So flavorful with lamb chunks, onions and tomato in a coconut milk based “gravy” or sauce or “curry.” 

Scrolling through my to-try soup recipes I was bored with chicken, chicken, and more chicken. I just made a fish soup a week or two ago. I’d made a ground beef soup as well. And more than one chicken rendition of some kind of soup. I’d defrosted half a dozen different ziploc bags of various soups with vegetables. The soups were good, but I wanted something different. Then I saw this recipe with lamb. I don’t cook lamb very often. When my DH (dear husband) was alive, he grilled a leg of lamb every so often; occasionally I’ll fix those tiny little lamb chops for myself. I decided to give this one a go.

The recipe came from James Peterson, from his cookbook called Splendid Soups. I think I’d borrowed the book from the library some years ago. There’s no turmeric in this soup – so really, it’s not a curry flavored soup at all. There are a myriad of spices, however, many of which go into a curry powder mix. In India, a curry just means meat (or even a vegetable) fixed in a sauce. Curry = Sauce. So this recipe is a lovely, flavorful lamb with a ton of onions and some canned tomatoes, pulled together in a gravy type soup. I made it slightly differently than James Peterson did, with only one significant change – I used coconut milk instead of heavy cream at the end. I also used less cayenne as I guessed it would be too hot, even for me with double the amount you’ll see listed below.

When I made it, I used a 2 1/4-lb leg of lamb, so I approximately doubled the recipe. It took about 1-1/4 hours for the lamb to get tender. Just remember, if you use lamb shoulder, it’ll take longer to get it to a tender state. After I’ve had 3-4 servings of this soup, I will likely freeze the rest for another day.

What’s GOOD: lovely, flavorful soup, good lamb-y notes, kind of a thickened gravy because of all the onions in it. Filling, delicious. Loved the spice flavorings in it.

What’s NOT: there is a bit of chopping here, and cutting up the lamb, made a bunch of dirty dishes, but that’s part of the deal if you want to make a soup with lots of flavor.

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This was Easter dinner – lovely, tasty leg of lamb with Vivian Howard’s Herbdacious spread, on the lamb and on the side.

It’s been some months ago that I wrote up a post about a meatloaf using Vivian Howard’s little back-pocket wonder, and also all about the mixture itself: Herbdacious. If you skipped by it then, you might want to reconsider. All of mine was gone (the 2 cups I made a few months ago), so made a new batch. It comes together easily – mostly it’s herbs with some EVOO. It keeps in the frig for several months. Down below I’ve given you a revised recipe of it, making just ONE cup, not two. Personally, I’d make two cups, but if you’re not sure about it, use this smaller version.

Meanwhile, I had purchased a tiny boneless leg of lamb (at Trader Joe’s). I think it weighed about 1 3/4 pounds, maybe less. My friend Linda joined me at the desert for the weekend and we cooked quite a bit. We made a salmon dish one night, shrimp dish another and then this lamb. You do need to know – providing you’ve already made the Herbdacious – this recipe is cinchy easy. Just mix up the yogurt-based marinade, slather it on the meat, let it rest in the frig overnight and roast for a little over an hour. Linda and I are both watching carbs, so we had a little bit of a roasted sweet potato, and some fresh asparagus along with it.

The leftovers: I sliced it thinly and made half sandwiches with it on some lovely soft bread. I used a bit of the Herbdacious on the bread, along with mayo, and on another I added some of the Tomato Jam I have from the batch I made a couple of months ago. That was just wonderful on the sandwich, along with some lettuce and sliced tomato.

There on the right is a recent picture of me. That was taken a few weeks ago at the Annenberg Estate in the desert.

What’s GOOD: Oh goodness, this lamb was delicious. Just wonderful. I’d definitely make this again on whatever size leg of lamb I had. I don’t think it would be good to barbecue this – don’t know what the yogurt/herbdacious would do – i.e., not sure how the barbecue smoke part would taste absorbed into that herbdacious topping. But roasted in the oven, it was divine. And the sandwiches from the leftovers were something to write home about.

