Dinner needed in a hurry? This is a great make-ahead meal that requires very little time in the oven. The salad with cucumber provides some vegetables and the Greek tzasiki-type sauce on the meat just makes it perfect.

A couple of weeks ago I spent the weekend with daughter Sara and her family. And Sara wanted to spend part of Sunday doing some make-ahead meals for her family. Both of the kids are in sports, so weeknight mealtimes have to be jammed into what little time Sara can carve out of the late afternoon or evening. Sabrina drives herself mostly, but John the younger sibling is just 13, so he must be delivered and picked up and often John Sr. stays and watches his practices. Anyway, this is one of the meals we put together and Sara was kind enough to give me a portion so I could make it once I got home. I baked mine in 2 ramekins (just easier for my single portion).

The recipe came from Cooking Light. Since making this Sara and I both agreed on a couple of things: (1) we would switch the amount of lamb and beef – we both wanted a more lamb flavor; (2) the baking time was not enough. So the recipe below has been changed. We also used full fat yogurt, but you don’t have to. We also thought that if the meat loaf was just slightly bigger, we could have eaten just one, so if I did this again, I’d do just that – I’d mound the meat loaves in the muffin tin or ramekin. You’d need to up the baking time if you did that. Lamb is rich, so halving the 2-meat loaf portion would cut down the calories significantly. The original recipe called for 10 ounces of beef and 5 ounces of lamb. That’s been switched, just so you know.

The other problem I had was that the meat loaf wasn’t really done well enough at 7 minutes baking and 3 minutes broiling. I did another 3 minutes of broil, and still the meat was really rare when I ate it (note blood-rare juice coming out of the left meat loaf in the photo). So I’ve upped the baking time to 9 minutes and 3+ minutes broiling. Do check the internal temp if you can – it should be about 160-165°F. The other things could be that pressing the meat into the muffin tin allows contact on the sides with the meat – maybe done that way it cooks in the shorter time. Just use a meat thermometer and gauge accordingly. In ramekins they didn’t quite touch the sides, so that may be why they weren’t quite so “done.”

The sauce was easy enough to make – it’s the standard kinds of ingredients for tzasiki sauce and was made ahead. On the recipe below I’ve also included instructions for freezing the meat – make them into mounds that will fit in a muffin tin or ramekin, place on a parchment or plastic wrap lined baking sheet and freeze, then package them for longer freezer storage.

If you added vegetables to the salad (it already has cucumber in it, but you could add bell pepper, for instance) you’d have a complete meal with the meat loaves, sauce and the salad.

What’s GOOD: these were tasty. Not necessarily off the charts, but not every meal can be that way, anyway. I would like them better next time with more lamb, hence the change in the recipe below. They were certainly easy to make and very quick for a weeknight dinner – providing the meat loaves were defrosted. The sauce is really good – don’t skimp on that part as I think it makes the dish.
What’s NOT: nothing, really. Altogether a good dish and easy.

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After roasting, grilling or braising a leg of lamb, I never seem to know what to do with the leftovers. One night we had the lamb shawarma in a sandwich (flatbread) as we’d prepared it for the dinner for 8 we did. But I still had about a pound of meat remaining. What to do. Aha! Soup.

Going to Eat Your Books, I quickly found a recipe in my copy of James Peterson’s soup book, Splendid Soups: Recipes and Master Techniques for Making the World’s Best Soups. Peterson, indeed, makes some splendid soups in this book. None of them 2-3 ingredients, however. But I like that. I used his recipe as my inspiration. A few ingredients I didn’t have, so I just punted. I changed a bit the way it was made because I believe that the vegetables you put into the beginning of a soup give out and off all the flavor and texture they have to the broth. And rather than starting with fresh meat (like shanks or stew meat) I wanted to use the leg of lamb bones (that did have a bit of meat attached, but I’d cut off most of the meat – it was added in at the end of the soup making, since it was all cooked). And I prefer soups with more than just beans or lentils – I want more veggies.

