With the advent of shallots in my garden, I wanted something to really show them off. And with some lamb mince in the freezer, this recipe from Jamie at Home seemed perfect. So Summery too. I agreed with Alex over at JustCookIt that lamb and bread are destined to be together, especially if both are barbecued. A kebab with a crisp outside, a soft middle and plenty of spicy flavours is absolutely perfect. The onions? Crunchy and sweet, the perfect compliment.
A good handful of shelled pistachio nuts bashed up a bit
2 large cos, shredded
Small bunch fresh mint, chopped
Handful of chopped shallots
Bunch of fresh parsley
Splash of white wine vinegar
4 tortillas
4 tablespoons creme fraiche
Mix the lamb with thyme, chilli, cumin, grated lemon zest and pistachios, seasoning well. Grab some skewers and squish handfuls of the meat around a skewer, really clamping to form sausage shapes. Chill until needed.
Cover the onion and parsley with vinegar and a pinch of salt and leave while you get on with everything else.
Brush the kebabs with a little oil and grill (or barbecue, preferably) on all sides until browned. Leave to rest a couple of minutes while you get on with the salad.
Combine the cos and mint and dress with extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice, adding salt and pepper as necessary.
Chuck the tortillas on the BBQ for about a minute, then turn over and grill until puffed up. Slap the tortilla on the plate, pile on some salad and top with the lamb. Scrunch the onions in your hand to remove the excess juice and throw over the kebabs. Devour in the sunshine.
Imagine my surprise when I was invited to a product launch by Tilda demonstrating a range of ready-to-stir-fry rices complete with flavourings. Unlike some foodies I have no aversion to prepared foods if the content is good and the results are delicious; in the real world we have people to feed often on a certain budget in a limited time. I’ve used the already-cooked rices and noodles many times before, and these stir-fry specific ones seem like a neat shortcut.
First a word about the venue. It was hosted at the 52 Cookery School, an ordinary looking Georgian building hiding a mazey, eclectic and beautiful interior. Clearly a working house built around entertaining and cooking, it was a quirky and adorable venue that hid charms around every corner. (The foot-operated toilet flush stymied many). A spiral staircase, a cooker the size of many small cars and dozens of steps are just some of the delights of this delightful place.
A series of recipes were presented in an amiable and easy-going style by Jo Pratt. She cooked a Thai prawn soup, sesame chicken toast, peking duck wraps and a lamb dish, all bolstered with the rices promoted. They were all tasty, particularly the soup which I’ll be trying myself soon. And then the chaos began.
We quickly assembled ourselves into small groups and clustered round gas-fired woks to begin creating our own stir-fry masterpieces. I partnered with Kavey and Anne, foragers of the highest order who immediately zoomed off to procure the best ingredients. Sneaking sideways glances at the ‘opposition’ Kavey began marinating lamb in soy sauce while I got on with stir-frying garlic slivers (that quickly burned and got flicked out of the pan). Anne found a mound of veg and quickly we began to throw stuff into the pan with gay abandon. Maintaining my stir-fry rules of 1) keep it as hot as it will go and 2) keep stirring I was designated stirrer. When we decided we’d cooked long enough, we all sat in a cool courtyard and tucked in, spoons a-blazing into our pile of rice and goodies. Jolly nice it was too. The ingredients benefited from short but scorching cooking, retaining their flavours and no doubt nutritional content too. The Peking rice possessed a pleasant aroma and satisfying building block to the meal.
Despite attending the event in full knowledge of the PR sorcery being performed on me I genuinely like the products. The light cooking of stir-frying gives advantages in being quick and fresh-tasting, and rice an effective way of pushing the meal out a little further. Lovely stuff. Apparently they’re available from Waitrose at £1.79 for two sachets (each serving two), so do give them a try as a quick meal fix.
Lamb and prawn peking rice:
1 lamb leg steak, sliced into finger-sized pieces
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 clove garlic, sliced thinly
1 inch of ginger, cut into matchsticks
½ red pepper, sliced
½ red onion, cut into half-moons
1 sachet of Tilda Peking stir-fry rice
2 spring onions, 1 cut into rings and another into matchsticks
Handful of peeled prawns
Few coriander leaves, chopped
Leave the lamb in the soy sauce to marinate (in an idea world, for a couple of hours. In our example, about 14 seconds).
Get a wok dead hot and add a couple of tablespoons oil. Heat until smoking and add the garlic. Cook for one minute until fragrant and add the lamb.
Keep the lamb moving around the pan until coloured all over, then add the ginger, pepper and onion.
Continue to stir-fry for a couple of minutes until the veg starts to feel tender, and then add the rice, rings of spring onion and prawns.
Keep stirring until the prawns have turned luscious and pink. Serve with sliced spring onions and stir through some coriander.
This is a recipe I’ve plucked from the pages of the April delicious magazine. I seem to be drawn to each every curry-style recipe at the moment – I’ve another planned for Sunday! This one seemed utterly irresistible, with spicy, rich lamb combined with a crisp potato topping.
I decreased the chilli for my version – we prefer it a little milder – and I’ve been off sweet potatoes since the awful barefoot contessa persuaded me that combining them with orange juice would be a good idea. Those changes made, the cook was on. I begins as a pan stir-fry, then finished in the oven to cook out the potato topping. The trickiest bit is draining the potato of excess water – I need to think of a way to squeeze them out without scalding myself. That aside, this was enormously satisfying. Filling, savoury, meaty and a dense mouthful on every fork. Very tasty indeed.