What’s NOT: only that you have to start this the day before. And you must have some of the Herbdacious mixture to make it.

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Herbdacious one cup: printer-friendly PDF and MasterCook file (click link to open recipe)

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Ever get a craving for something? A lamb shank called my name.

A post from Carolyn. Rarely do I eat lamb. I love it, but whenever I look at the nutrition and see how much fat there is in lamb, usually I reconsider. This time I gave in to my craving and bought a nice honkin’ lamb shank. Looking through my recipes to try, I found this one. Originally, this came from Food & Wine, awhile back, when they provided an online listing of the 40 best recipes of all time. Certainly I pay attention when a magazine makes that kind of statement. By the way, have you noticed that Bon Appetit  and Epicurious are now going to charge for access to their recipe files? Makes me so very frustrated. When I find a recipe published by them (that I don’t have from a recent issue of one of Epicurious’s magazines), I go online to do a search, and usually I’ll find the recipe somewhere else, somebody else has made it, or at least published it. And there’s no charge. I’m not going to pay for access to those. I already subscribe online (paid subscription) to Cook’s Illustrated (the group that also includes America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Country), Milk Street, and the New York Times. I’ve decided that’s enough.

Back to this recipe. From the get-go, I’ll just say – – I don’t know about the ranking of one of the 40 best recipes of all time. I mean . . . these were really good, but not sure they qualify with those kind of bragging rights. Just sayin’ . . . . .but would I make them again? I might. Mostly because it was really easy. Read on . . .

So here’s what’s involved. A whole lot of garlic. With the exception of that infamous recipe of chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, this may be the most amount of garlic I’ve ever used in a single recipe. I only made one lamb shank, but the recipe for four shanks calls for 36 cloves of garlic – some peeled, some left whole in the skin. Lamb can surely handle a heavy hand of garlic and I loved the flavor in this. Anyway,  you brown the lamb shank(s) on numerous sides, then add seasonings and part of the garlic, and it goes into a 300°F oven for 2 hours, turning the shank(s) every 20 minutes. Once out of the oven you remove the shank(s) and begin cooking the peppers and onions. Onions weren’t in the original recipe, but I do like the combo of peppers and onions – and I had a big red onion that needed to be used up. I did end up adding a bit of water to the peppers so they wouldn’t burn, and once the veggies were done you make a tiny amount of a pan sauce. I added a bit of water to that as well. And you’re done. There’s bay leaf and thyme in this dish also.  If I were making this for guests, I’d add a bed of buttery mashed potatoes or creamy polenta and nestle the shank onto/beside it. Make a salad, and that’s dinner.

The Food & Wine recipe called for fresh thyme (I used dried) and fresh bay leaves. Not very many people have a bay laurel tree in their yard. I sure don’t. So I used dried. And then I added the onions, more broth and a tiny bit of dried thyme in the sauce.

What’s GOOD: the succulent lamb, first and foremost. Loved the flavor of the garlic with peppers and onions. Next time I’d double the amount of peppers and onion (I’ve made a note of that in the recipe). The veggies were a wonderful foil to the richness of the lamb. Worth making, and don’t skimp on the garlic. Each lamb shank (for me, anyway) made two servings.  Would make a nice company dinner, but at the price of lamb shanks (each shank was about $15) it would make a very pricey meal. The recipe is really very easy to do – seasoning, browning, 2 hours of roasting, chopping of the peppers and onion and little bit of cooking after that. Very simple. Can be made the day ahead, the recipe said.

What’s NOT: only that it takes a few hours to make (minimum 2 1/2 hours).

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A tasty way to use up that summer zucchini!

A post from Karen.  Among the things I loved about this creation is it is one of the few ways I can get my son to eat zucchini.  He not only ate it…he went back for seconds!  And that was my motivation for coming up with this.  My fruit truck guy, Roberto, visits every Thursday morning in our neighborhood with his picks of the freshest and most tasty produce.  On this day he had gorgeous-looking zucchini.  I couldn’t resist, even though I knew it would be tough going to convince my son to enjoy it with us.  So I started thinking about what I could pair with the veggie to make it more palatable to him.  Sausage was a good starting point.  I looked online for existing recipes for zucchini casseroles, but on this particular day, nothing looked like something that would tempt my son.  So, it was time to get creative.

