Lamb Stew and Suet Dumplings

Mmm, yum. This made a fabulous Sunday lunch on a clear, crisp and chilly day. It uses a reasonably cheap cut of lamb, so it requires slow cooking, but the flavour and texture is wonderful.

I bought two lamb shanks, which rightfully feeds about 3 people. Lamb is great at this time of year, much better than in the spring, having had a lovely summer roaming free to express natural lammy behaviour.

Chop up a big onion, a couple of sticks of celery and a few cubed carrots along with several cloves of garlic. Add them to hot oil in a large pan, give them a quick stir, and then drop in your lamb shanks. Let them brown all over before adding a big glug of red wine and 500ml (2 pints) lamb stock, or whatever stock you have to hand.

Bring up to a simmer and add a cup (or tin) or cannellini beans, a few sprigs of thyme and rosemary and a couple of bay leaves. Leave to cook, lid on, over a low heat for 1 hour.

After an hour, give it a good stir and add cubed parsnips or potatoes, I had some brocolli and cauliflower stems so I cubed and added them in as well. A big dollop of redcurrant jelly really helps the gravy along too.

After another half an hour, add in some whole mushrooms and green veg like broccoli, savoy cabbage, peas, green beans or whatever you happen to have. Give it a good grinding of black pepper and salt to taste.

To make the dumplings, the ratio is twice as much self-raising flour to suet. For two people, I used 80g flour to 40g vegetable suet, with a pinch of salt, brought together with a few spoonfuls of cold water. Roll them into balls about the size of a golfball and plonk them on top of the casserole. Put the lid back on and leave to cook for 20 minutes until they've puffed up.

 

Lamb Burgers with Houmous, Courgettes & Mozzarella Salad

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.

Italian Lamb Meatballs

I had half a pack (200g) lamb mince left over from the redcurrant burgers and decided to use it to make little meatballs in tomato sauce for dinner.

First thing, I wandered into the garden and picked some oregano and marjoram, to supplement the parsley and basil I already had in the fridge. Then I diced a couple of small onions, several cloves of garlic, a celery stalk and half a long chilli, along with the stalks from the parsley and basil.

I fried up that lot until cooked and then separated half out to cool on the side for a minute. To the remaining oniony mix, still in the pan, I added a tin of chopped tomatoes and a squeeze of tomato puree. Left that to simmer and got on with the meatballs.


The lamb mince went into a mixing bowl with plenty of salt and pepper, a handful of the herbs (chopped finely) and the rest of the onion mixture. Squished it all up by hand and then divided into eight little balls. These went onto a foil covered baking tray, coated in a little olive oil. Into the oven at 180 degrees for about 25 minutes.


I cooked some green beans and set them out on the side with the remaining herbs and a lemon. By this time, the tomato sauce was bubbling away, so I added a shot of vodka and a peice of parmesan heel, along with half a chopped red pepper. Down to a very low heat and left to simmer. 
The pasta went on about 15 minutes before the meatballs would be ready, I like spirali so I used them, anything would do though. I reused the bean water to cook the pasta.


When the meatballs came out of the oven I transferred them into the tomato sauce, along with the green beans, the herbs (torn, rather than cut, this time), a sqeeze of lemon juice, a few spoonfuls of pasta water, salt, pepper and a little sugar. Finally I served up with the pasta on the bottom and the meatballs and tomato sauce on the top. A grating of parmesan and it's done. Yum.

Surf & Turf BBQ: Lamb burgers, Sea Bass & Prawns with Watercress Salad

When we looked out of the upper window of our house on Sunday afternoon we saw three things in common with all of them: laundry on the line, mowers running and barbecues out. Ok, so we didn't quite get around to getting the mower out, but we did do the laundry and wheel out the barbecue.

We went to the supermarket on the way home from the pick-your-own farm, primarily for cat food and compost baggies, but couldn't resist a couple of special offers on organic lamb mince, line-caught sea bass and large atlantic prawns. Oh yum. We were salivating already as we drove home, catching the smell of everyone elses barbecues on the way past.

