Everything but Beetroot

Sometimes I want to spend hours and hours making a meal, but mostly I’d rather get something together quickly, but without compromising on taste.

That’s particularly true on a Friday evening after a long week.  So a quick curry was just what the doctor ordered.

Ingredients

• Lamb steaks, cubed
• Onion, finely chopped
• Chilli, finely chopped
• 3 cardamom pods
• 1/2 tsp coriander seeds
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• Fresh coriander

Method

Fry the meat in a little oil until the cubes are browned.  Add the onion and chilli to the pan and continue to cook for about 5 minutes.

Add the spices and stir occasionally for 10-15 minutes.

Serve with freshly chopped coriander, either over rice or couscous.

quick-lamb-curry [pdf]

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Top family meal from the Casa Moro cookbook.

This was very easy to prepare and cook; you just have to remember to start early enough!

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• Leg of lamb
• 250 ml red wine
• 4 shallots, halved
• 1 jar of red currant jelly

Method

Pre-heat the oven at 110C.

Heat the oil in a large oven-proof pan and brown the lamb on each side. This should take about 10 minutes.

Pour in the wine and add the shallots.

Spoon the jelly over the lamb and then cover and put in the oven for 5-6 hours.

Serve with mash and steamed green vegetables.

Method

Brown the lamb (which has been rolled in flour) then remove it and fry an onion, a garlic clove and a teaspoon of fennel seeds.

Return the lamb along with the zest and juice of two oranges, a small red chili, and 300ml of chicken stock. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer for 25 to 30 minutes (until the potatoes are cooked).

Fry the lamb (with a Persian rub) and an onion, then stick them in the oven at 160 C for 20 minutes.  Put the couscous on the top and pour over chicken stock and put back in the oven (covered in foil) for a further 10 minutes.  Stir in chopped apricots, chickpeas and coriander and serve.

This is a South African take on moussaka, with apple instead of aubergine. I worried that the use of curry powder was going to put the kids off, but actually it was the yogurt that they didn’t like. Despite that they both came back for seconds, which is a pretty good sign.

Ingredients

• 1 slice of white bread – soaking in 125ml of milk
• olive oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 500g minced lamb
• 1 tbsp of tomato puree
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1.5 tbsp curry powder
• desert apple, cored and chopped
• 40g ground almonds
• 25g raisins
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 250ml water
• 300ml yogurt
• 2 eggs
• 15g flaked almonds

Method

Heat a some olive oil over a medium heat and fry the onion and garlic for 5 minutes. Brown the mince for a further 5 minutes. Then sieve to remove the excess oil and return the meat to the saucepan. Add the tomato puree, cinnamon, curry powder, apple, ground almonds, raisins and water and allow to simmer for 10 minutes. Stir in the bread and milk and if your saucepan isn’t oven-proof pour everything into something that can go in the oven.

Mix the yogurt and eggs and spoon on top of the meat. Top with the flaked almonds and put into a pre-heated oven (200C) for 30-40 minutes.

Bobotie [pdf]

The family love a roast, but this evening we were late starting to cook so it was a good thing the lamb was off the bone which meant it took about 15 minutes to cook rather than the hour you’d usually need.

Still I’m not fantastic at cutting corners just yet so when I started on the marinade – taken from the Casa Moro cookbook – I thought I wouldn’t be likely to get the kids into bed on time.

Ingredients

• Butterflied lamb shoulder
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• juice of a lemon
• 2 tsp of cumin seeds roughly ground
• 1 tsp of tomato purée
• large handful of chopped coriander
• half a grated onion
• olive oil

Method

Combine all the ingredients for the marinade except the oil and rub all over the lamb. After a few minutes add the oil, this pause before adding the oil is supposed to allow the lemon juice to get into the meat. Let the marinade do it’s magic for as long as you can – in my case about 20 out of the recommended 30 minutes – occasionally turning the meat.

Meanwhile prepare and par-boil your root vegetables for about 10 minutes before draining them and then putting them in a roasting tray with a little oil and then into a pre-heated oven for 45 minutes at 200C. On this occasion I did 2 potatoes, a sweet potato, the half an onion that didn’t go into the marinade, and a few carrots. Boiling the potatoes gives the finished potatoes a really fluffy and crispy finish.

Back to the lamb. Seal the meat over a hot hob in a roasting tin and then put it into the oven for 15 minutes. I’ve now learnt to make sure I give enough time for the meat to rest for about 10 minutes while the rest of the meal is in its final preparation stages.

So, once the meat came out (and was wrapped in tin foil to make sure it didn’t loose heat) I put on the green vegetables.

It all got served within an hour and a quarter of starting, which doesn’t make this the fastest of fast meals, but it went down well and I got the sort of praise that is compatible with this sort of effort.

Butterflied Lamb [pdf]