So I threw out all those soft and mushy veggies used to flavor the broth and added new ones (onions, carrots and celery). It called for fresh ginger in the beginning too. And some saffron, cinnamon and turmeric. I added curry powder also. I’d saved the broth and drippings from the roasting pan when I made the lamb shawarma, so that went into the pot as well. The shawarma seasonings were somewhat similar to this soup, so I thought they added just a bit more oomph to the flavor.

What I had were tiny yellow lentils, so they went in after the broth was created, but after I’d strained out everything from the broth itself (the bones, ginger chunks, onions, celery, etc.) so it was just flavorful broth at that point. I added beef broth (using my Penzey’s soup base. Then after the lentils were done I added a CAN of chickpeas (drained and rinsed) and new vegetables. I also added a can of chopped tomatoes including the juices. That simmered for a short time, then I added the lamb, all cut up into cubes and some parsley. Full-fat (Greek) yogurt was added. My pot was simmering a bit too vigorously if you examine the photo carefully – so it separated some. It didn’t look very pretty, so I added 1/4 cup of heavy cream to it. Hardly made much of a difference in the consistency, actually. It probably needed more, but that’s all I was willing to add. And it was done. All I did was garnish it and serve in wide bowls along with some home made no-knead wheat/rye bread I’d made, nicely slathered with unsalted butter. Yum.

What’s GOOD: first, it was a good way to use up all that leftover leg of lamb meat. I was happy to have a good use for it. AND, I’m glad I now have a great recipe I can return to in the future! I don’t much like just pieces of leftover lamb heated up as a dinner entrée. The soup freezes well too. I now have 2 ziploc bags (2 servings each) in the freezer for some night when I don’t feel like cooking!
What’s NOT: only the time you have to commit to the long, slow cooking – at least a couple of hours, but it happily simmered away while I did other things in between times.

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That’s a huge leg of lamb (8 1/2 pounds to be exact) we made for our Israeli dinner recently. The darkened patches are the spices that were used in the marinade. It’s oven baked. Since it’s not roasted on one of those unique vertical spits, it’s not an authentic Shawarma, but it’s close enough for government work, as they say. I suppose I should call it Shawarma for the home kitchen.

As I just mentioned a few days ago, my DH loves-loves lamb, and would happily eat it about once a week if I’d prepare it. But lamb is a very saturated fat – and I don’t just mean because it’s a red meat – I mean that lamb in and of itself is a very fatty meat, comparing it with beef or pork. It’s hard to realize it unless you read the nutrition info on lamb recipes, or even when you look at those cute little lamb chops in the grocery store, or at the slices of lamb cut from the above leg. Even when I cut up the meat from this meal later (as leftovers) I could hardly SEE any fat in it. But it’s there. Hence I buy leg of lamb very rarely. And not only because of the high fat, but also because I never seem to be very happy using up the leftovers. But oh, this time, I’ve got a winner of a recipe to share – in a day or two – a soup I made with the bones and lamb meat.

The recipe for this came from Jerusalem: A Cookbook. The authors provide lots of details about the origins of the spice mixture ((Lebanese) and about ways to serve the lamb.

Aren’t the colors beautiful? Seeing this plate reminds me of our trip some years ago to Turkey (in 1997). We visited an underground ancient city in Cappadocia that provided a safe haven for Christians when the Romans were trying to arrest and kill them all. The Christians lived and hid there for months, some for years. There was even a morgue that could be sealed up with a stone (because of the smell, I suppose) because no one could go above ground during that time. Considering this was about 2000 years ago, they had a very sophisticated ventilation system too, so they wouldn’t be found from any little twists of smoke emanating through the rocks hiding the entrance at ground level. In one of the subterranean rooms was a kitchen and a big stone sat right in the middle of this room – the top was flat with a myriad of little 2-4 inch round indentations.  It was their kitchen spice cabinet, so to speak. When the underground caverns were discovered centuries later, there were still remnants of the herbs and spices in the little cups. At left you can see an example of one (from tryanythingonce blog). Those cups would have held all of the spices you see on the plate above. At right is a photo from the underground caverns (from the vagablond.com). The cavern we visited went down something like 8 stories below ground. It was an ever-winding spiral, down, down, down. Only the top 3 “floors” closest to the surface were open to the public and some of the connecting tunnels were very narrow and low. My DH, who is tall, got stuck in one of them as he bent over trying to move forward, and had to be pushed slightly from behind to get through the passage. Scary for him, as he gets claustrophobic. The picture here shows very wide and tall tunnels. Not so in the one we visited!

