Life is still crazy, so many food adventures have not made it into the food diary. This past weekend was nice. As a kind of last minute decision I decided to cook some Algerian food on Saturday. The one cookbook I use for north African recipes is the wonderful Great book of Couscous by Copeland Marks. Funny thing is I’ve never made couscous from this book. Despite it’s title there are many, many other types of dishes, especially tangines(sp) (Stew like dish) and lots of salads and vegetable dishes. The cooking, for the most part, is fairly simple, but quite tasty. There are many fantastic lamb dishes, and as I am big fan of sheep meat, I was drawn to one this Saturday. The simple recipe I found included a simple salad that was to be served with the dish. It was supposed to be served with cauliflower fritters, three recipes in one, always a good thing.
One of the great things about living in the DC area is the number of Halal butchers. Since I love lamb, it’s great to be able to go to a real butcher, find out when the meat was killed, and have it prepared the way I want. Since many Americans don’t eat lamb frequently, lamb in grocery stores tends to be not as fresh as it could be. The Muslim community, especially those from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, eat lamb frequently. This means a Halal butcher shop usually has very fresh lamb.
Another thing about lamb, I don’t like it rare. Pink lamb does not taste as good to me as fully cooked lamb. I mostly stew lamb at home, i.e. I make dishes with the meat braised in a liquid, such as korma, “curry”, etc. For this I like to use lamb shoulder, cut up with the bone. I love the bone, and the marrow. Bone makes the sauce taste great. You can’t get lamb shoulder cut into small pieces with the bone at the local supermarket (although I have been seeing goat meat cut up this way, which is great). The Halal butcher will do this for me, cut off the fat and use his cool electric saw to cut the meat into small pieces.
The dish I made Saturday was relatively simple. It did call for dried chickpeas to be soaked overnight. That wasn’t going to happen, so before I went shopping I put them in a pot with some water, covered, brought them to a boil and boiled for about 2 minutes and then turned off the heat and left them covered while I went and bought my other ingredients (it’s the quick-soak method). When I returned, I sautéed the lamb in some butter with some shallots till everything was nice and brown. Then I added some water, some fresh tomato, the chickpeas, a pinch of cinnamon, some saffron (mmm), salt and pepper, and cooked it covered for an hour. Really easy.
I didn’t find any cauliflower, but remembered I had some small eggplants from the farmers market, so I made the fritters with the eggplant. I got some excellent fresh pita bread from the awesome Middle Eastern bakery/market nearby, and made the salad, which consisted of fresh tomato, cucumber, onion, salt, lemon juice and olive oil. Everything was great.
I am now officially tired of writing about this, I need to go shopping and cook tonight. I may try something Japanese.