Lamb With Chestnuts
Equipment
- Tagine
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons smen or ghee
- 2 onions finely chopped
- 4 garlic cloves finely chopped
- 25 g fresh root ginger peeled and finely chopped
- 1½ teaspoons cumin seeds
- 1,5 cinnamon sticks
- 500 g lean lamb cut into bite-size pieces
- 600 ml lamb or chicken stock
- 450 g shelled chestnuts
- 1½ tablespoons honey
- seeds of 1 pomegranate with the pith removed
- To garnish
- small bunch of mint finely chopped
- small bunch of coriander finely chopped
Instructions
- Heat the smen, or ghee in the base of a tagine or a large, heavy-based saucepan over a medium heat, stir in the onions, garlic, ginger and cumin seeds and cook for 3 minutes to let the flavours mingle.
- Add the cinnamon sticks, stir in the lamb and cook for a further 1,5 minutes.
- Pour in the stock and bring to the boil, then reduce the heat, cover and cook gently for about 1 hour to cook the lamb and flavour the stock.
- Add the chestnuts and honey, topping up the liquid if necessary to just cover the lamb and chestnuts.
- Re-cover and cook gently for a further 20–25 minutes until the chestnuts are tender.
- Stir in most of the pomegranate seeds, season to taste and cook, covered, for 5 minutes.
- Garnish with the mint and coriander and the remaining pomegranate seeds.
- Serve with couscous, if liked.
Notes & Wine Advice
For lamb with chestnuts & pomegranate syrup,
make as for Lamb with chestnuts, replacing the honey with 2 tablespoons pomegranate syrup. Omit the pomegranate seeds and stir some of the chopped mint and coriander into the tagine for the last 5 minutes of the cooking time.