Recipe: Spicy Moroccan Lamb

 A real tasty dish that utilises some great Moroccan flavours that brings the lamb to life.

This dish takes minutes to prepare and 2 hours to cook making it the perfect dinner party main. Prepare it before your guests arrive, stick it in the oven and you can concentrate on entertaining your friends. Like a lot of people I had a tagine in the kitchen but didn’t get as much use out of it as I liked, that was until this dish came along.

Ingredients:

600g lamb (shoulder will do but the choice is yours)

2 medium onions

4 cloves of garlic

fresh ginger, enough for 2 tablespoons once grated

2 teaspoons of tumeric

2 teaspoons of paprika

½ teaspoon of cayenne pepper

2 tablespoons of cinnamon

2 tablespoons of tomato puree

2 teaspoons of crushed coriander seeds

12-15 cherry tomatoes

2 tablespoons of plain flour

15 dried apricots

2 tablespoons of raisins

olive oil

salt and pepper

Serves 4

How to make:

First you need to dice the lamb into cubes, not too small, and finely chop the onions and garlic. Next peel and grate the ginger and put all these to one side, keeping separate for now. Turn on your oven to 160°C and leave it to heat up. In a bowl, mix the cayenne pepper, tumeric, paprika and plain flour then put in the lamb and give a good mix to coat the lamb in the spices.

Place a deep frying pan on a medium heat and add a little olive oil. Once this has heated up add the lamb and brown the pieces all over. Once browned off, remove the lamb from the pan and put in a bowl for later. Keeping the pan on, add the chopped onions and garlic along with cinnamon to the pan and fry for 2-3 minutes. Now you want to just throw in everything else and give it a really good stir, return your lamb to the pan and mix the whole thing together. Keep this heating and continue to stir until the whole mixture is hot through, should take another 3-4 minutes.

Meanwhile, put the kettle on and get your tagine ready (you can use a casserole dish for this too but the tagine really helps to bring out the authentic flavour). Transfer the entire mixture into your tagine and add boiling water until it nearly covers the mixture then season with a bit of salt and pepper. It takes 2 hours in the oven, but you’ll want to give it a stir after an hour.

To serve, I like it with a bit of couscous or some pitta bread and salad. For a party or family affair the tagine can be put on the table and let people help themselves (just be warned the tagine will be hot). Delicious!