Anyway, back to this lamb. . . all those spices were toasted and ground up in my spice grinder. If you happen to look at the plate and wonder about the cinnamon – it’s from Penzey’s. They sell it in chunks like that – you can easily use a cinnamon stick – I just happened to have the chunks in my pantry. So the spices were combined with some peanut oil, salt, fresh ginger, garlic, cilantro and lemon juice. I spread it all over the outside of the lamb, puncturing numerous slits in the meat and pushing the mixture into them as well. Into a large plastic bag it went and refrigerated

overnight. Most of the marinade stuck well to the lamb, so once it went into a baking pan (on a rack, my turkey roaster actually) it was easy to go right into the oven. The lamb was roasted at a low temp for about 5 hours (part of the time covered with foil). I allowed a little extra time because the lamb leg was bigger than the recipe indicated. The meat wasn’t falling off the bone, really, as some commenters mentioned on other sites where I found the recipe online, but it was quite tender.

Traditionally this dish is served in either pita bread or some kind of soft foldable flatbread with condiments like chopped tomato, chopped cucumber, onions and definitely some sumac to sprinkle on top. I did the same.

We had fresh sangak bread on hand and I tore it up into hand-sized portions and placed the slices of lamb on the bread. The tray was passed at the table for people to add condiments of their choice. The recipe also mentioned a spread to put on the bread or pita – a mixture of canned tomatoes, harissa, tomato paste, olive oil, salt and pepper. So I spread some of that on each piece of sangak bread as it was served. The harissa added some heat – everyone noticed that. I liked it, actually. The only thing missing in my book was some fresh Greek yogurt to dab on the hand-sandwich. The recipe didn’t indicate it, so I didn’t put it out, but I think it would have been a nice addition.

What’s GOOD: loved the spices in this – warm and cozy. The lamb was not difficult, but was a bit time consuming and I needed to be near the oven periodically over the 5 hours to keep water in the pan below the meat (so it wouldn’t dry out). It made a gorgeous presentation. Meat was well done, obviously. Not dry, though and was still relatively tender. Made a very spectacular centerpiece of a meal.
What’s NOT: it’s a fair amount of work, as I mentioned above. If you have an Alligator 11-1/4-Inch Dicer with Collector, it’s quick work to make the condiments you see above. If you don’t own all the spices already, it could be a bit expensive to buy them all.

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The cooking class I went to recently was all about SAUCES. We had 4 sauces altogether: two on meats (pork tenderloin and this lamb), one on a chicken breast, another on salmon, plus a chocolate caramel sauce on a dessert. And none of them was ordinary. They all started from some basic sauce, but each had something unique or different about them. That’s why I took the class!

Do you ever eyeball those lovely lamb racks at Costco? Or the frozen ones at Trader Joe’s? They’re pricey, no question, but for a special occasion, I’ll splurge and get one. My DH really loves rack of lamb and I don’t fix it anywhere near often enough for him! Maybe twice a year. I think the ones from TJ’s already have a rub or herbs on them – you won’t want to buy that as this recipe has a light flavoring to put on it as well. But this recipe is all about the sauce.

Ancho chiles are a favorite of mine because they are mild. They impart lots of flavor, but not much heat. Now occasionally you may find one with some heat, but usually not. Anchos are dried poblano chiles, same thing. At left you can see the dried anchos (thanks to photo at Freida’s Produce). At right is a photo of a fresh poblano. We can buy them fresh at almost any grocery store here in California.