I’m all for making your own sauce, but if you need to save time, we really liked the Vero Gusto Calabrian Marinara.

In addition to the sausage, I had some stale ciabatta bread that I didn’t want going to waste.  I also had cottage cheese and started thinking about layering ingredients like lasagna.  So that was the impetus for cutting the zucchini lengthwise instead of in rounds.  Among the recipes I had read on casseroles, more than one mentioned taking the time after slicing to salt the zucchini to draw out the extra moisture so you would avoid an overly mushy casserole.  sounded sensible to me, so I incorporated that step.

I hadn’t made a lot of casseroles using bread cubes but knew I wanted to make sure they absorbed enough flavors and moisture, so I decided I would try folding them in with the cheese, egg, and cream mixture.  This ended up working really well.  I have made this recipe more than once experimenting with different types of bread.  We have decided the ciabatta has both a nice chew texture and savory flavor profile that we prefer.  The Savory Spice “Limnos Lamb Rub” was a wonderful blend of herbs to add to both the white sauce and for topping off the casserole.  If you need to select a different rub or make your own, this particular rub is a blend of coarse sea salt, garlic, lemon peel, onion, black pepper, fennel, rosemary, Mediterranean thyme, sage, basil, parsley, Greek oregano, spearmint, marjoram.  As for the different sausage choices, we enjoyed both the Hot Italian Sausage and the Lamb Merguez, so I’m content to let my mood or freezer dictate which one I use.  Speaking of the freezer, I have tested freezing the leftovers into individual portions and it worked really well!

What’s Good:  My son will willingly eat this dish.  Paired well with a lite salad for a complete meal.  It’s a great way to use up some bread that is past its prime.

What’s Not:  Only that I have to be organized enough to make sure I have the ingredients on hand.

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Cross the pond to Morocco. Delicious dinner dish. There are a bunch of tiny lamb meatballs simmering in a rich tomato stew. Then the succulent steamed eggs on top.

Certainly I’m mixing cuisines here. I’ve just begun following a blog called MarocMama. Amanda (an American, I believe) resides in Morocco, and lives in a typical communal family household with her Moroccan husband, their children and his extended family. She writes about travel and food, and her cross-cultural lifestyle. When I saw this recipe, my mind went immediately to shakshuka. Amanda called this a kefta (for the little lamb meatballs). But with the eggs on top, well, it was nothing short of shakshuka for me.

[Shakshuka] was brought to Israel by Tunisian Jews as part of the mass Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim lands, where it has become a characteristic feature of the local cuisine. Shakshouka is typical of North African and Arab cuisine and is traditionally served in a cast iron pan or, in Morocco, a tajine. It is a Maghrebi dish of eggs poached in a sauce of tomatoes, olive oil, peppers, onion and garlic, and commonly spiced with cumin, paprika, cayenne pepper, and nutmeg. Egg shakshouka evolved from an Ottoman meat stew, also called shakshouka, into a vegetarian egg-based dish. Maghrebi Jews brought it to Israel, where it has become a characteristic feature of Israeli cuisine.. . from Wikipedia

And shakshuka is not usually a meat dish, either, so as I said up top, I’m mixing cuisines and cultural lines. Please no hate-mail! I’d purchased some ground lamb recently and knew I wanted to try this dish. I don’t own a tajine, but I knew that a wide skillet (iron one, even, although I used a nonstick high sided pan to make this) would work. I followed Amanda’s recipe mostly, but did make a few changes. Do use a pan that has a lid.

Recently I read on Food52 about a new-ish method of treating ground meat (that actually came from Cook’s Illustrated) with the addition of baking soda and water. Why? So glad you asked . . . sprinkling a mixture on ground meat helps the meat retain moisture, so it only gives off fat. And oh, does it ever work!

