
Oh yes! And Lamb Saag! Ah, lamb! You are so versatile!! Again with the interweb’s help I cooked up another gem in Henri. Diced Lamb, spices, spinach... I think though, I added too much water as I was worried Henri would dry out during the day, so it was not as thick as it could have been but was delicious still, I served with roti romali – my new favourite Indian bread. I was worried that just lamb and flat bread might be a bit much so I also knocked up Aloo Matar which was easy and sensational...
1 comment:
Truly a wondrous friend you are. The moussaka was delectable. It was far spicier than other versions I had tried - which I think really added to it. Normally it's quite a bland dish but the flavour combination however the addition of star anise was well placed.