Yummy lamb steak recipe: lamb, halloumi, couscous and summery salad served in warm pitta/pita envelopes
Sometimes I get sick and tired of conventional meat and two veg sit down suppers. I want something that I can pick up in one hand and eat beside the pond or balance a plate on the arm of the sofa and guzzle whilst I watch a bit of TV. I know that there’s a big move to get people to sit down at a table and eat together so I’m bucking the system a bit here. What I’m saying is that as Danny and I always sit down to eat together – sometimes it’s good to have a meal that just needs a fork simply our hands to eat. This sort of meal is a...
read moreBest shepherd’s pie recipe: leftover roast lamb
As a small child I remember watching my mum mince cold roast lamb using an old metal mincer that was screwed onto the kitchen table. It was magical to watch big pieces of lamb turning into mince. I assume that she was making shepherd’s pie back then. Danny has similar memories too, standing in his big Irish kitchen, watching the mincer in operation – the air full of the smell of freshly baked soda bread. That’s why we both thought that we had to mince our leftover roast lamb to make a shepherd’s pie. Wrong! Thank goodness I had a...
read moreRecipe for lamb shanks braised in red wine with shallots: slow cooker/crockpot
Lamb shanks are perfect for long slow cooking. The price has shot up over the years and now they are expensive to buy. Luckily Danny found some on the Tesco CFC* and I came up with this recipe. Lamb shanks actually have quite a bit of meat on them so we managed to get six good meaty portions out of the shanks. And of course bone in meat makes a much better casserole. The key ingredients were the shallots and tomato. Our one remaining onion had gone bad so I grabbed some of the shallots that we grew last summer. We had our best ever harvest...
read moreSlow cooked summery lamb shanks recipe. Simmered with apricots and tomatoes
Years ago lamb shanks were a very cheap cut of meat. Now, with the return to forgotten cuts, they have become increasingly popular and the price for a couple of shanks has become quite high. So when I found a couple of these tasty lovelies half price on the Tesco CFC I squirreled them into my basket with a trill. Lamb shanks, like oxtail, always used to flag a warming winter dish to me. Judging by the amount of shanks that appear regularly on the CFC at this time of year most people would agree. But why not try and create a summery dish? The...
read moreSuperb slow cooked lamb casserole recipe (posh lamb stew)
I used not to be much of a fan of lamb casserole or stew. I think that I made it once for Danny and didn’t like it as it tasted bland and fattylike all the lamb casseroles I’d tasted before. Back then I didn’t have a slow cooker/crock pot – which is great for enhancing the flavour of cheaper cuts of meat. This week the scales fell from my eyes when I used some lamb shoulder neck chops at the Highgate Farm Shop. Six chunky chops (900g) for just over four quid. Feeling thrifty I bought them, determined to make something...
read moreLamb ribs with a green and orange tomato piquant sauce recipe
I spotted some *CFC lamb ribs – knocked down from £3.99 to £1.42 – so snapped them up. I’d never seen lamb ribs before – the price was tempting but how on earth was I going to cook them? I floated some recipe ideas past Danny. With zero response. “I’m happy to cook them.” He offered. “Grilled ribs and chips. How about that?” “No way.” The weather has been cold and drizzly for days. On my daily blight check I spotted that quite a few tomatoes had split and the skins were peeling back. Not blighted yet but...
read moreLamb mince burger recipe with chips in our halogen oven by Danny
Lamb can be greasy but these were delicious and not at all fatty. If our friend KC is reading this, then you can skip the rest, K! She hates lamb. We did not know this when we invited K and JP for Sunday lunch of roast lamb and dauphinoise potatoes. Poor K was too polite to say anything when she arrived and heard the menu but she really cheered up when the big dish of potatoes was placed on the table. One bite later she realised that, as a special treat, the lamb was roasted on a rack directly over the potatoes so that all the juices would add...
read moreThe slow cooker chef: Low fat summery lamb shanks braised in red wine and tomatoes recipe
I tend not to buy lamb shanks as they usually look so weedy and unappetising. Last week I spotted a half price pack of two lamb shanks on the Tesco condemned food counter. These were quite chunky (just under a kilo) and the original price was pretty stout too. They had been reduced from £7.95 to £3.50. So naturally they ended up in my trolley. I decided to try just using ingredients that were knocking about in the fridge and larder and devised this dish that would easily feed eight. The combination of carrots, tomatoes and red wine worked...
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