Showing posts with label easy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label easy. Show all posts

Monday, October 29, 2012

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!







Monday, October 22, 2012

French Apple Cake




This is a recipe from the Full Circle Farm blog and here is the link to the original http://www.fullcircle.com/goodfoodlife/2012/10/16/french-apple-cake-recipe/#s.achlcwfvyayaa and it's really a great and easy cake to make.  We liked it so much we are thinking about using it for Thanksgiving instead of an apple pie!  I made a couple adjustments to fit ingredients I had on hand of course...

Ingredients:

3/4 cup flour (I used spelt)
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
pinch of salt
4 large apples pealed and cut up into 1 inch cubes (you can use any apples you want including a combination of different types)
2 large eggs
1/2-3/4 cup sugar depending on your preference for sweetness (I used 1/2 cup and it was plenty sweet with the apples I used)
3 T dark rum (I used coconut rum)
1 tsp vanilla extract
8 T (1 stick) melted

Directions:

1. Grease a 9 inch cake pan and preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in a small bowl.
3. In a medium bowl whisk eggs until they are foamy, add sugar, rum, and vanilla.
4. Add half of flour mixture to egg mixture and combine, then add half of melted butter, then rest of flour mixture, and then rest of melted butter, mix well.  Batter will be smooth and thick.
5. Fold in apples and mix well.
6. Pour mixture into the cake pan and even out top with a spatula.
7. Bake for 50 or 60 minutes or until top of cake is golden brown.
8.  Let cool for 10 minutes before slicing and serving.  Would be delicious with some homemade vanilla ice cream. Enjoy!

Note:  This is such a basic recipe I feel that you could easily substitute other fruits for the apples if you wanted to.  I'm sure I will be experimenting more in the future with this recipe...