Archive for the 'lamb' Category
It turns out I am a grown-up, after all. I spent last weekend choosing a new washer and dryer. When it arrived yesterday, Mike and I were so excited that we sat in front of it and watched the water level rise through the window, as if it was a TV. Today I took the dog to the vet and drove home in the rain and rush hour, listening to the CBC news. Then I made a practical dinner; something I actually planned ahead this time. By the time I got home
One day not so long ago while I was attempting to do inventory in my freezer, I pulled out a small chunk of lamb, thinking I’d do something with it. I didn’t, so cubed it, tossed it with some spices in a plastic bag, sealed the bag and tossed it back in the freezer with ROGAN JOSH written on the outside. (I think I am finally beginning to learn that what goes in isn’t necessarily identifiable by sight when it comes out.) I planned to make a recipe for lamb R.J. that I found in an old copy of Cooking Light I bought at a garage sale for 25 cents. (Cooking Light recipes are fantastic.)
And I am now addicted to roasted chick peas and chard; awhile ago I roasted the chick peas in oil and garlic, salted them and ate them in front of a movie. Far better for you than chips or popcorn, but still fairly calorie-dense, unfortunately. It went swimmingly with the lamb.
Rogan Josh
(adapted from the April 2005 issue of Cooking Light)
1 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1 1/2 tsp. ground coriander
1 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. chili powder
1/2-1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground turmeric
1/4 tsp. saffron threads (optional)
1/4 tp. ground allspice or cloves
1- 1 1/2 pounds boneless leg of lamb, trimmed and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 tsp. canola oil
1 cup less-sodium beef broth
1/2 cup low-fat yogurt or sour cream
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro (optional)
Combine first 9 ingredients in a plastic bag. Add lamb; seal and shake to coat. Chill for several hours or overnight, or freeze for up to 4 months.
When you’re ready to make dinner, heat oil in a large, deep skillet over medium-high heat. Brown the lamb on all sides, but don’t worry about cooking it through. Add the broth and scrape the bottom of the pan to loosen browned bits; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 1 hour. Uncover and cook 5 minutes or until sauce thickens. Remove from heat; stir in yogurt and cilantro and serve immediately. Serves 4.
Per serving: CALORIES 193(38% from fat); FAT 8.2g (sat 2.5g,mono 3.5g,poly 0.9g); IRON 2.6mg; CHOLESTEROL 67mg; CALCIUM 90mg; CARBOHYDRATE 4.8g; SODIUM 396mg; PROTEIN 24g; FIBER 1.5g
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August 21 2008 | lamb | 10 Comments »
If this wet, grey, hail-y weather continues, we are in for a whole year’s worth of cold weather comfort food. The smell of this shepherd’s pie bubbling made me crave crunchy leaves and Halloween.
To be honest shepherd’s pie isn’t normally in my repertoire, but as I was pondering what to do with this leftover roast lamb (hash was my first thought… my mom used to make the crispiest hash with leftover roast beef, potatoes and onions – like a wedge of burger and fries all crisped up and smothered in ketchup) I was simultaneously working on an article on meals you can freeze ahead. Shepherd’s pie is traditionally made with lamb, and I saw it as another opportunity to chip away at my stash of sweet potatoes while making it healthier in the process. Typically SP is made with raw ground meat, but it can just as easily be done with finely chopped leftover roast. Honestly, you could make a shepherd’s pie out of anything – a panful of veggies, even, or robust mushrooms with onions and garlic – then sprinkle a spoonful of flour overtop and add a cup of stock; bring it to a simmer to thicken and scrape up the browned bits from the pan, and pour into a baking dish and top with mashed potatoes. You really don’t need a recipe here, just a basic formula.
Come to think of it – a vegetarian version made with meaty portobello mushrooms, onions and garlic, and Guinness in place of the stock, would be just fab. More appropriate in October though, I think. Under normal circumstances, anyway.
Shepherd’s Pie with Sweet Potatoes
2 largeish sweet potatoes or 3 largeish russet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
a drizzle of canola or olive oil
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
1 large carrot, peeled and chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 lb. ground lamb, lean beef or bison (or 2-3 cups chopped leftover roast)
1 cup sliced mushrooms (optional)
1 Tbsp. flour
1 tsp. chopped fresh or dry rosemary (optional)
1 cup beef, veggie, onion or chicken broth
2 Tbsp. tomato paste or ketchup
1 cup frozen peas
2 Tbsp. butter
1/4 cup(ish) milk
salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 375°F. To cook the potatoes you can either roast them in their skins in the oven for about an hour, microwave them whole in their skins (poke them with a fork first) or peel, chop and boil them until soft.
