Lamb necks, spiced and
cooked slowly is one of my favourite dishes and is traditionally what is eaten
at Eid al Fitr (festival of sweets) at home with family and guests. Arabic food
tends to have two strands. There are traditional dishes cooked in the
home (almost always time consuming and / or fiddly) and then there is
the mezze and kebabs, which is served in restaurants. There are overlaps but I
am yet to taste good traditional home dishes in a restaurant. It just does not
lend itself to the speed and quantities required in a restaurant generally. Asfur is a very important ingredient
in the lamb necks; it comes from a part of the saffron plant and is used as a
cheaper substitute in Middle Eastern cooking, to flavour rice and
meat. You can buy it in Arabic / Turkish shops.
Serves 3 approximately
Ingredients
Lamb necks (900g) 6
pieces (as above)
Do not buy them in a
supermarket; they will be over priced and the portion stingy. I got 6 large
meaty chunks for five quid at my local butchers. Ask for pieces about the size
of a fist. Small enough to pick up without looking like a caveman, big enough
to get good bits of sticky cartilage and marrow to suck on.
Marinade ingredients
Cardamom
pods ground - 2 heaped tsp
All Spice berries ground
- 1 heaped tsp
Cinammon – 1 heaped tsp
Asfur ground - 3 heaped
tsp
Black pepper
ground - 1 heaped tsp
Combine all the above
spices and then rub all the above on your meat and leave overnight (try for 24
hours) so that it has time to take in all the flavours.
Other ingredients
Olive Oil
Measuring jug of water
Salt
Lightly toasted pine
nuts - 100g
Yoghurt (300g)
One clove of
crushed garlic
Handful chopped coriander
Half a cucumber peeled
& chopped
White basmati rice
(Half a cup per person)
Asfur - 2tsp
Once the lamb
necks have had time to marinate heat two tablespoons
of oil in a large casserole pot (with a lid) over a high
heat. Brown the meat. You will need to turn it and make
sure they are all sitting flat in the pot.
Pour cold water
carefully in to the pot, until it comes to half way up the meat. This when I
did it was approximately 300 ml but it depends on the size / depth of your pot.
Don't drown the meat. Add two teaspoons of salt to the pot and one teaspoon of
pepper.
Turn it down to a very
gentle heat, put the lid on the pot and let the meat cook slowly for three to
four hours. Check it every hour or so to make sure there is still liquid in the
pan (keep it to halfway up the meat). By this point they should be beatifully
tender but still attached to the bones with some lovely meat juices in the
bottom of the pan.
To serve
Rice
Soak it in water for an
hour, drain and rinse it off. Put the rice in a pot (with a tight fitting
lid) and carefully pour in fresh cold water so that it comes to approximately
one cm above the rice. Add to the pan; a teaspoon of salt, 2 teaspoons of
asfur, 1 tbsp of olive oil and stir.
Turn on the heat and
wait until the water starts to bubble. As soon as it does turn
it down to a very gentle heat and put the lid on. The rice should take about
ten minutes to cook. It should be soft but firm and a light yellow colour. If
some of the spice has not mixed with the rice evenly, stir it quickly. To make
it in to the below shape I used a small, round drinking glass as a
mould, put the rice in it, patted it down to compact it, pulled it off
gently and voila. It won't work if your rice is soggy just to warn you.
Yoghurt Salad
Put the yoghurt in
to a bowl and stir in one teaspoon of salt, the crushed garlic clove, the
handful of chopped coriander and peeled cucumber (small cubes). Drizzle with
olive oil.
Serve your lamb
necks and rice with the toasted pine nuts, yoghurt salad and some of the
cooking juices from the bottom of the pot (you can reduce to a nice sticky lamb
‘gravy’ but increasing the heat under the pan and stirring rapidly.
