Monday, 8 September 2014

Harvesting for an impromptu lamb casserole

I roasted a shoulder of lamb yesterday when my parents came to visit and I hadn't really thought about how much of it was going to be left over afterwards. I'm not keen on cold lamb, so I decided to make a casserole. My complete failure to anticipate all my leftover lamb meant I didn't have much in the way of suitable vegetables in, so I decided to raid the garden for veg.
The things that looked like they might be big enough to be worth eating were a swede (no photo because the file got corrupted on my camera), a beetroot
and a carrot.
The carrot was actually a lot bigger than I expected at around 15 cm long. I managed to salvage the thumbnails of it and the beetroot and swede from the corrupted photos:


The beetroot, as with the previous ones, though, had had a chunk eaten out of it. I'm clearly not the only one in the garden who likes a bit of beetroot.

Anyhow, the casserole ended up a bit of an odd colour because of the beetroot, but it tasted pretty good, so here's the recipe:

Lamb casserole
Leftover cold lamb and bone from one shoulder of roast lamb
2 tbsp olive oil
3 sprigs of fresh rosemary (or 3 tsp of dried rosemary)
1-2 tbsp plain flour
1 chopped onion (optionally frozen)
about 750 g of potatoes, washed and chopped into bite-sized chunks, but not peeled
1 small beetroot, peeled and chopped small (not sure how important this was to the flavour, the colour would have been better without it)
1 carrot, peeled and sliced
1 very small swede (about 100 g), peeled and chopped
1 400 g can of cannellini beans
1 360 g carton of chopped tomatoes
half a broccoli, chopped into bite size pieces (you can put the stalk in too if you cut the tough outside off, I cut the tender inside bits of the stalk up pretty small so my husband wouldn't notice he was eating it)
salt and pepper (to taste)
1 tsp turmeric (to try and hide the strange colour the beetroot turned it, I'm not sure it made a significant contribution to the taste)
1 tsp paprika (also to try and disguise the beetroot colour, I originally wanted to put smoked paprika in for the smoky flavour, but I couldn't find it).

1. Remove the remaining cold meat from the bone, then remove any fat or obvious gristle from the meat.
2. Separate/bend the bone at the joint so it fits easily into a large saucepan, then add to a saucepan with any leftover fat and gristle. Cover with water and bring to the boil for at least 10 minutes (20-30 mins would be better).
3. Chop the leftover meat into large, bite-sized pieces, removing any fat or gristle you notice and adding it to the stock (the water with the bone in it).
4. Pour olive oil into a metal casserole dish and heat,
5. Add the onions to the casserole dish and stir till soft.
6. Add the chunks of cold lamb and rosemary and stir on a medium/high heat until the outsides of the meat have browned/crisped up. Turn the heat back down.
7. Add the flour and stir.
8. Add the potatoes.
9. Use a colander or sieve to drain the lamb stock into the casserole dish until it just covers the potatoes and lamb (you can always freeze any leftover stock in an ice cube tray). Stir and simmer for about 10 minutes.
10. Add the beetroot, carrot, swede, cannellini beans and tomatoes. Stir and simmer for about 5 minutes.
11. Add broccoli, salt and pepper, turmeric and paprika and simmer until the broccoli is just cooked (probably about 8 minutes).
12. Serve in a bowl with a spoon.

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