Typically, this dish served in Morocco would have a pile of some kind of soft or crusty bread on the side (chunks of a French baguette, or something similar to naan) so you could scoop up a meatball with the sauce, and drag it through a bit of the oozing egg. However, if that last part’s not your thing, you can cook the eggs until they’re hard and not drag the egg into it unless you wanted it.  You could even leave out the eggs – – but then it wouldn’t be shakshuka anymore, just so you know . . . but then, this recipe never started out to be shakshuka. I just renamed it. It began as kefta.

So first off, I mixed up the lamb meatball ingredients, then I poured in a stirred-up concoction of 1/2 tsp baking soda and 1 T water. Then I squished the meatball mixture well, so the baking soda would be distributed. Then it needs to sit for 15 minutes, to soak in, to do it’s thing . . . which is to draw in the water in the meat.

You don’t brown the meat in this recipe. The little meatballs are dropped into the tomato-y sauce you make. While the meat is sitting for the 15-minute soak in baking soda/water, I started the sauce. First it was onion, then garlic, in some EVOO. Turmeric is added, some half-sharp paprika (or use regular paprika and a generous pinch of cayenne), salt, cumin. After the onions had softened a lot, I added in a large can of good San Marzano tomatoes. Next time I make this I won’t add all the juice from the can, as it made a bit too much “soup.” Amanda uses large fresh tomatoes, but I didn’t have any fresh tomatoes at all, so canned would have to do. They happened to be the whole type, so I needed to squish them in my hand to break the tomatoes up into edible chunks. Do simmer that mixture for awhile so the lovely cumin and turmeric spices can mingle with the tomatoes.

That mixture simmered while I made the meatballs. The recipe indicated forming them into tiny grape-sized meatballs. Wow, is that hard! I made about 38 meatballs (pictured) from the one pound of ground lamb.

Amanda mentioned in the recipe that if you crowd the meatballs, they won’t absorb as much flavor from the lovely tomato stew, so to use the extra for another dish. As it turned out, I did have a small bunch of meatballs left over, so am going to make a soup with them in the next few days. I cooked those meatballs in a small frying pan, and there was not one speck of water-type moisture in the pan – only the fat. So easy to do.

Above you can see the full pan. I’m hoping you can see the meatballs a little better. I simmered the tomato mixture uncovered for awhile to try to reduce the amount of soupy liquid. And I only used two eggs, because I’m just a family of one. I’ll be having leftovers one of these evenings.

What’s GOOD: everything about this was delicious. Wonderful. So full of flavor – from the lamb, the turmeric, the cumin, and the good San Marzano tomatoes. Loved it. Even the soft, runny eggs. Such a break from tradition to have eggs in a lamb and tomato stew.

What’s NOT: nothing really. Took a bit of time to make the meatballs, but otherwise it was easy enough. You could probably do this in a little over 45 minutes if you start the tomato stew first.

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Long ago, when I was a teenager, my best friend lived a few doors from me. Linda and I were fast friends for all these years. Sadly, Linda passed away of pneumonia about 2 years ago. She was severely handicapped and lived most of her young life at home, being home schooled. She eventually broadened her world, learned to drive a specially outfitted van with hand controls and a lift/gate, attended her last year of high school at the one I attended too, then she attended college, had several jobs too. Her dad was a Navy dentist; Van was a stay-at-home mom to Linda and her sister Joan. Once in awhile Linda’s mother Van and her dad would entertain a big group of friends, and one of her favorite things to prepare was lamb curry. This lamb curry. (It was my first introduction to lamb, as my dad wouldn’t eat lamb. He wouldn’t eat chicken, either. So my mom was kind of stuck with pork, beef and only very occasionally some fish.) Anyway, as we got old enough to handle knives, Linda’s mom would recruit us to help prepare the condiments. And they are legion. Van usually served about 25-30 condiments. So our job was to clean, dry, mince, chop and put things in tiny bowls, covered with waxed paper (I don’t think we had plastic wrap back then) and carefully refrigerated or stacked on a large tray, ready to serve. Van always made the curry the day before – the flavors are so much better with an overnight chill.

