Recipe: Cherry lamb

As I munched on another hotcrossbun for breakfast, I flicked through Claudia Roden's A Book of Middle Eastern Food.  Inspired by the simplicity of the meat and fruit stew recipes, I added lamb and cherries to my grocery list and decided to do a mini "Surprise Chef" on my own tonight.

 

Come dinner, I pulled the Morello cherries out (Bulgarian or Turkish?  We went with the Turkish, but would've felt exotic either way, there's just something about cherries, isn't there), sampled a few for inspiration, and just threw things into the tagine, without consulting Roden for more guidance.  Surprise indeed!  It worked.  Beautifully!

OK I'll admit that the lamb+tagine combination is completely idiot proof, so it wasn't a huge challenge, but sometimes I get completely menu-bound, and it's nice to test my confidence of cooking...one, from other cultures and two, from the heart! 

 

I'm off to experiment with making cherry cocktails, sadly enough, without cherry brandy or the luxury of having pre-made my cherry-infused vodka...however, there's a bottle of hibiscus flower cordial tucked up the back of the pantry, waiting for such opportunity...or...rosewater and cherry something...gin?  Coconut rum?  Could ginger beer and cherries be friends?  Yesno?  I have limes...ooo...yarr...(the pirate+lime equation is ALSO idiot proof...true story...)

 

In the meantime, here's the recipe, I hope you like it :)

 

Lamb and cherry tagine

 

If you don't have a tagine, I reckon you just add 30 to 60 minutes on your cooking time, go finish another level of Zelda or something...

 

For two people:

Enough lamb for two (I cut mine from a 2 kg leg tonight), trimmed lean and diced

half an onion, thinly sliced (the other half went into a big pot with the leg bone, to make stock)

turmeric, cumin, coriander, ground or stick cinnamon

handful of Morello or sour cherries (or use dried cherries, how about soaking them in red wine or port first?)

1 green apple, thinly sliced, or use your whizbang corer-slicer gadget

I wondered about preserved lemon or fresh lemon but gave it a miss, my fruit combo had enough tang.

1 cup small grain couscous

 

Do this:

Heat your olive oil and saute the onion with turmeric.

Brown your meat, add some freshly ground cumin and coriander, and cinnamon to taste.

Approximate two fingers' depth of water to the tagine, bring to boil, cover and lower heat; simmer for 30 minutes.

Add salt, cherries and apple, top of with liquid if necessary, ensuring the meat is submersed; simmer for another 30 minutes.

Check and adjust spices to taste.

Add couscous and cover.  Cook for about 5 minutes, till the liquid is completely absorbed. 

Remove from the heat and allow couscous to swell and fluff abit more.

Toast a handful of pinenuts. 

 

In the meantime, grate half a long lebanese cucumber into a bowl of natural yoghurt, I added lots of pink salt.  The worms got the other half, no salt. 

 

Serve up with a few extra cherries on top. 

 

The fruit and spices flavor the lamb very delicately, the pinenuts are a perfect complement, and the raita gives it a velvety finish. 

 

I wonder if anyone out there has tried and blogged a duck and lychee tagine.  That'll be next week's tagine.  To be continued. 

 

And now for those cocktails...