Wednesday 16 May 2012

Middle Eastern flavours

I have a number of great recipe books for Moorocon and Turkish cooking.The photography in my books are a visual feast in themselves. I am a big fan of middle eastern flavours and of course many of the dishes use vegetables and pulses so are suitable to serve to vegetarians
My good friend Deb cooked this dish for us while on our stay in the Tekapo bach. She cannot remember where she got the recipe from so my apologies for the lack of reference.
I love using new ingredients and while Pomegranate Molasses had been in my pantry for a while I was waiting for the right recipe to try it.
Debs Middle Eastern Lamb
1 leg of lamb
1tbsp olive oil
2 red onions finely chopped
250ml beef stock
Paste
2tbsp pomegranate molasses
3 tbsp tomato paste
2 tsp ground cumin
4 cloves of garlic ground with a 1tsp salt

Heat oil in pan, brown leg of lamb all over and set aside. Saute onions and place in large meat dish. Pour stock over onions. Mix paste ingredients and spread over the lamb and place in dish. 
Cook for 160 degrees Celsius for about 4 hours.
We used an oven bag which worked really well (just put onions and stock in bag, then pasted meat), the meat just fell off the bone, no need to carve!
I have also tried this recipe with lamb loin chops which worked well too, just lessen the time cooked to about 1 hour or less (depending on the cut of lamb chop).

We had mixed roast vegetables as a side dish, you could include a green vegetable like broccoli to add extra colour to the plate.

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