The skewers are easy: take prawns, thread on skewer. Done. Major mistake? Using pre-cooked prawns. They were still tasty but dried out quite a lot on the coals.

Lamb, Redcurrant & Mint Burgers
I got the idea for these from the counter at waitrose, where they sell them pre-made. As we'd just picked some redcurrants at the farm these burgers came back to mind so I thought I'd give making them a go. I made it up as I went along but the results were really good.


I put a handful of redcurrants together with a handful of chopped mint, some salt and pepper, 200g of lamb mince, plus onions and garlic, pre-fried with a little sugar to help them brown and make them slightly caramelised. Squished up by hand and formed into patties, these were perfect.

Asian Style Steamed Seabass
This one's easy, just whisk up a couple of dashes each of light and dark soy sauce, the juice of a lime, a splosh of sesame oil and another of rice wine vinegar, a big dollop of grated ginger, some chopped coriander and a red chilli. 

Keep tasting it and adding the ingredients until it tastes good to you, if it isn't acidic enough add more lime or vinegar, if it's too acidic add more oil, if it isn't salty enough add more soy. Tweak away until you like it, that's why you're making it.

Lay the fish in a foil parcel and spoon over the sauce, wrap it up tightly so it won't leak and it's good to go on the barbecue.

Watercress, Herb, Blue Cheese & Walnut Salad

I love watercress and I love herbs, luckily I already had a lot of both. I mixed the watercress with the following, scavenged from the garden: chives, basil, oregano, marjoram, coriander, spinach, sorrel, parsley, fennel and nasturtium leaves.

Make up a dressing from balsamic vinegar, first cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper, spoon this over and then top the whole salad with walnut peices and little peices of blue cheese - whichever is your favourite, but a slightly sweeter type goes best.

I garnished it with a nasturtium flower and borage and coriander flowers, because they're incredibly pretty and edible too.

Turnips with peas, wet garlic & roast lamb

Sometimes there is a nice little surprise in my veg box, a recipe that someone has thoughtfully put in, to inspire people when cooking some of the ingredients that week.

This time it was fresh turnips, which they suggested you braise and then serve with the wet garlic and fresh peas that were also in the box. Luckily enough I had ordered racks of lamb too, which the recipe mentioned as great with this side dish.

Cooking little racks of lamb to go with the veggies is pretty easy. It's even easier if the only breadcrumbs you have in the house have gone mouldy, so there's nothing to make a herby crust from. Whoops!

Just brown them for a few minutes either side, preferably using the baking tray that you're going to roast them in. Then cover with foil and pop in the oven at 180 degrees for about 10-15 minutes, depending on the size of them. At this point you'd usually remove the foil and add the crust, before cooking for another 8 minutes or so, in this case I had to omit the crust and just removed the foil.


The turnip recipe was very easy too, and rather than typing the whole thing out here is a picture of the recipe from my Abel and Cole box.

I think the only note I'd make to add to this recipe is that the turnips probably needed to be cooked for a little longer than I did them (we were hungry!), so make sure they are nicely cooked before serving up.


Btw, I did like adding a splash of white wine!

Once the lamb was done, I left it to rest for five minutes before serving up.

What I did with the lamb joint I was too lazy to cook yesterday

I was feeling a bit down so when I got home from work my lovely husband offered me a chinese takeaway. Hot and sour soup, pancake rolls, monks vegetables, oooh lots of my favourite things danced before my eyes for a moment. And then I thought about the lovely lamb joint in the fridge, and the heart-pounding, insomnia-inducing after effects of MSG overload... so I changed my mind...

Once I'd stopped dithering I could turn my mind to how easy dinner would be if I just got on with it. I plonked the lamb in a baking tray, made slits with a knife and stuffed the poor beastie with garlic and rosemary. Salt, pepper and olive oil to coat and straight in the oven at 180 degrees, covered in foil.

