Friday Night Mezze

My friends came over on Friday night for the usual dinner, drinks, shisha and terrible dancing. What with the weather and our dancing plans, I decided to go for a mezze affair taking inspiration from a tapas special in a really old copy of Observer Food Monthly written by Moro. A few colourful dishes that weren't too heavy eaten along with a simple salad and toasted pittas, the kind of food that can be eaten warm, lazily, over easy conversation with a glass of elderflower and fizz.
Top of the list was hummus with crispy lamb - an old favourite, this is so tasty and so easy. You can definitely get away with a decent shop bought hummus. Spread messily over a large plate, top with lamb mince fried with onions and little cinnamon, pine nuts and parsely. Then this delicious beetroot and pistachio salad - raw beetroot sliced paper thin topped with a jade green pistachio sauce flecked with parsley, mint and lemon zest. The nuts and lemon zest go perfectly with the sweet beetroot.

Finally I made chicken legs marinated in garlic, tahini and cumin, roasted until golden and crispy served with a tahini sauce.

All recipes here.
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Roasted Tomato and Spinach bulghar salad

This is one of the great salads that I'm loving at the moment. They take a bit longer than your average chop and go salad to prepare but are bursting with flavour and if you make a huge batch, you can eat it for dinner and keep leftovers in the fridge for lunch or for other meals. Simply add the protein of your choice. Try blistered slices of haloumi, fried mackerel fillets, chicken, lamb kebabs or a poached egg.

This salad was inspired by this recipe from 101cookbooks, in all honesty, I took a cursory glance at the ingredients and went by the picture more than anything, so my version is below. Bursting with colour, sweet roasted cherry tomatoes and slow cooked red onions go beautifully with the nutty bulghar wheat spiked with loads of fresh herbs, a little garlic and a handful of spinach (I have a sneaky suspicion that toasted pine nuts or almonds would be a fabulously crunchy addition). A perfect accompaniment to a mezze type affair, try a simple carrot salad, some hummus and flatbreads.

Ingredients

250g cherry tomatoes
250g bulghar
olive oil
juice 1/2 lemon
1 clove garlic
3 handfuls spinach
1 bunch mint
1 bunch parsley

Onions
3 red onions, finley sliced
2tsp brown sugar
1tbsp balsamic vinegar

• First up the tomatoes. Preheat the oven to 180C. Slice the tomatoes in half and throw onto a large baking tray. Drizzle with olive, season with crunchy flakes of sea salt, a twist of black pepper and a pinch of brown sugar. Stir well, making sure all the tomatoes are cut side up and roast for 40mins until shrivelled and golden.
• Meanwhile pour the bulghar wheat into a saucepan that has a lid with 1/2tsp of bouillon if you have it or a pinch of salt. Cover with boiling water, bring to the boil, cover and simmer until all the water is absorbed and the bulghar is tender but still with some bite. (you may need to add a little extra water or drain any excess off.
• Heat a large frying pan with 2tbsp olive oil, add the onions and cook on low until completely soft. Add the balsamic vinegar, sugar and plenty of seasoning and cook for another 5mins or so until dark, sweet and sticky.
• To assemble the salad, squeeze the lemon juice over the bulghar and add 2-3tbsp olive oil, the garlic and most of the mint and parsley. Stir well and season to taste.
  
• Fold in the spinach and tumble onto a large serving platter. Top with roasted tomatoes, onions and the rest of the herbs.
  

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Lamb Saag

So, first up apologies for the absence. I've been cooking of course and I have a whole raft of recipes ready to write about, i guess life just gets in the way sometimes...

Next up for OxNosh is a booklet of recipes for students and we spent the bank holiday weekend developing recipes. The idea is that they're easy, obviously but we've also kept the ingredient list as short as possible whilst delivering big flavours so that it's likey to turn out edible and hopefully tasty if even the most inexperienced cook tries it.

