Culinary Arts II-Week 7: Moroccan Lamb Stew!

As I mentioned before in my previous blog posts, lamb is not really my go-to meat to cook because of its distinct gamey taste that I am not fond of. However, in this week's recipe, we prepared Lamb Maroc, a.k.a., the Moroccan lamb stew, which has quickly become one of my favourite lamb recipes. The different layers of flavours like savoury, sweet, sour, and spicy all blend in together in a harmonic manner, and they manage to mask the gamey taste of lamb very well. I am not very familiar with Moroccan food, but to me, this dish shares some basic tastes with Indian curry, probably because of the Moroccan spices used, Ras el Hanout, which contains equal parts of nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, cumin, cayenne, ginger, clove, coriander, pepper, saffron, and turmeric. If you are worried about the gamey taste in lamb and reluctant to cook it, give this recipe a try, you'd be pleasantly surprised! 

Ingredients

1 kg lamb shoulder meat, chopped

3 oz olive oil

3 oz butter

60 g ginger

2 tsp Ras el Hanout

650 mL chicken stock, warmed up

1 piece of onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 piece of cinnamon stick, broken into 2 halves

1 cup of raisins

1 cup of almonds (toasted at 300F until turned golden brown)

1/4 cup of honey

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

4 sprigs of cilantro, chopped

1 lemon, juice squeezed

salt/pepper to taste

Methods

1. Take a pan, heat the oil, sear the chopped lamb at high heat until browned, remove from the pan

2. Drain the fat from pan and add melted butter, sweat the chopped onion at medium heat until golden brown (takes about 15min)  

3. Add the cinnamon sticks, spices, and ginger, sweat for a minute

4. Stir in raisins, and add warm chicken stock to the pot

5. Add the meat back into the pot, stir well and simmer for 30min

6. Add the toasted almonds, honey, and lemon juice, simmer for another 20min

7. Stir constantly to make sure that the honey doesn't get burned at the bottom of the pot

8. Garnish the dish with chopped cilantro right before serving

* this dish goes really well with cumin-flavoured rice! 

Indian-Week 1: Lamb Curry!

Spring is finally here! So is the spring semester at George Brown! Having taken the French course and two Italian courses in the past winter term, I started to notice that even though we got new recipes in every class, the cooking techniques, on the other hand, are getting repetitive: browning, braising, baking, roasting, etc. If you are like me with a short attention span,  learning new techniques, even with a risk of messing up, is a lot more appealing than repeating the reliable old tricks. So here I am, signed up for the Indian class, which I know absolutely nothing about. 

Unlike all the other classes, Week 1 in Indian is not just a Demo-only class. It actually has a lab component, and we made lamb curry. I knew that I found the right class when I couldn't identify half of the ingredients on the recipe. Challenge is good. Challenge = Excitement. 

Ingredients

600g lamb, boneless, diced 
40g ghee 
5g cumin, whole
1 cinnamon stick
2pc cloves
3pc cardamom
5g red chili powder
5g turmeric powder
5g coriander powder
5g garam masala
ginger paste
garlic paste
1 onion, chopped
250mL canned tomatoes, crushed
1 lemon, juice
1/2 bunch cilantro leaves, chopped
salt to taste

Methods

* Our Chef kept emphasizing the secret of good Indian cooking: the sequence of adding ingredients. Garam masala needs to be added at the very end. If it's added during cooking, it'd add a bitter taste to the dish. 

1. get a pot, heat up the ghee

2. add all of the whole, seed-based spices (cumin, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom), wait until the cumin starts to crack open

3. add chopped onion, sauté until golden brown (takes about 20min w/o lid on the pot)

4. add garlic and ginger paste, sauté for 2 min 

5. add all the powder-based spices EXCEPT garam masala  (chili, turmeric, coriander)

6. add the tomato sauce, mix well

7. add the lamb, cover the lid, cook at low-medium heat for 1hr (1.5hr to get very tender meat)

8. once the meat is done, stir in garam masala

9. garnish with lemon juice and chopped cilantro 

TA-DA..... my very first Indian dish! 

Northern Italian-Week 2: breaded lamb rack!

In this week's class, I learned a new way to prepare lamb racks, the "Modena" style. Basically, the lamb rack was first breaded, then pan-seared, and finally baked to complete the cooking. To be honest, this is not my favourite way of making lamb racks. I find the breaded surface  a bit weird. I prefer the French way (http://ppcao.blogspot.ca/2013/02/french-week-6-mmm-lamb.html)  to cook the rack a lot better, which gives you a lovely crispy skin on the lamb from the browning process. 

