Lamb + Veal – Page 3 – Writing With My Mouth Full

Lamb Ragu

I was ready to spend the entire day indoors until my phone rang. It was the Dr. asking me if I was interested in having some lamb ragÃ¹ for dinner. When he invites you over for a home-cooked meal, you just go. He’s one of the best cooks I know who can move in the kitchen like no one’s business. If you watch me cook, I’m all over the place, stressing out and trying to make sure I’m getting every step right. He makes cooking less of a chore and the end product is always top-notch.

This lamb ragu from The New York Times Sunday Magazine is one of those recipes you keep and do over and over until you can cook it with your eyes closed. It was hearty and deliciously gamey in flavor, so after a big dump of snow here in the east coast, I wanted to make my own.

They say patience is a virtue and you’re going to need a lot of it for this dish. The key is for everything to be a deep brown color. It’s a sign that all the flavors have been concentrated.

While you do this recipe on your own, here’s a video of my version simmering.

Ingredients:
3 pounds ground lamb leg or shoulder
1 small can of tomato paste
3 cups red wine
1 large onion, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
3 celery stalks, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 sprigs of rosemary, removed from stem
half a bunch of thyme, tied in a bundle
grated Parmesan
farfalle, cooked al dente
garlic bread, toasted
salt, oil

1. Using a large Dutch oven, heat some olive oil over medium heat. SautÃ© garlic until light brown. Add the onions until translucent. Add the vegetables, season with salt and cook until all the water has evaporated and the vegetables begin to brown, about 18 minutes. Stir frequently.
2. Add ground lamb, season generously with salt and cook until it is browned, about 25 to 30 minutes. Everything should be a deep brown towards the end.
3. Add the tomato paste and cook for about 5 minutes. Stir in the red wine, rosemary and bay leaves. Cook at a lively simmer until the wine has reduced by half. Add the thyme bundle and enough water to cover the lamb by about 1 inch. Simmer for 2 hours, stirring and tasting frequently and adding more water as it evaporates. Remove the bay leaves and thyme when cooked. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
4. To serve, pour over farfalle that’s been cooked al dente. Grate Parmesan all over. Add toasted bread on the side.

Rack of Lamb with Apricot-Lime Chutney

We went crazy in Central Market when we were in Austin. Every produce aisle should look like theirs. After Cameron pushed the cart to pick up the ingredients she needed for her salads, we bought a $50 rack of lamb. I knew I wanted something savory for our New Year’s Eve dinner, so I went to the spice aisle and happily weighed some loose curry powder and bought it for 45 cents. With iPhone on hand, I Googled a chutney to match the Indian flavor. Because we were expecting a couple to join us for dinner to make us five, I wanted to do something low key as well. In fact, I was able to prepare the lamb in between courses; only the chutney was done before our guests came in. Cameron’s spinach salad peppered with blueberries, cranberries and almonds and roasted fingerling Peruvian potatoes were nice sides with this.

Ingredients:
rack of lamb
garlic cloves, minced
a small knob of ginger, peeled, thinly sliced
curry powder
salt, pepper, oil

For the apricot-lime chutney:
6 fresh apricots, pitted, chopped
juice from a lime
lime zest
honey
a small knob of ginger, peeled, thinly sliced

1. Preheat oven to 350Âº. Make small slits all over the lamb using a sharp knife. Insert garlic and ginger. Cover the rack of lamb with the spices and let sit for half an hour or until ready to cook.
2. Place all chutney ingredients in a saucepan, add water and bring to a boil. Lower heat to simmer and cook for 30 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add a little water if it begins to dry when simmering. Allow to cool before serving.
3. Using an oven-safe frying pan, brown one side of the rack in hot oil. Transfer in the oven and cook for 25 minutes or until medium-rare. Let rest on a wooden block to finish cooking before slicing and serving.

Autumn Tagine with Meatballs and Squash

I asked my parents if ever a balloon popped in my face when I was a kid. I like balloons just fine, but the possibility that one would pop makes me wince. I had the same reaction when I started to use the tagine cooker I bought in Tunisia. (Don’t get me started with a pressure cooker!) The potter told me that because there’s a pinhole on the top of the cover, that it’s safe to put on top of a stove. Because it’s also not decorated and had already been fired, it would be all right to use as both a cooker and a serving bowl. To make sure, though, I first boiled some hot water in it with a small drop of oil. There was no popping–I stayed far away from the kitchen–and the water didn’t turn blue or anything, so I deemed it safe to use.

