Moroccan Lamb with Couscous, pg. 246
I begin some of the recipes in Jamie’s book with a certain amount of trepidation. I have never cooked with lamb before and there is not much of in the grocery stores of our smallish town. We have a Whole Foods in the city near us, but I do not regularly make the trek up there unless I am feeling really ambitious or have several special things I need. So I entered the local grocery store with my list, in a bit of a hurry as usually, trying to keep 4 kids happy long enough to get my list done. The tiny section of lamb had little vacuum sealed steaks and some meat already cut into chunks as the recipe calls for. So I grabbed the pre-cut package with the idea of saving the cutting time at home. This was a mistake! I had not spent the time to really read and understand how this recipe works before shopping. I grabbed stewing meat rather than the lamb leg steak that I assume would have been nice and tender. Jamie wants you to cook the lamb 2 minutes on each side. That just doesn’t do it for stewing meat.
The rest of the recipe is really nice. The sauce has a ton of flavor with the apricots and beans and pine nuts. My kids ate it up. They just ate around the tough, chewy hunks of meat that needed to have slowly stewed for 4 hours. I think it may have worked fine to make this a stew if I had figured out what I had done before 4:45. This did not turn out to be a good first experience cooking with lamb, but there are others in this cookbook so I will have another chance. I think it would have been pretty good with steak, too.
We would like to invite you to cook with us through Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. Check out the meals we have planned for the next 2 weeks and see if any appeal to you. If you cook one or more of them sometime during the 2 week period we are cooking them and then leave us a comment on the post for that recipe (before 8 pm eastern on Sunday, April 24th), you will be entered into our giveaway for a $39 year subscription to Plan to Eat.
Happy Cooking!