The lamb is rubbed with a mixture and allowed to sit out at room temp for about 45 minutes; otherwise, make it several hours ahead and just put it in the refrigerator until 30 minutes or so before you’re ready to bake. The lamb is browned well on as many sides as you can manage (they’re a bit awkward to brown, I admit), then place them on a parchment lined baking sheet and roast for about 15-20 minutes. They also need to rest for 5-8 minutes afterwards to let all the juices re-absorb before you cut them into little ribs and serve.

Meanwhile, you make the sauce. Have everything all ready to go – once you start the lamb browning and baking, you’ll want to be on a time line. Have your meal all ready (except plating) and do serve this with some kind of carb so you can soak up any errant sauce. You’ll want to get every bit of it! Anyway, the ancho chiles need to be soaked (do this ahead), then they’re whizzed up in the food processor with some of the soaking liquid. It makes a puree that gets added to the sauce later on.

The  usual flavor mixture starts with celery, carrots and onion, then peppercorns, port wine, red wine, cranberry juice concentrate (great flavor), the ancho puree, some brown sugar and chicken broth. You boil it until it’s reduced by half, then you season it and add fresh blackberries. At the very last minute you add a couple T. of unsalted butter and season it if needed. Serve with that carb, and garnish with at least one pretty blackberry. This makes a fairly thin sauce – if you want something thicker, remove a bit of the liquid, cool and add some flour. Do this after you’ve reduced the liquid by half.

What’s GOOD: Well, the sauce first and foremost. It has wonderful flavor. If you enjoy lamb, this will be a fabulous meal.
What’s NOT: the sauce does take a bit of time to make – this would be a special occasion kind of meal.

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I’ve re-named this dish slightly from the original recipe over at Food52. I didn’t have orzo pasta for one thing, and I thought describing it as a Ragu might give you a better idea of what it is. And you just need to know that this is fabulous. Absolutely drop-dead fantastic. If you enjoy lamb (ground), and pasta, with Feta, lemon and Kalamata olives, well this is right up your alley.

You’ve heard it here before, that when I see other bloggers use superlatives when they describe a dish, I pay attention. Not only did the originator, Emily at fiveandspice wax glorious about it, but Amanda & Merrill at Food52 did too. That was enough for me to decide to make it. What clinched it was seeing a package of ground lamb at the market and that was that. The original called for fresh spinach. Well, I had arugula instead, but I doubt that would have made much of a taste difference. And, as I mentioned above, I used different pasta (farfalline instead of orzo). The original title is “Greek” Lamb with Orzo. The Greek part is all the Greek-style additions: Feta, olives, lemon juice, oregano, but otherwise it’s an Italian style ragu. The back story of the recipe is just the kind of history I love. The recipe came from Emily’s mother, from a magazine, and it was a family favorite. Here’s what she said: It was also the recipe she sent to each of us [kids], successively, when we needed something easy but impressive to cook for friends in college. It’s still one of my favorite meals, and a wonderful way to easily serve a crowd. Of course, as I’ve evolved, my lamb with orzo has evolved as well, gathering additional ingredients and spices like a glacier gathering stones. . . . I loved that last phrase Emily wrote – gathering ingredients and spices like a glacier gathering stones. I think Emily needs to be a writer . . .

The sauce is relatively easy to make – lamb browned, most of the fat drained, onions and garlic added, then tomatoes, seasonings (including some cinnamon and ground coriander, which are different). The pasta is made and tossed with some oil and lemon juice. When you spoon the ragu on top of the pasta you garnish with Feta cheese crumbles and Kalamata olives. Done. Serve.

What’s GOOD: I refused to put down my spoon until every single morsel was slicked off the plate. Does that tell you how good it was? The other great thing? One pound of lamb makes enough sauce to serve 8, supposedly. Hungry eaters? Well, maybe 6 then, but it’s very filling and comforting food. A definite make-again dish. My DH thought it was fabulous too. It’s going onto my Carolyn’s Favs list, in case that is any additional motivation for you to make this!
What’s NOT: nothing, other than you will dirty up a fair number of dishes, pots and pans in the making of it. Worth it, but then I don’t wash the dishes, my darling DH does. He did complain a bit.

