This is a great easy-to-prepare and healthy-ish dinner, perfect at this time of year when courgettes and tomatoes are filling the weekly veg box. Lamb is also at its best in autumn, after spending a whole summer fattening up on rich pastureland and frolicking about in the outdoors.
If you're a veggie then this would work just as beautifully with my homemade veggie burgers.
The Lamb Burgers
Just in case plain lamb-and-mint doesn't tickle your fancy, I have a more summery recipe with redcurrants here.
These burgers are very simple, you just need 250g minced lamb, a small onion diced very small, a crushed garlic clove, some chopped mint and parsley, salt and pepper. Squish together in a bowl until thoroughly mixed and then form into two patties.
Grill or pan-fry until cooked through, although if the meat is very fresh these are lovely served a little bit rare in the middle.
The Houmous
Homemade houmous is so wonderful because you can tweak it according to your own tastes - extra lemony if you like that, a super hit of garlicky goodness if that's your thing, spicy or cool, smooth or textured; whatever you like best.
You need a tin of chickpeas, rinsed under the tap, and plonked into a food processor. Add to this a couple of cloves of crushed garlic, a couple of tablespoons of tahini (sesame seed paste) plenty of salt and the juice of a lemon.
Whizz these up and then, with the processor still running, start to pour olive oil through the "chimney" in the lid. Try a couple of glugs to begin with and keep stopping to taste the mixture, adding more seasoning, lemon and olive oil until it's exactly how you want it. Spoon out into a bowl and top with paprika.
The Courgettes
You need to thinly slice your courgettes, approximately one small courgette per person, using a mandolin or sharp knife.
Melt some butter and a little oil in a large frying pan and gently saute the courgettes until they have softened but still retain some bite. Season well with salt and lots of fresh ground pepper.
The Salad
Easiest recipe there is! Slice some ripe tomatoes and a ball of buffalo mozzarella, drizzle with olive oil and season with a little salt and pepper.
For Sunday lunch I went middle-eastern in theme, feeling really inspired by a great cookery book I got for xmas last year: "Stuffed Vine Leaves Saved My Life" by Nadia Sawalha, the quirky masterchef winner.
Luckily, I'd been sensible enough to make a couple of things the day before, so I didn't have much work to do this morning.
First, I made the tabbouleh, which took the longest out of everything to make. It involved skinning, deseeding and finely chopping a few tomatoes, skinning plus cubing the cucumber and salting the peices (to firm them up). The bulgar wheat is easy, just shove it in a bowl with some salt and hot water for half an hour, then drain and squeeze it dry in a teatowel. Then chopping and chopping and chopping of a handful of mint and the largest amount of parsley ever. Mixed together with lime juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. It stored in the fridge overnight perfectly.
Personally I think this is a nice salad, but it needed more sweet tomatoes to offset the slight bitterness of the raw herbs.
I made the houmous / hummus this morning, which is a matter of five minutes work with a food processor. A can of chickpeas, a huge clove of smashed garlic, a squeezed lemon, salt, a few tablespoons of tahini and some olive oil, whizzed up until fairly creamy. Taste and taste again, if it seems bland a bit more lemon juice and salt is usually what mine needs.
The felafel mix was next and again is really easy with a food processor. A couple of tins of chickpeas, a couple of teaspoons each of cumin and ground coriander plus one each of allspice, cayenne pepper, cinnamon and bicarb, a handful each of parsley and coriander, a few spoonfuls of flour, plus the usual salt and pepper. I added a little water until the mixture would easily form into balls and then stashed the lot in the fridge.
About half an hour before I wanted to serve up, I rolled the mixture into balls with a light coating of flour. I don't have a deep fat fryer so I just heated up some oil in a baking tray in the oven, dropped them in when it was hot enough to sizzle and then turned them over half way through. In the photo you can still see the flour on the outside of a couple of them but seriously you can't taste it, especially when squished into a pitta bread. They cooked perfectly in half an hour at about 200 degrees.
Finally, a simple cold salad of grated carrots tossed with briefly fried black onion seeds, salt and lemon juice. I also served up a plate of dolmades which I bought ready-made (I will give making them a go at some point!) and a small bowl of black olives. A few wholemeal pitta breads, toasted until warm, provided the perfect transport vehicle for a heady mix of felafels, tahini, houmous and carrots.
We could barely waddle to the sofa afterwards, although we did manage to force down a few medjool dates between us for pudding. Mmmmmm, that's what Sundays are all about.
Links
Nadia Sawalha's tv programme "Eating in the sun"
Just in case plain lamb-and-mint doesn't tickle your fancy, I have a more summery recipe with redcurrants here.