In a large pan, heat a drizzle of oil and sauté the onion and carrot over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes or until soft; add the garlic and meat and cook for another 5 minutes, until the meat is cooked through and the veg are starting to brown a little.
If you want to add mushrooms, set the meat mixture aside (transfer it to a bowl or something), heat a little more oil and sauté the mushrooms until they release their moisture and then the moisture cooks off and they start to brown. Return the meat mixture to the pan. Sprinkle the flour overtop and stir it around until it coats the meat a little, then add the rosemary, stock and tomato paste and stir until the mixture bubbles and thickens, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Stir in the peas.
Pour into a baking dish, making sure it only fills it half full, so there is room for the potatoes.
Peel (if necessary) and mash the potatoes with the butter, milk and salt and pepper. Spread over the meat mixture and bake for about 45 minutes, until bubbly.
Serves 6.
Per serving: 270 calories, 9.6 g total fat (2.8 g saturated fat, 4.4 g monounsaturated fat, 1 g polyunsaturated fat), 27.8 g protein, 17.9 g carbohydrate, 74.8 mg cholesterol, 2.5 g fiber. 32% calories from fat.
June 11 2008 | freezable and lamb and leftovers and one dish | 3 Comments »
Stop rolling your eyes.
It would never in a million years occur to me to pop a leg of lamb in the oven on a plain old Monday night. But on Saturday morning I pulled the thing out of the freezer when I invited my sister over for dinner, and forgot about it when she went out of town and I decided to make Otsu instead. Which in turn got bumped for chicken shawarma. See what happens when I plan ahead?
So I spent altogether too much time this morning perusing recipes in an attempt to do something lamb-worthy; after all, the chunk of meat was $18. Then again, that’s less than ordering pizza, so what’s all the fuss about?
I was too mad at the rain to grill kebabs, and in the end decided that since it was a nice, even, bone-in piece of leg without the shank, I’d just straight-up roast it. Roasting a leg of lamb is very similar to roasting beef – the tricky part is the shape of it – the uneven thickness of the leg makes it difficult to roast evenly. At the thicker sirloin end and in the middle it’s very fleshy, but then it tapers down to the shank, which has very little meat. It’s common to end up with one end overcooked, while the middle beside the bone is still nearly raw.
The best way to combat this is to have the butcher remove the hipbone and aitchbone, then tie it with string to make it as uniform in shape as possible. Or you could buy a boned leg of lamb, which you can stuff, or cut and lay flat, or tie up and have it be pretty uniform.
It also helps to roast a leg of lamb on a rack in a roasting pan, so that the heat can circulate around it and the part resting on the hot pan doesn’t get overcooked. This also makes it easy to rotate the meat as it cooks, which will also help ensure it gets evenly cooked. I’ve heard that slow-cooking is a good method for lamb, but thought I’d save it for shanks or an awkward whole leg (as if that will likely happen this year).
So all I did was make a paste with 5 cloves of garlic, a twig of rosemary and a spoonful of olive oil and rubbed it all over the roast, then showered it with pepper and coarse salt. The oven was at 450F for the bagels Emily and I were making, so I took them out, put the roast in, and turned it down to 350F. This flash of high heat browns the exterior, caramelizing it a bit and adding flavour. (It doesn’t “seal in the juices”, as is commonly thought.)
It stayed in the oven for about an hour and a half, and I slid a pan of new potatoes tossed in oil underneath about halfway through. (I was too lazy to add garlic or anything else.) When the lamb was done and needed to rest for 10 minutes or so, I left the potatoes in and cranked the oven up to 450F again to make sure they were nice and dark and crispy.
Of course, lamb requires mint sauce. I do have a dusty bottle of the stuff on my shelf, but it occurred to me that this might make good use of the mint that’s currently taking over my lawn: 1 cup vinegar (whatever kind you think), 1/3 cup sugar and a big handful of torn fresh mint leaves. Shake it up in a jar.