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What a special treat – loin lamb chops grilled and served with a sauce (dried tart cherries, rosemary, dry Marsala wine, shallots and butter). All of it delish.

Visiting Costco recently I noticed a gorgeous package of 7 lamb chops. Little things, beautifully trimmed, ready for the grill. The recipe came from the New York Times, but I’d read about it in my favorite cookbook, The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century, by Amanda Hesser. This is her recipe that was published in 2001. A winner.

It took a few minutes to make the sauce, and my DH did the chops on the outdoor grill. The sauce has a bunch of ingredients, but it wasn’t difficult – chopped shallot, garlic, fresh rosemary, some chicken broth, the dry Marsala, salt and pepper, plus some unsalted butter and oil. Have all the remainder of your dinner all ready to go so when the chops are done and the sauce is thickened just so, you’re all ready to serve it!

What’s good: the meat was delicious – tender and juicy – and the sauce was unusual (from the tart cherries) but complemented the meat perfectly. It would make a lovely company meal.
What’s not: nothing at all.

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It seems like lamb shanks are a real treat. You don’t see them at Costco, and rarely at a traditional grocery store, either. I never seem to think of making them, although my DH will order them at a restaurant any time he sees them on a menu. The day I made these it was rainy and almost stormy, certainly a fall-like day, so these just sounded so “right.”

Sometimes when lamb is cooking, it isn’t very appealing to me. The smell. I suppose that’s the part that’s almost like mutton. It must be the fat, which has a distinct taste. So I decided I’d make this in the pressure cooker. That way I wouldn’t have to hover over it so much or smell it all that long, either. I’d found a recipe over at www.food.com, and it was really quite easy.

The lamb shanks were well-browned in a skillet first (at least that’s how I did it) in a bit of grapeseed oil. A whole bunch of whole garlic cloves were added later and sizzled just until they were light golden brown. Into the pot went chicken broth, Madeira (the original recipe called for Port, but I didn’t have any), dried rosemary, a bit of tomato paste, salt and pepper. Then the lamb shanks. That’s it. It rattled away for 35 minutes while I did other things. I made a green salad and some steamed broccoli and cauliflower too.

Once the meat was cooked, and the pressure released, I removed the shanks and to the small amount of liquid in the pot (which contained a lot of fat, I’m certain) I added a bit of fig balsamic vinegar. Probably plain balsamic would work too, but I thought a fruity balsamic would enhance the flavor a bit more. With the left overs I poured the sauce into a container, expecting I’d be able to remove the fat. There wasn’t any. I suppose that means the sauce was kind of homogenized, so it didn’t separate. Serve this on heated plates and drizzle the gravy on top and let it pool around the shank. You might want some bread too, to soak up any of that very tasty, garlicky, boozy gravy. Just sayin’.

What’s good: how easy it was to make – the pressure cooker just got dinner on the table in a bit less than an hour. The meat was tasty and meltingly tender. The gravy made itself, really – I didn’t have to reduce it at all – I merely added the balsamic vinegar and it was done. Easy meal beginning to end.

What’s not: if you watch calories and fat, well, you may want to give this one a miss. I was astounded at the statistics in this dish, although I’ll say in my own defense, there probably isn’t more than about a heaping 1/4 cup of meat on a lamb shank. Well, at least the ones we had were quite stingy with the meat. But that made each bite worth savoring.

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Something totally different – Moroccan marinated lamb with a fantastic yogurt sauce that contains harissa (a spicy pepper condiment), cumin and coriander. And garlic. I swear I could eat it with a spoon, but it’s ever so much better with a little bit of lamb, or chicken or fish with it. Or pita bread.