Got the hubby to scrub the potatoes (I hate that job!) and put them in a pot with some torn up mint from the garden. I picked some thyme too, and prepared the leeks with some extra garlic.

Then I plonked myself on the sofa to watch Modern Family and the Simpsons to cheer myself up. By the end of the Simpsons the lamb had been in the oven for about an hour, so it was time to take the foil off the lamb and put the potatoes on to cook in boiling water. 


Then I heated up a frying pan with some oil, added the garlic and then the leeks and thyme, just to brown a little bit. Then, the happy sizzling noise of a glass of white wine, left until almost all of it has boiled away, then a pint of veg stock and the lid on to let them braise.

Twenty minutes later, the lamb came out of the oven to rest - it does make a difference you know, I used to think it was a load of baloney but it isn't. And it gives you just enough time to stick the pan on the hob, add a bit of water and make some gravy. Add the broth from the leeks too, with the garlic and thyme it just works beautifully.

Lamb, minted jersey royals and braised leeks with gravy. Not bad at all. I didn't miss having a takeaway that's for sure. 

Wogan Gosh (a Eurovision dinner)

I named this curry in honour of the one time eurovision commentator, much lamented since he left:- his ascerbic comments are the memories of my childhood and couldn't be matched by any modern presenter, no matter how much I love Graham Norton.

We don't see this very often: the UK at the top of the leaderboards

Of course it's basically rogan josh, a lamb curry with tomatoes and onions. I've used scrag end of lamb because it's super cheap but you can make it with other cheap cuts like neck fillet, or more expensive ones if you're feeling flush.

First things first, I trimmed all the meat off the scrags and set about turning it into a stock. Just the usual ingredients: celery, carrots, onion, parsley stalks, pepper and bay leaves. Covered with cold water and left to simmer for a couple of hours, lovely.



I coated the meat in cornflour and browned it in a hot pan and then put it to one side while I cooked up sliced garlic, a large sliced onion, a diced stick of celery, a dollop of grated ginger and some crushed cardamom pods.

Once the onions were getting soft I added in a couple of teaspoons of cumin, one of tumeric, one of ground coriander and a couple of bay leaves. When they started to smell terrific, a can of chopped tomatoes went in with a cup or so of lamb stock and sliced green chillies.



Brought it up to a boil then turned down and left it to simmer, just in time to catch Russia's entry, including the immortal lyrics "I lost my mind somewhere between your face". 

Go France though, seriously: an operatic singer at eurovision? Winner. I love it.

Italy, you have done me proud. Reasonably hot man playing a catchy song on a plastic grand piano, short instrumentals by an awesome trumpet player, plus end-of-chorus screeching. He's the Italian Jamie Cullum. Reminds me of my grandad, aw.

Oh Moldova. What are you like, though. Love you guys.

About now, my husband was kind enough to pop out to the kitchen and add the rest of lamb stock to the curry. By romania I was on my 3rd glass of wine. I needed it.

By Azerbaijan I was already thinking about my fourth. They are usually the highlight of the contest but this year's low grade, standard pop offering was a theatrical disappointment. (NOTE: when I wrote this I had no idea they were going to win. Oh the trauma...)
Iceland deserved good voting just for the sad story, but they were actually alright. As my husband said: happy Mumford & sons.

Seriously, this tastes way better
than it looks in my photo!

Anyway, when the curry tasted done, I added a load of chopped coriander, some lemon juice and lots of seasoning.
We ate it with warm, wholemeal pitta breads and some leftover rice, whilst enjoying Georgia's 2Unlimited style offering. Especially the "unusual" dress. 
Interesting fact: Georgia have basically the same flag as ours and share our patron saint. They had a king called George the Brilliant.

I voted for Italy. But it was a close decision: France, Iceland and Moldova all got serious consideration. Italy came second in the end, I'm not too upset about that, but seriously... Azerbaijan's song. Really? There's no way that was better than Italy's entry!