Mediterranean Lamb recipe.

 Whenever I eat lamb I am reminded of home. Lamb is a very Mediterranean dish and I personally prefer it over pork. This is a simple recipe but it takes some time for the lamb to cook. Time required to prepare; 15 minutes. Cooking time; 2-3 hours.

We spiced the lamb up with some herbs of our choosing. In this case they were rosemary, pepper, salt, daphne and thyme.

We cut up some potatoes and placed them in a deep pan and we filled the pan with enough water so that it reached the mid-point of the potatoes and lamb. After that we poured some extra virgin olive oil (around half a cup) so that it covered the surface of the water.

The reason for doing that is so we can get the lamb nice and juicy on the inside while crispy on the outside. The oil traps the water from evaporating during the cooking time so the meat isn't dried up.

Place the pan in a preheated oven at 350 degrees Farenheit and let it cook for 2-3 hours, occasionally checking it to make sure it's not burning! I say 2-3 hours because my oven is not the best, heat escapes and the cooking time varies.

 To go with our lamb, I made a nice Greek-style salad. I tore some iceberg lettuce, chopped up some red and orange bell peppers as well as some green onions and lastly, some pine nuts and black olives. I dressed it up with some olive oil, oregano and some freshly-squeezed lemon juice. The lemon juice really goes well with the lamb so it was a perfect match.

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Thanks for the support guys, see you on the next recipe. :)

Haddock delight.

 This is really simple. Using the leftovers from yesterday's pork dish (aka wine sauce and potatoes and whatever else you may have), we added 4 small haddock fillets in our crock-pot along with some vegetables and tandoori powder. Let it cook for 4-6 hours, turn it on high until it warms up and then back to low.

For the rice, we cooked it (1.5 cups) separately while we lightly fried one red pepper, one yellow pepper and about 10 thin asparagus chopped up.

After frying the vegetables for a minute or two, we mixed 2 tablespoons of soysauce and 1 tablespoon unrefined, raw brown sugar and stirred it together. Add a few tablespoons of the rice into the soy sauce mixture and continue stir-frying until it gets covered well.

Add that soy sauce/rice mixture into the rest of the rice and mix.

That's it, you're done! Take a look at more photos. I hope you enjoyed this, give it a try and let me know what you think :)

Rosemary Pork tenderloin in Crock-Pot.

 Here's a nice recipe done in the crock-pot. We got everything ready at night, turned the crock-pot on and left it for 6 hours on low. Today, we turned it on again to warm up for about 2 hours. It was delicious!



For the Marinade

• 1 clove garlic in the marinade used for the pork
• pork tenderloin - enough for 2 people
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1 cup red wine

Start by marinating the pork tenderloin (sliced up) in the wine, vinegar and garlic for about an hour. When marinaded, remove the marinade, lightly fry the tenderloin cuts in a pan with olive oil and add everything (including the left over marinade) to the crock-pot, set it on high until it warms up and then turn it back to low, letting it cook for the night with the rest of the ingredients.

• 4 medium-small potatoes cut up
• 1 onion in half
• rosemary
• thyme
• bay leaf- crushed and spread out
• water
• olive oil - enough to cover the surface
• 1 clove garlic in the potatoes

 Here's the result. Pair it with a homemade salad and use the sauce from the crock-pot as a dressing.  The pork tenderloin is so juicy, soft and just melts in your mouth. The taste of vinegar is not overpowering, it adds a great taste to the meat and potatoes.

Try it out and let me know what you think!

What can I do with leftovers??

 We had some bean sprouts in the fridge that were on the verge of going bad. So what did we do?  We spiced them up and ate them. Of course, sprouts are tasty when they are raw as well, but it was cold today and we wanted an extra 'zing'.

 Sprouts are excellent for you, they are a source of minerals, aminoacids, phytochemicals, proteins and vitamins such as vitamin C, A, B-complex, E, K and choline, which are all needed for us to maintain a good health.