Lamb keema sag with rosti topping:
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
½ teaspoon turmeric
½ chilli powder
2 onions, sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ginger, minced
500g lamb mince
300ml lamb stock
1 tin tomatoes
300g spinach
1 teaspoon garam masala
Juice of ½ lemon
2 maris piper potatoes, grated
Fry the seeds in a dry pan for 1 – 2 minutes until fragrant. Grind to a powder and mix with the turmeric and chilli.
In the same pan fry one of the onions with the garlic and ginger for a few minutes until softened. Tip the ground spices into this.
Fry the lamb until browned. Tip away the excess fat and add the stock and tomatoes. Simmer for 20 minutes until the lamb is tender and the sauce has thickened. Preheat the oven to 200°C.
Wilt the spinach in a colander by pouring over boiling water. Immediately run under cold water and squeeze off excess liquid. Add this to the mince with lemon and garam masala. Check for seasoning.
Back in the colander repeat the boiling water trick with the potatoes and other onion. Tip onto a tea towel and squeeze out the excess liquid. Mix with a little oil and season, then spread on top of the mince.
Put the pan into the oven and bake for about 20 minutes until browned in top.
I’ve got a bit of a thing for curries at the moment, helped by recent repeats of Floyd’s India on Five. There’s tons of Keith Floyd’s typical ease, wit and of course plenty of great recipes. He tours the country and attempts to distill the tastes of the region into a handful of recipes. It never fails to impress me how different the techniques are around India yet still maintaining similar techniques: crackling, tempering, masala, gravy etc. I recently enjoyed a chicken tikka masala made at home and just had to do something from this series. The one that stuck out to me was a lamb rogan josh. That was the recipe sorted, what about the meat?
I was fortunate enough to be sent a boneless lamb leg by Abel & Cole. Their specialty is weekly veg boxes, serving up a random assortment of organic, locally-grown produce delivered to your door. Unfortunately this service doesn’t quite suit me; I’m a weekly planner who organises food for the week and getting a bunch of stuff I have to plan around just doesn’t fit. In addition to this however they also act as a butcher and grocer; including this lovely joint. I opened it out so I could cube it, trimming away the excess surface fat (if I was roasting this would have been extremely welcome, but not suited to the pot-roasting I was about to do). Cutting first into strips it was clear this was great-quality meat; an even marbling of fat within, a healthy ruby colouring and a loose texture.
On with the recipe then, the few unusual quirks to it were: onions (plus a couple of garlic cloves) were fried first to get a little colour, before being blitzed and added to the pan. After an hour or so in the curry this left a lovely sweetness that I really enjoyed. Also it’s in two parts; the lamb is cooked down with the spices first until it goes fairly dry – much like a rendang (or is it penang?) from Thai cooking – before adding the remainder of the ingredients. This caked the flavour right on to the meat in a very pleasing fashion. Towards the end I added ground almonds and possibly overcooked them a touch – they came out gritty and slightly bitter. That said the overall flavour of the dish was tremendous, giving and giving as a good curry should, with fragrant cloves to begin with, sweet onions and tomatoes, leaving with a slightly peppery finish. I love to eat a curry with a decent naan bread, pushing the meat ‘n’ sauce around and scooping up. This was perfect for that, as it had a quite thick gravy with which to mop. Next time however I’ll add a little more cardamom, and perhaps not let the almonds cook out so long – in face I might be tempted to leave them out altogether.
And the meat? Superb. It yielded beautifully in chunky flakes, and despite being up against the strongest of flavours you could still taste that it was lamb underneath all the spices. About half an hour into cooking I had a sneaky sample of the sauce and you tell that the lamb had started to release fats into the mix, as the slightly greasy – yet delicious – unmistakeable lamb flavour started to seep through. It was a beautiful piece of meat from Abel & Cole, and while I might not personally consider them for weekly veg (I have a friend who swears by their boxes) I will definitely go back to them for special joints of meat. In fact, I think I’ll be ordering my Christmas gammon from there any minute now…
Lamb rogan josh:
2 onions, sliced
4 garlic cloves, peeled
4 cardamom pods
2 cloves
1 tablespoon ginger paste
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon paprika
300g plain yoghurt
1.5kg lamb leg, diced
1 tin tomatoes
2 tablespoons ground almonds
2 tablespoons coriander, chopped
Fry the onions and garlic in a little oil until softened and starting to colour. Transfer to a food processor and blitz until smooth.
Add some oil to a pan and fry the cardamom and cloves over a high heat until a fierce crackling noise is heard (about 2-3 mins).
Turn the heat down and add the ginger and onion pastes. You should stir continuously to avoid sticking and burning. Add the chilli, turmeric and paprika and stir well to avoid the powder clumping together.
Add the yoghurt and stir until combined, then add the lamb and a good pinch of salt. When everything is well mixed transfer to your lowest hob heat and leave to bubble gently, uncovered, for about an hour and a half. Stir every half an hour or so.
When the the mixture has gone quite dry add the tomatoes and ground almonds and simmer for another 30 minutes. Check the seasoning and stir through coriander. Serve with rice, naan, a vegetable side or all three.