I’m generally too lazy to make gravy. Whatever drippings are there are typically left to maybe be picked at, maybe get cleaned up and if I’m lucky end up in soup stock (if it’s chicken; minus the fat). I rarely roast beef and lamb. I do love the crispy bits and dark sludge that end up in the bottom of the roasting pan though, and so this time I spooned off as much fat as I could, and not wanting to flavour it with wine or dilute it with stock, instead I stirred in the tiniest dab of butter (about half a teaspoon) with a fork, working all that yumminess off the bottom and sides of the pan. My intention, actually, was to (ingeniously, I thought) wilt a bag of spinach in the small amount of buttery drippings, but when I pulled the bag out of the fridge I realized it had been in there longer than I thought.
So I dribbled the few tablespoons of what amounted to pure meat heaven over the lamb, and we forgot to use the mint sauce altogether.
As it turns out, this was one of the easiest meals I’ve done. Seriously. Why are roasts always reserved for fancy occasions?
June 09 2008 | lamb | 6 Comments »
Every time people I know move, I am the eager recipient of boxes of old cooking magazines they may have stored in their basements. These then get transported into my basement, or my parents’ basement, to be dusted off and moved again when we do. Mike loves this.
Likewise, I am always the one lugging magazines out of church and garage sales for a quarter apiece. Then they get stored in our basement/garage/bedroom until I have a chance to flip through them and pull out the most interesting pages. Their final stage of decomposition is when said pages are piled into my big yellow milk crate for sorting, and the rest gets recycled.
As I may have mentioned, my parents are moving, so a box of Saveur magazines have been returned to their rightful owner. I stumbled upon this recipe for ground lamb and peas in yogurt: aha! a use for that chub of ground lamb and unreasonably huge bag of peas taking up prime real estate in my freezer.
Keema matar calls for a technique known as tarka: which refers to sauteeing whole spices – in this case coriander, cumin and chiles—in clarified butter (also known as ghee) to boost flavour. Of course this does not require you to go purchase a jar of ghee; my plan was to simply use melted butter and perhaps scoop the suds off the top. But to be truthful, my enthusiasm for this dish waned with every step as I plodded through the instructions. I thought I had garam masala; I did not. I had to puree the ginger and garlic with turmeric and garam masala and water to make a watery paste. When it came time to do the tarka, I found I had exhausted my stash of cumin seed, and my coriander was missing (this could be due to one of W’s favorite pastimes: to throw my spices out the bathroom window) but I soldiered on. I threw in the towel when I realized I didn’t have chiles de árbol, only ancho and guillano, and who knows if they are similar? I plopped in a spoonful of curry paste and was done with it.
The method – saute onions, add ginger-garlic paste and tomato paste, cook to caramelize (? the onions should be caramelized before the moisture goes in) and then add the lamb and cook it, too, was odd. I’d have done it the other way – cook the onions and lamb, then add the ginger-garlic and spices and tomato paste. I’m not sure what the benefit is of the other method – it was difficult to tell when the lamb was cooked in that mixture, and impossible to pour off the excess fat – but I’m sure if someone with Indian cooking expertise did it it would turn out beautifully.
And actually, Mike thinks it did. I was ho-hum about it, but I found him picking out of the pan after dinner, and he said “this is one of the best things you’ve ever made! It’s like an Indian Hamburger Helper.”
April 14 2008 | lamb and one dish | 5 Comments »
In Lethbridge, in the dark to honour Earth Hour.
It was fantastic. I was in Lethbridge to cook and eat with the wonderful folks who were the highest bidders on a private dinner/cooking class with me that was auctioned off for the CBC Petro-Canada Food Bank Drive at Christmas. I asked what they would like to make and they were interested in learning to make fresh mozzarella – something I hadn’t done before. The process was simple but we tiptoed through it, skeptical that it was actually going to turn into cheese in the end, and it did! Although we were shocked at how little 2 L of milk produced; one handful-sized ball, which we managed to squeeze enough slices out of to make this salad layered with tomatoes and fresh basil:
Here’s how you do it:
Dissolve 1 tsp. citric acid into 2 L of cold milk (we used homo), briskly stirring it with a whisk in a largish pot. Set it over medium-low heat and warm until it reaches 100F, or just slightly warmer than body temperature. Remove from heat.
