Chickpea and Lamb Soup

This one is out of a recipe book of Mediterranean Street Food. It is an awesome book.

I did the lazy version of this recipe. The recipe involves dried chickpeas, and rinsing them and peeling the skins off and so forth. I just used tinned ones, and didn't bother with any of that.

So, throw a tin of chickpeas in a saucepan, with about a cup of diced lamb, a thinly sliced onion, a third of a cup of chopped parsley, a pinch of saffron threads, 1/4 teaspoon ginger, 3/4 teaspoon ground black pepper, a can of tomatoes and 2 quarts of water. Bring to the boil, and then drop in 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter and leave it to boil for an hour.

Stir in 1/4 cup of broken up vermicelli, 1/3 cup cilantro, 3/4 tablespoon of tomato paste and the juice of a lemon. Reduce the heat to low, and leave it to simmer gently while you make the thickening stuff.

Which is just 3 or 4 tablespoons of flour mixed with 2/3 cup of water, which you dribble slowly into the soup, stirring to avoid lumpiness. Add salt to taste and cook till the noodles are done, and then serve hot.

My biggest issue was that I found the vermicelli really hard to work with. Unlike other noodles, it doesn't break up easily, so I ended up putting too much in and it sort of monopolised the soup. But apart from that, it was really very tasty. I love these sort of Med flavours, so I thoroughly enjoyed it.

NOM.

Steak with Green Peppercorn Sauce

Oh. My. Gods. This was AMAZING.

I will admit I played fast and loose with the recipe though. It called for some store bought beef jus, whereas I went online and found a recipe and made my own. I was supposed to make it like hours in advance, but I hadn't, so I improvised. It also called for port, but we didn't have any, so I used red wine.

The jus is just a cup of red wine, half a cup of beef stock and half a cup of chicken stock. In a perfect world, you'd have this stock in your freezer or fridge, because you're such a culinary genius that you keep some handy at all times. Yeah, I am not such a beast. So, I used the cube stock thingies. Add some garlic and some rosemary, and leave it simmering. It's supposed to simmer for like an hour and a half all told, or something. Mine didn't.

While its simmering away, tie a string round the steaks (though I have no idea why or what purpose that serves. Then you season, them, push a teaspoon of butter into each one and brown them in a very hot pan, starting butter side down, and just a minute a side. Take 'em off quick.

I then added the jus to the pan juices, and threw in three tablespoons of peppercorns. Recipe said green ones, but we couldn't find any, so I used mixed peppercorns. I was so not going to sit there sorting the green ones out of the mix.

Then I just let it simmer away until we were ready. I'm not sure how long it cooked for, maybe half an hour all told? There was feeding of the baby and putting him to sleep. The steaks we threw on the barbeque, 3.5 mins a side. They could have been a little rarer for my taste, but I like mine practically mooing still.

Guys. This sauce. Was frikkin' incredible. Rich and tasty and gorgeous. The peppercorns are amazing with the steak. It was an unqualified success. Awesome.

NOM. I have actually written what I did so that you can make it too, it was SO good.

Ratings:

Me: Absolutely thumbs up. Great.

Appreciative Husband: Enthusiastic Thumbs up.

Fussy Teen: Thumbs up.

Spinach and Goats Cheese Stuffed Lamb

So this one I was very much looking forward to. I have never been a huge fan of spinach, but even so. Look at that title! It sounds amazing.

And it was. But it was quite an adventure.

You see, what you're meant to do is get a rack of lamb ribs, gently cut the meat partially away from the bone, stuff it with the spinach and cheese mix, then coat it in a layer of bread crumbs, rosemary and butter. Roast, carve, TADA!

Only, we went shopping for this on a Sunday night. In Port Chalmers. Which meant there were no lamb ribs, so we bought barbeque chops. There was no goats cheese (wtf?), so we ended up getting goatsmilk feta. And we couldn't get sourdough bread, so I used what was left of the last loaf of Alec's Patented Homemade Bread.

So, I sliced the meat away from the chops, making little round holes in them, stuffed the holes full of the stuffing (which was just blanched spinach, the feta and lemon zest), pressed the breadcrumb mixture onto the meat part of the chops, and stuck it in the oven for 20 minutes. (This while juggling bathing the baby and putting him to bed. Yay for my husband, I say!)

Guys, I was sceptical. I didn't really think it was going to work very well. But Oh. My. Gods.

It came out golden brown and gorgeous. NOTHING like as pretty as the picture in the book, but nevertheless. The spinach, cheese and lemon combined BRILLIANTLY with the lamb. The rosemary got kind of lost in the breadcrumb mixture, but still. REALLY tasty.

Well, I thought so, and husband thought so too. Fussy teen hated it. I guess the spinach was too much.

I have to admit, I have never been a big fan of spinach, but this recipe may have changed my mind about it. I may have to give spinach more credit than I have in the past.

We served it with a fresh salad, and it rocked.

Ratings:

Me: Enthusiastic thumbs up. Best recipe so far in this experiment.

Appreciative Husband: Thumbs up.

Fussy Teen: Thumbs down. Bad spinach. No biscuit.

Next: Steak with green peppercorn sauce. Mmmmmmmm yum.