This is Marie, contributing my take on a lamb stew recipe out of the Penzeys catalog. If you have been reading us for a while you know we are great fans of the Penzeys line of spices, and we also really appreciate how they do such a great job including delectable recipes in their catalogs. It’s hard to throw one away!
What we have taken to doing lately is tearing out the page with a recipe we’d like to try and posting it on the fridge as a reminder. At the very least it keeps me from forgetting about it after leaving drool marks on the page…
I used to cook lamb before I had to cook for a kid who won’t eat the stuff, and still pick some up occasionally when we go to a restaurant that carries it. This time I made a trip to Whole Foods, where they had no lamb stew meat so they cut up a boneless leg for me, and it turned out so incredibly tender and delicious! I recommend doing that yourself, even if you will then wind up with the problem I had later in the dish’s cooking process, which is that it wouldn’t thicken properly (because, duh, no bones) so I added some potatoes that aren’t called for in the recipe. I love the taste of potatoes with lamb gravy anyway so I’d probably do the same next time.
The recipe calls for quite a few spices, so normally this one would sit on the fridge until I got around to collecting anything missing from my (already too-large) collection, but it had been far too long since the last time, so despite the girlchild’s vehement protests, made it for the very next Sunday dinner. Hey, she was allowed to eat leftover birthday cake for dinner, so don’t feel too bad on her behalf!
Below is the recipe as Penzeys presented it, with my alterations in parentheses. First of all, I halved the recipe, so when looking at the photos you will see that they are modified for half of the quantities listed below. This is a recipe for 8, and we had 2.5 people eating it! And the .5 didn’t even have much interest because he’d been “helping” me make applesauce all day by eating the apples.
3 – 3.5 lbs lamb shoulder or stew meat in 1-inch cubes
3/4 tsp kosher flake salt
1/2 tsp ground pepper
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp cayenne (next time I would be a little more generous)
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground coriander
olive oil
butter
2 cups chopped onion
3 minced garlic cloves
1.5 tb fresh ginger, peeled and minced (the one I had was not good any more, so I just added some more powdered ginger and it turned out OK)
3-4 tangerines or 2 sweet oranges, segments seeded and the tough spine cut off
1/2 cup dried apricots, diced
2/3 cup slivered carrots (or more, to taste)
1 15-oz can chick peas
1/4 cup golden raisins
1.5 cup low-sodium chicken broth (veggie broth would also probably be fine)
2/3 cup fresh-squeezed orange juice
1 tb honey
Toss diced meat in the spices, then brown the pieces thoroughly in a skillet with olive oil, 6 minutes or so (do in batches if the skillet isn’t large enough to have room between the pieces) transfer the lamb to a paper towel-lined plate (REALLY? and lose all that lovely lamb fat? Oh no no, I transferred directly to the crock pot with the chick peas and veggies and broth! You might need to do this with a fattier cut.) Add butter (or just use more olive oil instead, as I did) and soften the onions, adding the garlic partway through to keep it from burning, and transfer to the crock pot. Mix well, add remaining ingredients, and cook on low 5-6 hours, or on high for 3-4 hours. Serve over couscous with a spoonful of Greek yogurt and parsley (if you have them; I left off the parsley and used rice instead.)
The stew was not at all fatty, and the meat was tender and delicious. The one thing that worried me was that the stew wasn’t thickening at all a couple hours in, so I added two diced medium potatoes an hour and a half before dinner, and that did the job nicely. Also as mentioned before, I just love potatoes cooked with lamb.
A note about apricots – mostly, what you see are the little dry flavorless pale orange chips that aren’t worth eating, that generally go by the name “Mediterranean” apricots. I seriously doubt those things were ever used in actual Mediterranean cooking. Get the California apricots (preferably Blenheim, if you can) that are big, deep orange, and soft. And, after using your scant half cup in the recipe, hide the bag so you can keep the rest of them to yourself.
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Marie, Let's Eat! 