Today was the first day it felt truly like autumn and I wanted something comforting for dinner. This recipe takes a lot of prep work, so it’s advisable to make the meatballs and roast the squash ahead of time. The end product, though, is totally worth all the time you put in.

Ingredients:
1 butternut squash, halved
1 large carrot, peeled, chopped
1 red onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsps cumin
2 tbsps cinnamon powder
5 saffron threads, soaked in 2 tbsps hot water
a handful of parsley, roughly chopped
juice from a small lemon
2 cups chicken stock

For the lamb meatballs:
1 pound of ground lamb
1/4 cup of cilantro, finely chopped
1 red onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp cumin, grounded
1 tbsp paprika
salt, pepper

1. Preheat oven to 350Âº. Season butternut squash halves with salt and pepper and drizzled some olive oil on them. Roast for about 45 minutes, or until squash meat is tender. Set aside and let cool. When squash is cool enough to handle, score and scoop out the meat into big chunks.
2. In the meantime, make meatballs by forming golf-sized balls with your hands. Brown meatballs by frying them in a skillet with hot oil. Set aside.
3. In a tagine cooker, or a large Dutch oven, sautÃ© garlic and onions. Add carrots, chicken stock, cumin, cinnamon and saffron. Cover and cook carrots until tender. Add browned meatballs and roasted squash. Cover to cook for another 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Mix in lemon juice and parsley. Turn off the heat and keep the cooker covered until ready to serve. Serve with couscous.

Roasted Neck of Lamb with Vegetables

Ah, fall. There were those weird couple of days when the weather turned muggy and humid, but it now feels like Mother Nature is catching up. The leaves are starting to turn and I’m beginning to feel too lazy to get up from my warm and cozy bed. All I want is to drink a full-bodied red wine and eat some lamb. After I start my day, that is.

This was an easy recipe from Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries. I’m not at all familiar with him, but the book design was so tempting that I couldn’t leave Strand bookstore without it. I initially wanted to use lamb chops instead of the suggested neck, but when I went to the halal store next door, they only had the neck left. I also picked up three chungus, the African eggplants they always have in stock.

Ingredients:
2 pounds neck of lamb, chopped
3 plum tomatoes, halved
2 baking potatoes, peeled, chopped
1 large eggplant, chopped
1 large red onion, quartered
6 cloves of garlic, peeled
5 sprigs of rosemary
olive oil, salt, pepper

1. Preheat oven to 400Âº. Season lamb with salt and pepper. Set aside.
2. In a shallow roasting pan, toss all the ingredients together, except the lamb, with some oil, salt and pepper. Bake, uncovered, for thirty minutes.
3. Remove roasting vegetable from the oven, toss gently and add the lamb. Turn the oven heat up to 425Âº and roast for another twenty minutes, or until the lamb is golden brown and slightly pink inside.

Grass-Fed Lamb Chops

I was at the market already so it was pretty hard to resist the lamb chops from 3-Corner Field Farm. It’s lambing season soon and they won’t be back in the market until June. I picked up four chops that cost $30 with a big knob of sheep’s milk cheese covered in herbs de Provence. The lamb was just slaughtered and packed immediately–I could tell as soon as I unwrapped them at home. Unlike the chops I buy from my neighborhood grocery store, the meat hasn’t been in storage for a long time and it tasted like it, too.

I cook a lot of lamb at home. I’ve cooked it with Indian spices. I’ve served it with corn pudding. I’ve tried it the Julia Child way. This time, I wanted to keep it simple. I mixed some olive oil and balsamic vinegar with minced garlic and fresh rosemary and brushed it on the chops. I broiled them for about ten minutes per side. They were done as soon as I poked them–soft, but firm. (Remember the meat of your palm right below your thumb.) I took them out of the oven and let them sit for five more minutes to finish cooking while I tossed some greens with the sheep’s milk cheese. We finished a bottle of red Loire wine with it.

Ingredients:
3 grass-fed lamb chops
5 garlic cloves, minced
3 sprigs of rosemary
1 cup balsamic vinegar
salt, pepper, olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 350Âº. In the meantime, combine all the ingredients in a large bowl and marinate the lamb chops in it.
2. When ready to cook, roast lamb chops for 10 minutes per side. They’re perfect when the meat feels like the palm right below your thumb. Remove from oven to a chopping block and let rest for five minutes.