Main: Pulled Lamb Braised with Veggies
Given that fall's upon us, I wanted to try a nice, hearty dish for the main course, so I broke out the trusty crock pot to make some slow-cooked lamb. I chopped up a bunch of veggies -- pumpkin, sweet potato, apple, carrots, green pepper, onion -- into big chunks, grabbed some raisins and zested a lemon. These went into the pot along with a 1 3/4 lb boneless leg of lamb:
I've had good luck with North African tagine-type seasonings with braised lamb, and I thought that might go well with the pumpkin also. So I ground up some coriander seeds, cumin, a few cloves and lots of black pepper, and threw that in, along with some cinnamon, paprika, ground ginger, nutmeg and red pepper flakes.
For liquid, I used a can of beef broth, a half cup of white wine, a little orange juice and some water. I set the crock pot on high, let it go about 2 hours, then put it on low for another four. My favorite thing about crock pot cooking is the amazing smell that permeates the whole house, and this dish didn't disappoint. Here it is toward the end of cooking:
And after I took it out of the pot:
The lamb was falling-apart tender, so I took half of it and pulled it apart with forks, in a pulled-pork style:
This would go into the main course, while the other half got saved for delicious weekend leftovers.
Main: Pumpkin Dumplings
These followed the same basic idea as ElSapo's gnocchi, though they're considerable less refined. The "dough" was more like a thick batter, so rather than rolling it out and cutting it, I just spooned it into the pot. I also wimped out and used canned pumpkin for this part of the meal.
½ can solid packed pumpkin (unsweetened)
1 egg
½ tsp salt
1/8 tsp baking powder
½ cup flour
1 tbsp grated parmesan
Grated nutmeg
Cinnamon
Allspice
I combined everthing in a mixing bowl
then dropped spoonfuls of the mixture into a pot of boiling water.
After cooking and draining, I fried them up with a little sage butter:
Main: Toasted Pumpkin Seeds
As a garnish for the main course, I toasted some fresh pumpkin seeds in a hot pan until they popped:
I then combined the pulled lamb, pumpkin dumplings and toasted seeds in a pan and heated them through:
I then plated and surrounded the lamb-and-dumpling mix with veggies that had cooked with the lamb and some of the reduced liquid from the crock pot:
Mrs. Weir thought I hit a home run with this. The lamb was super-tender but not overcooked, and the tagine spices worked very well. The veggies really absorbed the flavor of the meat and the spices. And the dumplings turned out better than I had expected. I was happy about using three kinds of pumpkin in this dish -- the pumpkin pieces cooked with the lamb, the dumplings, and the toasted seeds.