Ingredients

1 rack of lamb, Frenched
1 egg beaten 
white breadcrumbs, dried
1 clove garlic
1 sprig sage
1 sprig rosemary
1 sprig thyme
1 sprig mint
flour, salt/pepper, olive oil






Methods
1. French the lamb rack to expose the bones
2. take some flour, add salt and pepper, mix well
3. beat the egg, add a splash of cold water
4. prepare the breadcrumbs: chop up the herbs and garlic,  mix them into the breadcrumbs as well as a pinch of salt and pepper and 1 tbsp olive oil 
5. roll the rack first into the flour (make sure you shake off the excess flour), then dip the rack into the beaten egg, then cover the rack with breadcrumbs and herbs. 
6. add oil into a pan, heat it up, and brown the breaded rack at all sides
7. transfer the rack to a baking tray, bake at 400F for 15 min (medium rare) to 20 min (medium)

*always rest the meat before you cut it, so that you wouldn't lose too much of the juice

8. balsamic vinegar goes really well with lamb. To make a balsamic sauce, you can add the vinegar into a small pot, heat it to simmering, and reduce the volume to half, then whisk in a bit of olive oil to thicken up the sauce. Or if you feel lazy like I did, use a thick, aged balsamic directly works well too.  

French-Week 6: MMM, lamb!

First of all, Happy Valentine's Day to you all! It's not that I have anything against Valentine's day, I like things that are pink, red, cute, adorable and heart-shaped. But honestly, I am just too practical to find getting an overpriced dinner in a overly crowded restaurant on February 14th every year "romantic". Why designate only one day a year to celebrate the love of your life? With the right person, every day is Valentine's day! 
So if you are like me, who chose to cook at home today, here's a yummy lamb rack recipe for you! 

Cari d'Agneau Florentine
- roasted lamb rack with spinach stuffing. (Anything with Florentine in its name involves spinach)

I guess lamb is not as common as beef or pork or chicken in our daily diet. I have never been a lamb person in my entire life because of the lamb-y smell, which is too distinct and strong for me to tolerate. (By the way, what's the proper English word to describe the lamby smell?) When my mom used to make her lamb stew/soup, our entire place would be filled with the smell and I had to lock myself in my room for hours. So I was pretty reluctant to try the roasted lamb rack made by Chef Klaus during class. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the absence of the smell in the meat! For once, I could finally focus on how tender the meat was, instead of being distracted by the smell! My guess is,  the smell would be less dominant if you prepare the meat by dry heat (i.e. roasting). If you never tried lamb or didn't like it before, give this easy, tasty recipe a try! 

Ingredients
2 lamb racks
half package of spinach
half onion
4 cloves of garlic
white wine
olive oil




Method
1. Clean the lamb.  To make it presentable, you need to French it. 
2. Add olive oil in pan, sweat onion, garlic and spinach, let it cool down
3. make a pocket in the meat, stuff it with sweated spinach/onion
4. season the lamb with salt and pepper
5. add olive oil in pan, sear the racks until the meat turns light brown
6. roast the racks at 425F for 20min for medium rare, or 30min for medium 

*Let the meat sit for a bit before you cut it, to prevent losing the juice in the meat

*You can use some red wine to deglaze the pan that you used to sear the meat, thicken it and make it into a wine sauce. Or make a vinegar/mint sauce, or Worcestershire sauce. I got lazy, so I just drizzled some aged, 6-year old balsamic on top, which turned out to be great! 


The lamb was served on a bed of Port-Braised Du Puy Lentils, here's the recipe for the side dish:
Ingredients
8 oz Du Puy lentils (black)
3 cloves of garlic
1 shallots
1 piece of double-smoked bacon (about 3 oz)
Fresh thyme, parsley, 2 dried bay leaves
olive oil
Port
balsamic 

Method
1. sweat the bacon, shallots, garlic in the pan
2. put in dry lentils
3. add cold water that covers the lentils
4. add thyme, bay leaves, a splash of balsamic, Port, salt/pepper to taste. Cover the pan with a lid, and let the liquid simmer for 20min with the lid on. 
5. when the lentils are about 80% cooked, continue cooking with the lid off to evaporate off the remaining liquid. 

*The other side dish in the picture, Duchesse Potato, will be covered in another blog post. 

Andddddd, of course, no Valentine's day would be complete without chocolate and strawberries! Amaretto sour goes down really well with the chocolate fondue! Who would have known?!