Crush 1/8 of a rennet tablet and dissolve into 2 Tbsp. cool water. Add this in a thin stream, whisking constantly, to the warmed milk. Stir for about a minute, then stop. Let it sit for 10 minutes.
Using a slotted spoon, scoop out the curds into a small microwave-safe bowl, pressing out as much of the whey as you can.
Microwave for 1 minute (this will coax out a little more whey; just pour it off) and then plop it out onto a clean countertop and start to fold and stretch it. It will be almost too hot to handle, but will cool to warm quickly. Pull and stretch it until it’s smooth, then shape into a ball and put in a bowl of cold water until firm.
Pavlova
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp. cornstarch
6 large egg whites
1 tsp. white vinegar
1/2 tsp. vanilla
whipping cream
fresh raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, and/or sliced strawberries, peaches, plums, apricots, kiwi or fruit salsa made with any combination of finely chopped fruit – strawberries, kiwi and mango looks and tastes great
Preheat oven to 250° F and line two large baking sheets with foil or parchment. Stir the cornstarch into the sugar. In a large bowl, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer until soft peaks form. Gradually add the sugar, beating until the mixture holds stiff, glossy peaks, like shaving cream. Beat in the vinegar and vanilla.
To make one large Pavlova, spoon the meringue onto the baking sheet and spread out with the bottom of a spoon to form a 9”-10” circle with a slight indent in the middle and raised edges, like a nest. To make individual Pavlovas, spoon small mounds (about a tablespoon of meringue) about half an inch apart on the baking sheet, then make little indents in the middle using the tip of a teaspoon. Bake for an hour, until crisp but still soft inside.
Let the meringues cool on the sheets, then peel them off the foil. To serve, top with a dollop of whipped cream or curd, and berries or fruit salsa. Makes 40 pavlova.
Crème brulée has an unshakable reputation as the penultimate fancy dessert, one you can guage the quality of a restaurant based on, and one uncommonly made at home. But truly, it is one of the simplest desserts you can make. All you do is whisk together egg yolks, sugar and cream, pour it into cups, and bake it. At Williams-Sonoma they have 1 L tetra packs of crème brulée for something like $22, and I’m constantly gobsmacked every time I go in there and see people buying them by the basketload. That’s the easy part! If there’s any trick to it, it’s baking the custards in a water bath and bruléeing the surface, but even that part is easy – you don’t need to have a torch (although it is fun), all you need to do is scatter the surface with sugar and run it under the broiler for a minute or two. Because they are chilled before this part, this is the ideal make-ahead dessert if you’re making a special dinner.
Crème Brulée
5 large egg yolks
6 Tbsp. sugar
2 cups heavy (whipping) cream or 18% coffee cream
1/2 tsp. good-quality vanilla (I used Madagascar vanilla bean paste, in which you can see the teeny seeds from the vanilla pod)
sugar, for sprinkling on top
Preheat oven to 325°F. In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar. Whisk in the cream and vanilla.
Divide among 6 small ramekins, and put them into a roasting pan or 9″x13″ pan; pour water in so that the water comes about halfway up the sides of the ramekins. This will sort of insulate them so that they cook gently and evenly.
Bake for about 40 minutes, until the custards are set but still just slightly jiggly in the middle (you’ll get a feel for this!). Take them out, let them cool and then refrigerate for a few hours or overnight, until nice and cold.
Sprinkle an even layer of sugar over each dish and caramelize with a torch or transfer to a cookie sheet and place under the broiler in the oven for about 2 minutes, just until the sugar is caramelized and golden. Turn the sheet around if you need to to help them caremelize evenly. Refrigerate again, or just let them sit on the countertop while you eat dinner or make coffee, just until the sugar is set and crackly.
Serves 6.
The drive home was longer than I anticipated, having blithely missed some turn at Fort McLeod and not realized it until I reached Pincher Creek. After turning around, driving back to F.M. and then finding highway #2 North, a snowstorm hit that lasted the entire drive back (almost 2 hours) to Calgary – it was one of those storms that makes you feel like you’re driving through an asteroid field, making it impossible to tell how fast you’re going or how far away that rig is in front of you.
But totally worth it.
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March 30 2008 | cheese and dessert and lamb and leftovers and sweet stuff | 3 Comments »
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