Many cultures have some kind of hot sauce associated with it – like salsa, or sambal oelek, that really hot chile pepper mixture from Indonesia. The Vietnamese have their hot sauce too – we fondly call it rooster sauce because it has a picture of a rooster on the bottle. A big jar lives in the door of my refrigerator. In this case it’s harissa, a briskly hot condiment from Morocco. There you can see it right out of the jar – thick and spicy. You don’t want to use much – the amount I spooned up for the picture would be way too much for a standard sauce. Harissa originally came from Tunisia, but has been adopted by many cuisines of the region, Morocco among them. They’re much the same – red chiles, cumin, coriander, garlic and a little bit of oil to smooth it out. You can make your own easily enough too. That jar will likely last me the rest of my life because you don’t use much of it in any one dish, and I don’t make Moroccan, Tunisian or Libyan food with any frequency!

Now then, back to the meal – the lamb. It was marinated overnight in a variety of things like olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, mint, coriander, cumin. Most of the lamb soaked up the marinade – how can that be? But it did. We actually served the lamb two ways – butterflied and grilled, and also cut into cubes and threaded onto flat-bladed skewers as kebabs.

The Harissa Yogurt sauce was ever so simple to make – jarred roasted red bell peppers were whizzed up in the food processor along with garlic, oil, cumin, coriander, Greek (thick) yogurt and seasoned with some salt and the harissa. That’s it. Chill until ready to serve. The sauce will keep for a week or so and could be used on other proteins too.

To round out the meal I highly recommend you also make the side skewers too – red onion wedges and whole dried apricots. I wouldn’t have believed that grilled dried apricots would make such an impression on me – they were wonderful. During grilling the edges get charred, and that caramelized them, of course. Delicious. And the onions – crunchy just a bit and a great accompaniment. They need to be grilled first since they take about 10 minutes longer than the lamb – once done just move them over to a cooler part of the grill while you grill the lamb. Serve with rice or couscous.

Because I had a lot of sauce left over (I made a double batch – far more than needed) I used it about a week later this way, pictured below. This was the broiled lemon salmon recipe that kind of goes with the asparagus pesto – I served it with some freshly made wild sockeye salmon and our dinner guests had a choice of either or both sauces..

What I liked: well, first and foremost I loved the sauce. Did I mention I think I could eat it with a spoon? Yes, well, it’s good! Loved the skewers of onion and apricots too. All worth doing.

What I didn’t like: nothing, really. Delicious meal beginning to end.

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As usual, it’s difficult photographing brown food. It was dinnertime with waning sunlight coming in through the kitchen window, so I finally took the bowl there and snapped this photo. It doesn’t begin to do justice to the dish. It’s hard to see the meat – I did prop up one piece (at 11:00 in the photo) so you could at least see a piece of the meat that wasn’t completely enveloped in the milky sauce. But with the shadow, it’s hard to tell, isn’t it?

It’s not really the season for stews and braises, but I had a 2 1/2 pound chunk of leg of lamb in the freezer that needed to be used. We’ve agreed to buy 1/4 of a Berkshire pig this summer, through our friend who has 4H boys and girls using her farm pens. So I need to make room in the garage freezer. I have some room, but perhaps not enough, so I need to get busy using up some of the larger type pieces in there.

Actually I have a 6 pound pork roast in there and it needs to be used too. Soon, since the Berkshire pig will go to slaughter this next week. They’ll deliver it probably at the end of next week (I’m writing this a couple of weeks ago . . .).

Anyway, back to lamb here. I’d copied off a recipe over at Simply Recipes a couple of years ago. Elise said it was based on a Mario Batali recipe, and she raved about it. Indeed, this dish IS really delicious. For a summer evening, it was coolish as we sat outside having dinner, so it ended up being a great night for a lamb stew. I made farro also, which Elise recommended. All I did to that was add in salt and some broth (rather than straight water) to the cooking water. The lamb I made according to the recipe with no variations. It’s quite simple – I actually made it in my crockpot, but am not sure I’d do that again – FYI: 6 hours on low was too long. So, just use the recipe below. The use of milk (and a little bit of cream) makes a fantastic creamy sauce to go with the lamb, and gives it lots of luscious stuff to go along with the farro too. Kind of like mashed potatoes and a milky chicken gravy, except this was farro and lamb.

