lamb & chickpea pilaf

After yesterdays exertions today is all about slowly making our way home from St Albans. Naturally this does involve a certain amount of paying lip service to the local customs, although I do restrain myself to only one (and half) of Greg's bacon sandwiches for lunch, and one post-walk gingerbread man.

Of more culinary note was the fact all the blackberry bushes in the woods near them were heaving with ripe berries, which the kids took full advantage of. Even better, there was also a load of Blackthorns laden with bitter, purple sloes. They're a few weeks off being ready for making into gin as you've really got to wait until the first frosts, but I've got my eye on another trip up north fairly soon...

Back home we've 800g of chopped lamb neck clogging up the fridge, which would've got used on Friday if we hadn't ended up at Kendra's instead. I quite fancy doing the Yianni (slow-cooked lamb with sour cherries) again, but it takes ages. And we don't have any cherries.

Instead, with one eye on possible cooking time whilst we're doing the whole bath-book-bed routine, and another on the huge cost of Ras El Hanout, we revisit a moroccan-ish although actually Turkish lamb stew from April.


Strangely it's better than I remember, but maybe that's because I doubled up on the spice, otherwise it's quite delicate. Also, if I don't have sour cherries in the cupboard, why do I think I've got lots of apricots?

Food of the Milos
He didn't really eat much for breakfast at Greg and Spandy's, vaguely pursuing some rice pops before making a pirate boat with Harry, and having odd bits of marmite sandwich shoved down his throat in between digging for treasure. For lunch he had mainly cake, some cheese, ham and fruit, and for dinner he had Bill's tomato risotto.

sources
lamb & chickpea pilaf - Delicious, March 2010, p25