Over the years I’ve made this dish a multitude of times, always for guests because it makes a lot, and usually I’d serve about 10 condiments. Lamb lends itself well to a curry style sauce. And it’s not difficult to make. I’ve just not made it since I’ve been writing my blog. No real reason. Hence I don’t have a photo of it and needed to use someone else’s (at top).

To cut to present day. A couple of months ago I was asked if I’d be willing to do a food oriented speech/talk and/or food demo on zoom, for my branch of AAUW (American Association of University Women), an organization I’ve been in since my 20s. First, it was discussed about Christmas cookies. Ho hum. And I’m trying not to bake them since I’m a family of one. My friend Ann, who was talking to me about this, asked if I’d cooked anything unusual recently. Oh, yes I had. That was the Food Cart Curried Chicken. And the Curried Shepherd’s Pie (click links in next paragraph). So I suggested I do a talk about curry. Ann thought that was a good idea.

I did some online research and wrote up my speech. Ann had hoped I could do a food demo on zoom, but with only 25-30 minutes to talk, I thought that was not feasible. Plus, lighting would be a problem (this was a nighttime zoom session). I ended up propping up my iPad a few feet away on the island, turned on the lights over my head, set up all of my props (various curry powders, and individual ingredients that go into them). And at the end, in talking about the two dishes I had made, the Food Cart Curried Chicken plus my recent Curried Shepherd’s Pie, I pulled them out of the oven and moved them closer to the iPad, steaming hot and tried to scoop up a big spoonful, so the guests could see how delicious they looked.

I talked about the history of curry – starting in India – then incorporating some of the surrounding countries, then into Japan (the Japanese fell head over heels in love with curry when it was introduced to their culture a long time ago). I talked about the Colonial Period in India, when British officers were running the country. About how they hired local cooks (usually men), and when they were transferred to a new station, sometimes their cooks with them, as well as the spice combination that cook used. At the new post, new British military families would be introduced to the curry of the last place, etc. Eventually curry made its way to the United States, probably to Savannah, or Charleston, and in the early decades of the last century, the south was introduced to a pivotal dish called Country Captain. I also mentioned my friendship with Kunda, my microbiologist friend, who taught me how to make Shrimp Khichdi, a favorite in her family. And about the gift Kunda made to me, a bag of her mother’s garam masala (also a combination of specific herbs and spices). Kunda’s family in India makes it once a year, it’s an all-day family work-party gathering, and one of her family usually flies to California to visit Kunda and that person is the courier of Mom’s garam masala.

You know, of course, that “curry powder” isn’t a powder made from a curry tree. Right? Curry powder is a combination of spices (also can be called a masala), and probably every curry cook has his/her own special mixture. I talked about the heat in curry (which can be mild to hot, to very hot). I’m certainly no expert on curry – I’m a white Anglo-Saxon female with Scottish, Irish, English and Welsh roots, but gosh, do I ever love curry. My speech went well, so many people told me. I went long – nearly an hour. There were numerous questions at the end, and then I got to eat my curry. Yum.

So here’s the recipe below.

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Lovely little lamb chops with an easy pan sauce.

Pulling out of the freezer a small vacuum-sealed package, I thought I was defrosting a little ribeye steak. But when it was fully defrosted . . . no, it was little baby lamb chops. The sealed pouch edge had kind of curled up and I never saw the L-A-M-B I’d written on the label. I had a day to think about what I’d make with them, and recalled an old recipe I used to make often. I thought I’d posted it here – lucky for you, I had not. You need this recipe – especially if you like lamb.

Back in the early days of my first marriage, we shopped at the military commissary, and lamb shoulder chops were very inexpensive. Growing up, my dad wouldn’t eat lamb – no way, no how – so I’d not had lamb but a couple of times in my life up to that point. Once in a great while, if my dad was on a business trip, my mom and I would have lamb. She missed it too! You can make this recipe with either shoulder chops (cook them longer) or the super-tender loin lamb chops.