This curry was one of our triumphs, using cheaper cuts of lamb designed for long and slow cooking. Leave this to do its thing puttering away slowly on the hob so that you're left with a rich dark curry, meltingly tender. Extra brownie points for sneaking in some vegetables too, bearing our audience in mind, we also tried this with frozen spinach. I was initially unconvinced, but it worked and keeps it green colour well.

I would also make loads of this and freeze it for a treat at a later date. If you're making it for lots of people like we did, try doing a daal or vegetable curry to go alongside and make the meat go further. Eat with fluffy white rice and yoghurt.




Ingredients

Serves 4
2tbsp sunflower oil
750g lamb shoulder or neck fillet cut into cubes
1tbsp flour
2 medium onions, finely chopped
3 garlic gloves, finely chopped
2tsp ground coriander
2tsp ground cumin
2tbsp tomato puree
1 tin chopped tomatoes
200g frozen spinach

• Put the lamb into a bowl, sprinkle over the flour and season well.Heat a large casserole with the sunflower oil, add the lamb to the pan in small batches, allowing it brown it on all sides before removing it.
• Once the lamb is cooked, add the onions and garlic to the pan and cook on a low heat until browned.
• Add the spices and lamb to the pan and cook for a few mins, stirring all the time.Add the tomato puree and chopped tomatoes, bring to the boil and simmer for 45mins until the lamb is tender.
• Before you want to serve the curry, stir in the frozen spinach and cook for another 5minutes.

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Hummus with crispy lamb and pine nuts

This recipe from The Moro Cookbook jumped out at me straight away, hummus with crispy lamb and pine nuts. Its simple enough, make some hummus and spread onto a plate. Then fry some lamb mince with a touch of cinnamon until golden and crispy, throw in some pine nuts and tumble it onto the hummus.

Delicious. This was gobbled up in record time.

Ingredients

Serves 4 as a starter with plenty of bread for dipping

1 portion of hummus
1 onion, finely chopped
2tbsp olive oil
½tsp cinnamon
150g lamb mince
To serve:
Paprika
1 small handful parsley, chopped

• Spread the hummus onto a large plate.
• Meanwhile cook the onion in the olive oil over a low heat for 10mins until golden and crispy, add the cinnamon and transfer to a bowl.
• Turn the heat up high and add the lamb, break the mince up into small pieces as you go and fry until golden and crispy, add the onions, pine nuts and fry for a few mintues more until the pine nuts begin to toast.
• Tumble onto your plate and sprinkle with the parsley and a little paprika.

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Slow Cooked Lamb, Sweet Potato and Lentil Curry

The picture doesn't really do this justice, it was the inaugural outing of our slow cooker and it did us proud! Amazing tender lamb in a rich sauce of lentils and sweet potato served alongside rice and peas.

I just browned the meat and chucked it into the slow cooker with the rest of the ingredients and left it to do its magic overnight, how easy is that? Now I'm planning all manner of slow cooked warming winter treats. Being a bit of a cheapskate and also trying to eat a bit more healthily, I bulked the meat out a lot with sweet potato and lentils. I definitely think adding as much veg as possible and maybe some beans or lentils is the way forward.

What follows is a recipe for cooking it on the hob. As with all curries this improves with age, be very caeful with the ctoch bonnet as it is violently hot. The idea of adding it to the dish whole is to get all the flavour with only a little heat. Be careful though, once the pepper 'bust', the curry will get VERY hot!

