Lamb Ragout

We recently purchased a half a lamb and have quite a bit of lamb to eat so I've been looking for lamb recipes recently.  I stumbled upon this recipe at Food.com (http://www.food.com/recipe/lamb-ragout-28726)  and it is really a great and basic ragout.  I made a few changes to use ingredients I had on hand.  I also boiled down the sauce a lot to make it a thicker sauce for my pasta.  It was really delicious with my homemade spaghetti pasta and some freshly grated parmesan!

Ingredients:

1-2 lbs lamb chops or other lamb meat
1 T butter
1 T olive oil
3-5 cloves minced garlic depending on your love of garlic
1 tsp dried rosemary or 2 tsp fresh rosemary
1/2 cup red or white wine (I used a Cabernet Sauvignon)
1 14oz can broth (I used water and chicken broth concentrate)
3 T tomato paste
1 14oz can of diced tomatoes (including juice) or 4 Roma tomatoes diced
1/4 cup olives (I used the garlic stuffed olives from the jar because that was what I had)
1/2 tsp fresh oregano chopped (optional)
1/2-1 tsp dried parsley
1/4 tsp onion powder (optional)
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1.  Heat butter and oil in a pan and brown the lamb on each side.
2.  Add the garlic, rosemary, broth, tomato paste, and wine and simmer the lamb for about 1 hour.
3.  Boil water for desired pasta and cook pasta (amount depends on how much sauce to pasta ratio you like, I used fresh pasta and it ended up being two meals for two people and the pasta alone filled a medium sauce pan when cooked)
4.  When done remove lamb and cool, pick meat off the bone and remove fat.  Break lamb meat into small pieces shredding as much as possible.  Add shredded lamb back to the wine sauce in the pan.
5.  Add tomatoes, olives, oregano, parsley, and onion powder to the wine sauce in the pan and increase heat to medium high and cook down the sauce to desired thickness.  I really cooked down the sauce because I didn't want my pasta to be in liquid.
6.  Add salt and pepper to taste for the pasta sauce and then combine pasta with the ragout sauce.  Serve with shredded Parmesan.  Enjoy!

I really like that this recipe doesn't use as many tomatoes as my usual spaghetti sauce and it was just as satisfying at spaghetti.  You could also easily add mushrooms, different kinds of olives, larger pieces of garlic, or even vegetables like zucchini at the end.  My husband and I actually both liked it better that my spaghetti, so for us this recipe is a keeper!