But, then move forward to the 60s, as a newlywed, I didn’t have very many cookbooks – only a couple were given to me upon my marriage, but I’d acquired a military wives’ cookbook. Over the years I bought several of them, and I still refer to them now and then. They’re pretty tattered and spotted, the pages having gradually turned a bit on the yellow side. This recipe came from one of those cookbooks.

In this instance I had beautiful little lamb chops – they may not look small in the photo, but they were. Maybe only 4 small bites per chop. The recipe indicates one chop per person, but that kind of depends on how big the chops are. You’ll need to use your own judgment as to whether your guests would eat one or two of them.

The chops are seasoned with salt and pepper and briefly sautéed in a frying pan in EVOO. I took them out of the pan when they’d reached about 110°F. They cook some more later on, so I knew I was safe removing them at that temp. Then you cook the pan sauce – green onions, celery, broth, thyme, and lastly some mushrooms, minced up finely. Then the chops are added back into the pan and cooked until they’re almost done (about 125°F or more), then you add a dollop of sour cream to the top of each chop. Cover it and let it simmer slowly for about one minute just to take the chill off that sour cream. Onto plates they go, with some of that pan sauce spooned in and over them. Garnish the sour cream with more green onions and some chopped parsley.

What’s GOOD: lovely flavor – oh, I do love lamb chops. I should have them more often. I think these came from Costco and I froze them in little 2-chop vacuum seal packages. So that means I probably have a couple more of them in the freezer. The pan sauce is just perfect with the chops, and the little dollop of sour cream adds a nice richness and color to it all. It’s a keeper of a recipe, and easy to make too.

What’s NOT: only if you don’t have all the ingredients to do the sauce – like the mushrooms, for instance. They add a lovely richness to the sauce profile. Not a thing to complain about this recipe.

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Uhmmm, mouth watering going on here as I look at this photo. This would make a great Easter dinner entrée if you are inclined to have lamb.

A few weeks ago I was at a cooking class with Tarla Fallgatter. I’ll be posting most, if not all, of her recipes from the class. Can’t wait to make some of the dishes myself. Including this one. I love lamb. I just don’t love the calorie count when I do have it. Obviously the wool-covered critters store up lots of fat amidst their meat, hence lamb, although it doesn’t look like it’s full of fat, it is! Darn.

Anyway, this recipe uses a boneless leg of lamb, butterflied. That means rolling it out and cutting butterfly slices all over the meat to make it a bit more flat. There’s a big hunk of the lamb leg that always sticks up high – – it needs to be butterflied and pounded some. If you’ve never done this before, you’ll see what I mean when you unroll that nice big boneless leg (Costco’s are a great price). Make some butterfly slices, then pound it some.

You make a lovely, big batch of herbs (Italian parsley, fresh mint leaves and fresh cilantro) and mix it with garlic, smoked paprika, salt and cayenne. Some oil is added to this mixture, then you pour off 1/4 cup of it to which you add sherry vinegar and more olive oil. That part is slathered all over the outside of the rolled and tied roast – but later. Meanwhile, you use the bulk of the herb stuff to rub all over the interior part of the roast, the part that will get rolled inwards. The roast is tied well with kitchen twine, then you slather on that saved bit of herb stuff.

THEN, you put it in a plastic bag and chill it for at least 8 hours, or preferably 24 hours, so those herbs just permeate everywhere. Let it sit out for an hour before roasting, though. Into a 375°F oven it goes (in a roasting pan) and bake/roast for about 1 to 1 1/4 hours, or until the interior temp reaches 125°F (rare to med-rare) or up to 135°F for medium to med-well. Personally I want it pink in the middle everywhere, so I’d be removing it at 125°F. So do start checking the temp after an hour to make sure you don’t cook it beyond your desired point. Remove from the oven and it gets tented for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, you put the roasting pan (roast has gone onto a cutting board and tented) and add wine and chicken broth to boil down a little bit. That little bit of stuff, with the pan juices gets added to the sauce that’s been kept aside. The lamb is carved into 1/2” thick slices (and then you’ll see all those beautiful swirly herbs rolled up inside). See photo. And then serve some of the herb sauce on the side, or spoon it right on top of the slice.

What’s GOOD: everything about this is good. Delicious. Fantastic in my view, but then I love lamb. I love cilantro and mint too. An altogether beautiful dish, excellent for a lovely spring dinner for guests (Easter). I’d serve it with some spring vegetables (asparagus?) and a casserole full of mashed potatoes, or au gratin potatoes, or sweet potatoes. But I prefer white potatoes with this.

What’s NOT: only that you need to plan ahead with this one – the roast needs to marinate for about 24 hours.

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Do you happen to have a package of ground lamb in the freezer? Here’s a quick and easy dinner if you’ve also got some zucchini and cottage cheese. Oh, did I lose you there at cottage cheese? You’ll never know, hardly, that there’s cottage cheese in the topping. I promise.

If you’ve ever had moussaka, made the long, laborious way (making a sauce and with a lamb stew kind of thing, plus eggplant), then you know the deliciousness of it (and it’s a lot of work). It’s kind of like Moussaka is to Greece as lasagna is to Italy. They’re similar, although lasagna has pasta in it. This dish has almost no carbs, just meat, vegetables and cheese and dairy.  The limited carbs come from the cottage cheese (some), the yogurt or sour cream (some) and the tomato sauce (which is pure carbs because tomatoes are a fruit), though there’s only an 8-ounce can of the sauce in the whole casserole.

The other day I was looking up a recipe I did for my blog when it was brand-spanking new in 2007. And I started off the first paragraph talking about the dish being a casserole. And then (9 years ago) I swear the word casserole, in food circles, was an anathema. As if it was something bad that only your ancient great grandmother would make. I’m glad to see that casseroles are making a comeback – in fact I bought a cookbook a few years ago all about new-fangled casseroles.

This casserole is a revision of a recipe I posted here, years ago also – Easy Ground Beef Moussaka. It’s a winner of a quick recipe, and one that I’ve made dozens of times over the years. You briefly cook the zucchini and put it in the bottom of a 9×9 baking dish, then you cook meat with onion, garlic and spices, then add in some canned tomato sauce. That goes on top of the zucchini. Then you make the super-easy topping (cottage cheese, yogurt or sour cream, egg, Feta, and Parmesan) and it’s spread on top with another sprinkling of Parm on the very top.

So THIS RECIPE, I just revised it a bit by using ground LAMB. The zucchini is the same (see picture above), the filling is the same (although I added in some different herbs and spices – I added some dried mint to the meat mixture which is different) and the topping is identical (see the uncooked dish at right). I should have invited somebody to come for dinner, because it made plenty for about 5 people, I think. A salad on the side and maybe some bread is all you’d need for a complete meal. I didn’t make a salad or have bread – the serving of this dish was ample for my dinner.

There at left is the dish just out of the oven. I actually turned on the broiler element for about 3 minutes to get those nice crusty bits on top. But the topping is all composed of dairy and a little bit of cheese, so you don’t want to overdo the broiling.

The dish comes together in about 30 minutes, I guess, maybe a little bit more, and it bakes for 30 minutes, so you could have it on the table in about an hour.

The lamb I had was not very lamb-y tasting. Why is that? I think it was Colorado lamb, not New Zealand. I don’t know if there is a difference. But the casserole was just wonderful anyway. Maybe it’s because I grew up on casseroles. My mother used to make them frequently. The original recipe for this came from one of my mother and dad’s friends, so it’s a old-old recipe.

What’s GOOD: well, I like casseroles to begin with. This is an easy one-baking-pan dish, though you will dirty up a couple of pans doing the prep for this. I love the combo of the ground meat layer, the zucchini and then the Feta-salty-creamy topping with the melted Parmesan on top. It’s comfort food, I’m sure. And I liked this one made with lamb rather than ground beef.

