Saturday, July 25, 2015

Moroccan Saddle of Lamb with Pomegranate Couscous

It was a beautiful Dutch summer evening, nice and warm, with a jentle breeze of cooler air blowing through the garden. These evenings are rare but precious, they last long and make for lovely nights sitting outside, enjoying pleasurable conversations with a good glass of wine and a luscious plate of food.

I was lucky to have already been doing groceries for a recipe I found in the Delicious. I had bought earlier this week. It had a lot of inspiring recipe's, but since it has been a long time since we've been eating lamb my eye fell on a lambchop recipe with pomegranate. Pomegranate is one of my favourite ingredients, when I have plenty of time to cook. When opened up, the seeds look like jewels, so pretty! And they have this nice fresh-sweet taste, that enlivens many savoury dishes. The only adverse of pomegranates is that it takes me ages to get all the seeds out. Maybe I'm not doing it the right way, but I often spent at least ten minutes or more to get all the little jewels out without mixing it with the inbetween whites.

Luscious our plate of food was!


Moroccan Saddle of Lamb with Pomegranate Couscous
Lamskoteletjes met granaatappel op z'n marokkaans
Delicious. augustus 2015, page 32
Author Valli Little

Ingredients for 2p (or more)
4 Saddles of lamb
2 Spoons of ras el hanout (moroccan spice-mix)
80ml Olive oil
200g Couscous
Zest of 1 organic lemon
1 pinch of salt
150ml chickenstock
60ml molasses of pomegranate
1 Spoonful of sugar
A bit of aluminium foil
1 handfull of freshly roasted and chopped pistachios
1 (or more) hands of freshly chopped mintleaves
Seeds of 1 pomegranate
2 teaspoons of rosewater

Mix 1 1/2 spoons of the ras el hanout with most of the olive oil, and mix with the saddles of lamb. Put it aside for 30 minutes.
Roast and chop the pistacchios. Take the seeds out of the pomegranate. Grate the lemonzest. Boile some water.
Mix the couscous, lemonzest, salt and the rest of the ras el hanout. Add 250ml of boiling water, cover with a dishcloth and put aside for 5 minutes.
Mix the stock, pomegranate molasses and sugar on a low fire and leave it on untill you have a slightly viscous fluid.
Fry the saddles of lamb on a grillplate, bbq or in an ordinary frying pan for 2 minutes each side and put aside, loosely packed in aluminium foil.
Stirr the couscous with a fork, add most of the pistachios, mint and pomegranate seeds.
Pour the juice of the lamb in the sauce, add the rosewater and the last spoon of olive oil.
Plate your couscous, put the lamb on top and finish with the sauce, and the extra mint, pistachios and pomegranateseeds.

Score: 4 out of 5
Tip: Nice change of taste for lamb, couscous also nice as a salad without the lamb. Could use more vegetables/herbs.
Time: Original recipe 25min + waiting for 30 minutes. It took me about 50 minutes, because a lot of the waiting time can be used for the preparation of the other components.
Degree of difficulty: Moderate
Amount of work vs waiting: Continuous work during waiting time
Ideal for: Romantic dinner, main course at a small dinner party, bbq



No comments:

Post a Comment