I’m going to put this down as a casserole recipe but really this is about the red wine sauce and how damn good it tastes with lamb. In fact if I was brave enough to cook up anything other than diced lamb, I’d say this would make a fantastic lamb shank dish with steamed vegetables and mashed potato, drizzled (or drowned) in this red wine sauce… well anyway, here’s the casserole version.
500g of Diced Lamb (large chunks if cutting from the bone).
2 Rashers of Thick Cut Back Bacon, diced (or basically 1/3 of a pack of bacon)
1 Onion (or Shallots of you’re posh)
2 Garlic cloves crushed
2 Carrots
1/2 a pack of button Mushrooms (or a few normal mushrooms cut into chunks)
250ml of Red Wine
250ml of stock (I use 1/2 beef and 1/2 chicken – it works for me and never have lamb stock around anyway)
2 Limes (or Lemon juice)
Tomato Puree (1 – 2 table spoons)
Salt and Pepper
Rosemary and Thyme
Set up
1 large frying pan to brown the ingredients and then a large casserole dish that can be placed on the hob or a very big pot.
Cut the Carrots and Onion into chunks. Dice the Bacon. Salt and Pepper the raw Lamb (I like to use quite a lot of salt and pepper here, a good table spoon of each). Boil the kettle and stir up the stock.
Ready to go
Heat some olive oil in the frying pan and drop in the Lamb, fry for 5 minutes until browned. Move the Lamb into the casserole dish with a bit of olive oil and leave on a low simmer (which will be more like a sizzle for now).
The frying pan should still have plenty of oil in it and place back on the heat. Add the onion, garlic and the bacon and fry for 5 minutes until the bacon starts to crisp and the onion starts to brown.
Then move the onion/bacon to the casserole dish and stir in with the lamb. Add a heaped table spoon of plain white flour and stir in, this should soak up the excess oil and coat everything in a sticky mixture which means you’re ready to add the liquid. Immediately start pouring in the stock while stiring the contents of casserole dish (but pour slowly to gradually build a sauce from the sticky mess).
You should end up with a reasonably thick brown sauce – time to add in the wine. Just pour in the wine and a heaped table spoon of tomato puree and mix well. This should thin the sauce and now you can turn up the heat a little to bring it to a hot simmer or a low boil.
Here is where I add the mushrooms and carrots to the frying pan to give them a quick blast. After 5 minutes add the remaining veg to the casserole dish, squeeze in the limes and sprinkle in the rosemary and thyme, give it a good stir and leave to simmer for 30 – 45 minutes depending on how impatient you are. It’s worth mentioning that this is no where near long enough if you want really tender lamb, for a dinner party or if you’re trying to impress then increase the liquids to 300ml and leave on the low boil for 30 minutes before adding the rest of the veg then move the casserole dish into the oven for 45 minutes on 180 celcius.
I forgot to mention the chili powder – just a sprinkle as you don’t really want to taste it but it does seem to bring out the flavours.
I’d serve with some steamed broccolli and mashed 0r sauteed potatoes.