In this case, we added some red wine in a pan along with some curry masala powder ( which in itself is a source of vitamins A, B as well as Iron amongst others) and olive oil. Heat it up and add the sprouts, leave it on until the wine evaporates.

                                        It looks like a bowl of worms but sprouts are yummy!

Remember the crock-pot lamb? This is last of it, we made enough that we kept eatting for three days. Which, if you think about it, means that it cost us about 35 dollars in total, to eat for 3 days, for 2 people. That rounds up at 6 dollars per person, per day.  Not bad at all!

Don't let it fool you, the pitta isn't a big as it looks, it wasn't a large portion of food, but it was more than enough for us.

We just used a lebanese-style pitta, put the remaining lamb and wrapped it. Really simple. We paired it up with the curried sprouts. I had them on the side, but if you want you could put it in the pitta along with the lamb. Yesterday we put the lamb along with some mustard and salad. That was really good too.                               

Tomorrow there'll be a new recipe up so keep an eye out! :)

Slow-cooked lamb with herbs

                                                                    The end result!

I love lamb. Slow-cooked lamb is one of the most delicious meats for me.
Whenever I eat lamb i consider it a treat, since lamb is so expensive, people can't really
afford to have it too often.

In this case, we are using a crock-pot, which is the best thing ever by the way, but if you
dont have one, you can use a regular pot on the stovetop or put it in clay cookware in the oven and leave it to cook for the day (yes, that's right, it takes long to make!). There are many alternatives,
use what you have.

By the way, a great place to get a slow cooker is from Amazon, for anyone who can't find one in a store close to them!


Let's get to it :)

Ingredients

Spices

• Ginger powder
• bay leaves
• rosemary

• Leg of lamb - boneless. I used an entire leg and whatever is leftover will be used to make wraps tomorrow.
• olive oil
• water
• potatoes

 For the salad

• Kale - two pieces
• 1/4 bunch spinach
• 1 onion
• 1 lemon

                                See how half my plate is full of greens? Gotta love the greens!

Instructions

This is a crock-pot recipe. Do you know what a crock pot is?
Wikipedia has the answer haha Crock-Pot
The gist is that it gives me the freedom to put food the night before, turn it on low, get to bed, wake up next morning, go out, come back and the food will be ready and waiting for me to take it out and eat.
I put the leg of lamb in it, put the ginger powder, bay leaves and rosemary. Rosemary is such a nice spice with lamb, i love it. You could also put thyme, instead of rosemary.
Cut the potatoes and spread the bay leaves in and around them.

 

                                               Here's a photo to see the food being cooked.

As you can see, my crock-pot is small. It's 2.5 Quart crockpot from Walmart.  So the next step is different for each of you. Since my pot is small, i only needed half cup of water to almost cover the food. Dont cover all of the meat because the lamb itself has some water itself that will come out while it's cooking.
All the spices you've put in before will be floating in the water and spread around.
Normally, if you leave it just with water, during the process of cooking, all the spices will float to the top and the taste will not be as strong.
What we did here is drizzle olive oil, just enought to cover the surface of the water. This makes the spices "trapped" in the water underneath, so all the taste will come out and the aroma will be heavenly.

That's it for the meat. Turn it on high until it heats up and then on low for the rest of the night. The food will be ready the next day.

Salad
The salad is really simple. It was prepared 5 minutes before we ate. I washed 2 kale branches (?) and a handful of spinach and chopped them up. Chop up one medium onion and take the fresh juice of one lemon and pour it in the salad.
As a dressing  i just used the lemon juice and a couple spoonfuls of the oil from the crock-pot with cooked lamb (the oil retained the aroma of lamb and the herbs).

The end result is a delicious blend of herbs and spices, with the distinct taste of lamb. It's a healthy meal with the proper amouth of starch, protein and vegetables.

Let me know what you think of it and if you have any suggestions comment below! :)