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A delicious lamb stew with aromatic middle eastern spices. This one is served with spiced roasted vegetables, but couscous is equally as nice as well. This is a super dish to make in large quantities for family gatherings and takes little effort to produce a very tasty and impressive meal. The meat quantity may seem large, but lamb does tend to ‘shrink’ quite a bit.

Serves: 4
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Cooking Time: 1hr 30 mins (lamb), 1 hour (vegetables)

Ingredients

2 lbs of lean diced leg of lamb, or neck of lamb
1 large onion or 2 medium sized sliced, not diced
1 tbs of dried nutmeg, or grated nutmeg
1 tbs of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of turmeric
1 pint of lamb stock or beef stock
1 can of chickpeas, rinsed
1 tbs of tomato puree
Salt and pepper to taste
6 dried apricots, sliced
2 large potatoes
1 medium sized yellow squash
2 red onions, peeled and cut into quarters
2 medium sized courgettes, cut into approx 1 inch slices, diagonally
A few glugs of olive oil for the vegetables
1 tbs of cumin seeds
1 tbs of dried coriander
Handful of fresh coriander and fresh mint to garnish

Directions

Toss the cubed meat in the dried spices – turmeric, cinnamon and nutmeg and add a little olive oil. Mix with your hands to coat the meat. In a large saucepan or casserole dish, dry fry the meat, mixing all the time to stop sticking. Add the sliced onion, and continue to stir so that the onion is also coated with the spices. Pour in the stock to cover the meat and onions and bring to the boil. Turn down to simmer immediately and place the pan lid on. If the meat is not covered with the liquid, add a little water (a couple more inches) and a stock cube. You can put the dried apricots in at this stage as well as they need to be rehydrated.

Whilst the lamb is cooking, prepare your vegetables if you haven’t already done so. The vegetables should be fairly chunky. Toss all the vegetables together in the olive oil and the dried cumin seeds and coriander, making sure you mix well. Place in a roasting tray.

After about thirty minutes of the lamb cooking time, heat your oven to 320 degrees F/160 Celsius. Place the vegetable tray into the oven and leave to cook, stirring the vegetables about every l5 minutes to avoid drying and burning. If the vegetables start to burn too much, cover with aluminium foil.

After approximately 1hr and 20 minutes of simmering, test a small piece of the lamb, it should be reasonably soft. If not, turn the heat up slightly and leave for another l0-15 minutes, testing after this time. By now, your vegetables should be ready, and you can serve your dish.

Serve the meat and vegetables on to your platter, and sprinkle over some fresh shredded mint and coriander.