The lamb cubes need to be browned sufficiently to generate some good flavor, then everything is put together for the braise. After the meat is done, remove it and boil down the juices. They’ll look kind of awful – most things made with milk will separate – but boil it down anyway, then puree in a blender to smooth it out. Add back into the pot with the lamb and heat through. And serve!

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Ah yes. You will believe me when I say it was delicious, right? When all you can see is the pitiful bone left after serving a big dinner to guests? And you’ll forgive me for not taking a photo of the finished roast? I hope so!

If it were cooler weather I’d have made some kind of soup with the bone, but alas, it’s too hot in the kitchen or our outdoor patio dining area to make or eat hot soup. So this bone got chucked in the trash. But the meat that came from it was quite good. Good enough that I’d make it again. Easy enough too.

I turned to one of my favorite barbecue cookbooks of late, Steven Raichlen’s The Barbecue! Bible. You don’t find all that many recipes for barbecued lamb anywhere. Raichlen has several in this book (well, the cookbook has 500+ barbecue recipes). Anyway, I had all the ingredients on hand  (always a good sign). All it took was to buy a bone-in leg of lamb and making the relatively simple marinade. And cutting a bunch of slits in the meat to stuff in little slivers of garlic and fresh ginger.

There you can see all the little studs of garlic and ginger. And the Worcestershire and soy marinade. The meat sat in the frig for about 8 hours with the marinade. Once drained, it went onto the barbecue with indirect heat (no searing of any of the meat) with a drip pan below the grates. It stayed there for about 2 hours, until the meat thermometer hit 160°.  This meat wants moderate heat, not high heat. It’s a roast, you know! It sat for about 10 minutes lightly tented with foil before we sliced and served it.

With the pineapple relish stuff Raichlen recommends in the book. Raichlen has traveled the world over for ethnic recipes, and he certainly adheres to the adages in the book, The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. If you haven’t read it, Thomas Friedman dissects how, in our global economy, we can so easily buy (now) a Thai urn, kites from China, saffron from Spain, lentils from Morocco. Or talk to a computer expert in India as if he or she is 20 miles away. And the products are all available at our local stores. In this case Raichlen doesn’t care that the meat preparation is a South African method, and the relish served with it is Vietnamese. And he suggests it be served with Persian-steamed rice. I don’t actually know what that means, Persian rice that’s steamed, or is it a particular cooking method that makes rice steamed in the Persian style. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t serve it.

Back to the Achar. It’s a relish composed of fresh, diced pineapple mixed with a bit of Vietnamese fish sauce. Now, I can already see you turning up your noses! Here in Southern California we’re used to fish sauce because we have a sizable Vietnamese community near us. And oodles of Vietnamese restaurants too. We’ve learned to appreciate all the different foods from that country. But almost everything is seasoned with fish sauce. It’s even standard in regular (non-ethnic) grocery stores. It’s like soy sauce to the Japanese, paprika in all forms to the Hungarians (they don’t even put black pepper on the table, just salt and paprika), salsa or pico de gallo to the Mexicans. So, there’s fish sauce for the Vietnamese. It’s a condiment served on every Vietnamese table. And it doesn’t taste like fish. You’d think it would, being called “fish” sauce and all, but it’s a salty liquid that comes from anchovies. In the picture, the bottle of fish sauce is there in the background. In the center of the bottle label is a graphic of three crabs – Anglos call it the “Three Crabs” fish sauce. It’s the premium brand. Below you can see the relish – with the chiles and sugar. This mixture doesn’t require any marinating time – just mix it up and serve it.

It went really well with the lamb, even though it IS a Vietnamese relish served with a South African barbecue lamb dish! The only thing I’d change next time – I think I’d do a butterflied leg of lamb instead. There wasn’t enough meat on the roast I bought. I know that the bone-in is a better way to roast, but the boneless is so much easier.

printer-friendly PDF for the lamb and pineapple achar

One year Ago: Peach Cobbler
Two years ago: Barbecued Beans
Three years ago: Crisp Apple Pudding (my all-time favorite, my mother’s recipe)

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