The biggest news in the last year was the arrival of Monkey Junior at the end of June last year (fortunately the renovations were mostly complete). He is a gorgeous little boy and the Monkey loves him dearly. He doesn’t love food quite as much as she does but I’m rising to the challenge of trying to find meals to feed a baby, a toddler and adult all one go - hopefully the subject of a future blog...
Winter is upon us here in Sydney so the slow cooker has come out of its summer hibernation. I made a giant lamb ragu a couple of weeks ago to double as a birthday dinner for our friend Fletch who adores lamb (and eats four times what a normal person eats so it had to be big) and also as a take out meal for my neighbour who just had twins. After they both asked me for the recipe, I decided it was time to get back on the blog. So here it is – my lamb ragu recipe enough for 8 adults at least. Easy to halve the recipe but just using one lamb shoulder but it seems a shame to not make enough for leftovers and freezing to get you through the winter although you could be restricted by the size of your cooking vessel.
The instructions below are for a slow cooker but you could also cook it in a well sealed oven dish in a low oven.
Ingredients
2 Lamb Shoulders (bone in, excess fat removed) – mine were about 1kg each
3 large onions – chopped
4 carrots – chopped
4 celery sticks – chopped
4 garlic cloves – finely sliced
100g chopped pancetta/lardons/bacon (optional)
2 tablespoons tomato puree
250ml white wine
3 tins chopped tomatoes
Handful of fresh rosemary, chopped
Sea Salt
Black Pepper
Olive Oil
Grated Parmesan to serve
In a large frying pan, brown the meat in a little olive oil, place into the slow cooker. Brown the vegetables (apart from the garlic) and the pancetta in the frying pan. Add the garlic and tomato puree, cook for about a minute and add the white wine. Cook until the wine has reduced a little and throw it all into the slow cooker, adding the chopped tomatoes and rosemary. Cover and cook on low* for about 7 hours – a couple more won’t hurt at all. If I’m home I poke the meat a bit to help it start to break into the sauce from about the 5 hour point. When its cooked to your satisfaction, fish out the bones and season to taste before serving with parmesan, pasta and a green salad.
*Different slow cookers vary in terms of heat. With my new slow cooker, I find I need to add the ingredients hot or pop it onto high for the first hour to get the food bubbling or it’ll take a ages to get to that stage on low but I didn’t need to do this with my old one.
Sorry - no pic of the lamb ragu so I thought I'd include one of my rice krispie birthday cake pics instead:
