badseed1980 | Thing Nineteen: Moroccan Lamb

I wanted to make my awesome winter vegetable soup for the big potluck. I really did. But someone was already making a butternut squash soup (the basis of my soup is winter squash), and another person was making a "hearty veggie soup." Hmph. There went my idea. After a little creative flailing, I decided to make a Moroccan-ish lamb dish instead. I figured it was something that could be impressive enough to wow the people who'd never had my cooking before, and hey, LAMB. Gotta love those baby sheep.

I had some frozen lamb stew meat on the bone from a batch I'd bought not long ago. It wasn't enough for the dish, so I went out and bought a boneless leg of lamb and a couple of shoulder steaks, both of which I cut into cubes. I wanted SOME bones to help lend flavor to the dish, but didn't want to serve pieces of bone in the dish, so having most of it be boneless was helpful.

I started out by trimming most of the fat off the meat. Before you get horrified, remember that lamb can have some quite large bits of fat on the outside of the meat, and I didn't want a huge pool of grease floating at the top of the dish. I did, however, reserve some of the fat. I rendered it down in my trusty Le Creuset. I used that fat to brown the lamb chunks, including those that were still on the bone. There was enough that I had to do several batches.

I set the meat aside, and used the fat that was left (plus a bit of olive oil) to caramelize some onions. Do you have any idea how good onions caramelizing in lamb fat and olive oil will make your kitchen smell? If not, I strongly recommend you try it. When those onions turned a luscious dark brown, I added a cubed eggplant and a bunch of cremini mushrooms cut into quarters, along with a couple of smashed cloves of garlic. Umm. The steam from the cooking veggies helped to deglaze the pot. Oh yeah, that's also when I added the second most important ingredient: ras el hanout. This is a Moroccan spice blend whose name means "top of the shelf." Basically, it's a mixture of all the best spices. I use this recipe, usually tripling it to make a good-sized jar, and leave out the salt so I can add that independently.

When the veggies started to get tender, I dumped the lamb back in, and added a 28-oz. can of diced tomatoes to the pot. That's when I started adding the most important ingredient: time. I let that stuff simmer with the cover on for almost two hours. I took the cover off after that, and let it cook about another half hour, so that the sauce could reduce and thicken. I wanted this to be a dish that could be eaten on a plate, not just in a bowl. Finally, I took out those pieces of lamb that were attached to bone, and cut them off the bone to make it easier to eat.

The end result was perfect. The veggies were super-tender, and the sauce was amazing: rich, lamb-y, and beautifully spiced. It got lots of compliments at the potluck, and a lot of it got eaten (which impressed me, considering how many dishes there were, and how many of the people there were kids who aren't often likely to enjoy spicy lamb dishes). I still had about a quart left, though, so I brought that home and stuck it in the freezer. It will be a nice treat to pull out in a couple weeks or so, for an instant slow-cooked dinner on a chilly night.