What’s NOT: if you don’t like lamb, well, you won’t like this. Most people like Feta. And I promise, even if you’re a cottage cheese hater, I doubt  you’d notice. You can barely see the curds of cottage cheese in the topping, but it’s blended in with crumbles of Feta and you could easily think that’s what you were eating.

printer-friendly PDF and MasterCook 15/16 file (click link to open recipe)

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My daughter in law, Karen, is a wonderful cook. More than once my DH and I have been at their home and she served these delicious lamb shanks. Last time she made it was a few weeks ago and I just couldn’t eat it because of my food poisoning (sorry to keep bringing that up, but it really did disrupt my eating style, big time, though I’m fully recovered now), but I did eat some of the gravy and rice she’d served alongside. It tasted wonderful, and she mentioned where the recipe had come from, so I made this myself.

Whenever I go researching for a recipe, I rarely, if ever go to the Joy of Cooking. In years past, I used to, because that was kind of the cookbook bible I had in my younger years, when I owned 10 cookbooks total. But now, I’ve got umpteen hundred cookbooks and I either search online, or I go to my recipe program and look at what recipes I’ve stored in my to-try file (it’s called Internet Recipes there). So, for whatever reason, as I was beginning to eat regular food again, this lamb recipe kept coming up in my head. I figured that it meant I really should make it (the dr. said don’t eat something unless you actually crave it). And I know that a lamb and rice diet is something lots of veterinarians say is easily digestible. So, I bought the ingredients and I made it.

Karen calls this Moroccan Lamb Shanks, but that’s not what the recipe is called in the cookbook, Joy of Cooking. It’s called Braised Lamb Shanks, but it contains a variety of mild Moroccan spices (cinnamon, allspice, cumin, coriander and harissa). And the recipe calls for carrots and winter squash. I decided not to add the winter squash to it, just because, but I used rainbow carrots, and I added celery, which wasn’t in the recipe. And it made a marvelous gravy – according to the recipe, the collagen in the bones helps thicken the braising liquid (chicken stock and white wine), and it does. Not a lot, but it makes a slightly thickened sauce that’s perfect over rice or mashed potatoes, which is what sounded good to me.

In the Joy cookbook, Rombauer has you bake the lamb shanks for 1 1/2 hours at 300°. I took the lazy woman’s approach and did the whole thing in my small slow cooker (actually it’s my risotto cooker that has a slow cooker function). It was perfect for making 2 lamb shanks, which was more than enough for me for 2-3 meals. So, in the recipe below, I’ve included a paragraph at the bottom with the instructions for making it in the slow cooker.

The prep work really took very little time – I browned the lamb shanks for awhile, removed them, sautéed the thinly sliced onions, added in the garlic at the last (I used ample) and the spices. Then you add the liquids, some tomato paste, heat that up, then add back in the lamb shanks. I set it to cook on the slow setting for about 6 hours. Twice I picked up the lid and turned the lamb shanks over, because they weren’t submerged in liquid, only up about halfway. Then I added the carrots and celery, and let that cook for about 45 minutes to an hour and it was ready to serve. At the very last you add in some fresh lemon juice, some harissa and the final dish is sprinkled with freshly chopped mint. Done. And it was every bit as good as I remembered. The gravy is a lovely medium-brown color and drizzles well over whatever carbs you might want to serve with this.

As for the lamb shanks, I happened to go to Sprouts to buy my ingredients (I don’t often shop there, but I figured they’d have lamb shanks) and sure-enough, they had some grass fed lamb shanks. They were on the smaller side, but perfect for me. Lamb shanks aren’t cheap food anymore – each small one was about $4.00. If you’re feeding hungry teenagers they’d have wanted 2 of these smaller ones. But with lots of veggies and carbs to go with it, you might be able to get away with just one per hungry person.

What’s GOOD: several things: (1) the flavoring/gravy is divine; (2) I did it in a slow cooker, so it was super-easy; (3) it’s good enough to serve to guests, even. Good enough reasons to try it? I’ll be making this again.

What’s NOT: really nothing at all – if you don’t want to use a slow cooker, just bake in the oven for 1 1/2 hours; otherwise, set this for 6 hours and then add the veggies and plan for another hour and it’s ready to serve.

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Files: MasterCook 5+ and MasterCook 14 (click on link to open recipe in MC)

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