Ingredients

Serves 4

600g trimmed shoulder of lamb, cut into chunks
sunflower oil
1 chilli, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, sliced
3 bay leaves
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp ground allspice
½ tsp ground nutmeg
3tbsp malt vinegar
2 sweet potatoes, pelled and cut into chunks
100g red lentils
1 scotch bonnet chilli
1 can chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp dark brown sugar

• Heat a large casserole and add 2tbsp oil, fry the lamb in batches until browned on all sides and remove.
• Add a little more oil to the pan and cook the onions until brown and caramelised, add the garlic, chilli, bay leaves, cinnamon and spices and stir well. Splash in the vinegar and scrape the bottom to lift off the sediment.
• Return the lamb to the pot with the sweet potato and lentils and stir to coat in the spicy sauce.
• Add the chopped tomatoes, fill the empty can with water and add that too along with the scotch bonnet.
• Cover the casserole with a lid and cook in the oven at 170C until meltingly tender.

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Lamb meatballs and couscous

Nigella comes up trumps again, although I have to say this is from her book rather than the TV show. It seems everyone is quick to criticise anything she does on TV, and while she does verge on the ridiculous much of the time, I think her genuine greed and love of food is really very endearing.

You also cannot escape the fact that she cooks delicious food, every single recipe book is crammed with recipes, all delicous and generally all guaranteed to work. So this is a recipe from Feast (possibly one of my favourites in terms of abundance of recipes, beautiful pictures and a good range of food).

The dinky lamb meatballs are served with the root vegetable stew that I've made many times before and eat happily with some couscous alone. We decided to go the whole hog this time and make the meatballs complete with all of Nigella's suggested adornings, namely pomegranate seeds and coriander.


I piled the couscous and stew high on a plate, with meatballs atop and the pomegranate seeds and coriander sprinkled over. Definitely a dish for bringing forth whilst entertaining. I know some people are not convinced by pomegranate, my dining partner included, but I think they work perfectly as not only a beautiful jewel pink topping that goes particularly well with the vibrantly green coriander, but also as a sweetly sharp contrast in many savoury dishes like this one and this one.

The lamb meatballs were of course delicious, I'm a big fan of using meat like this, i.e. making them into little meatballs and serving with a hearty vegetable stew so that it's healthier but also goes farther. They are also perfect stuffed into a pitta with hummus and salad

Ingredients (adapted from Feast)

500g minced lamb
½ onion, pureed or chopped very finely
½tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp salt
3tbsp breadcrumbs
1 egg, beaten

Mix the onions into the lamb.
Sprinkle over the spices and breadcrumbs and mix well.
Stir in the beaten egg, cover and leave for 30mins to allow the flavours to meld.
Using about ½tsp mince, roll into small balls and drop into a hot pan.
Continue rolling, dropping and cooking, shaking the pan every so often, you want to cook the meatballs for about 5mins until golden on all sides and cooked through (this will depend on how big your balls are).

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Spicy Marinaded lamb

Ok, so I don't eat meat, but in a quest to write more recipes for the soon to be launched OxNosh, I decided to test this one and feed it to meat eating friends, who loved it. Marinading the lamb leaves you with tender and tasty lamb, full of flavour. We actually had it with the chickpea burgers below.

As with any marinade, the longer you leave it, the better. So ideally, you want to leave this in the fridge overnight. We left it for only a hour though and it was perfectly delicious. This recipe is made for the barbecue, you really want to sear the meat on the outside and leave it pink in the middle, failing that a smoking hot pan will do the job.

Ingredients
4 lamb rump steaks
1 lemon, juiced
1tsp salt
2 sprigs thyme (or 1tsp dried thyme)
2 red chillis
2 cloves garlic
1tsp ground coriander
½tsp cinnamon
½tsp turmeric
1tbsp olive oil
200g yoghurt

Add the lemon juice, salt and thyme to lamb, rub it into the flesh and set aside. Meanwhile whizz the rest of the marinade ingredients (except the yoghurt) until smooth and season, or just chop everything finely and mix. Add this paste to the yoghurt, mix and pour over the lamb, make sure you coat the lamb and rub in the marinade well. Leave for at least 1 hour, ideally overnight. Cook the lamb on each side for 6-8 minutes. Allow to rest for a few minutes and slice thinly.

Serve with hummus, tzatziki, toasted pitta and salad. Read more...