Roast Lamb

Until this year, I hardly ever cooked meat for myself at university. In my first two years I lived in nominally kosher places and therefore could only buy and cook kosher meat, which is both expensive and hard to get hold of. Most of the meat I ate was part of leftovers brought up from home. And then after that, meat was still expensive, and I like vegetarian food. And a lot of my leftovers from home were still meat. But this year things have changed. And the key to that change is the boyfriend. We eat together a lot of the time, and he likes meat. So, I eat more meat. There is also the fact that I have a smaller freezer, and can rely less on mum's cooking!

This weekend, Marks and Spencers were doing a £15 deal - a meal for four involving meat, a side dish, a dessert and wine. There were 5 of us for dinner - including 3 hungry boys (well men, I guess) - so we opted to get two. We bought two shoulders of lamb, with roast potatoes, mixed veg, chocolate pudding and an apple and pear tart. And wine, obviously. I actually thought that, whilst most of it was good value, the side dishes were a bit lacking - we needed more vegetables. But anyway, it was a lovely meal - and all of my housemates were in for the first time which was particularly nice. And we definitely got through more than those 2 bottles of wine!

We had a decent sized piece of lamb left over, and I decided to use that up last night. I had some mashed roast butternut squash as well, left over from home, so thought I'd so some kind of vaguely Moroccan style curry.

Chopped leftover lamb - apologies, photo is from my iphone

First I chopped and fried an onion, some garlic and some ginger paste.
I added some cumin seeds.
Then I added mushrooms (a handful) and the squash.
Then tomato puree (two tablespoons) and some water
Then I added spices: ground corriander, paprika, salt and pepper, ras-al-hanout, cinnamon and some honey.
I cooked that for a few minutes before adding the lamb, because I didn't want the lamb to be over cooked - I like it quite rare.
It was really good, but needed some more squash I think.

Cooking with Lentils

In amongst the chaos of the last week, which I mentioned in my previous post, I have done some cooking. I've done less blogging, partly because most of my time has been taken up by the new boy, and partly because of the continuous shuttling between houses!

Last week when I was at home, mum was planning what to make for her departmental party, which was being held here. She decided on a mozarella, tomato and avocado salad, and a couscous and roasted veg salad to use up some left overs.

I also made her a lentil and squash salad, that we found in the Good Food magazine

Unfortunately, they haven't posted the recipe online, but I shall summarize it here for you:

Peel butternut squash and chop into wedges. They think this hsould take about 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 hours
-I cheated and peeled it once it was partly roasted, because once the squash was quite soft, it was easier to get the skin off. I also considered chopping it once it was softer, but actually my squash wasn't too bad.
-In the recipe they used 2 squash, which they reckoned were 800g or 1lb 12oz each. Our squash were about twice that size!

Also roast a couple of red onions that have been thinly sliced. You may want to add these part way through the squash cooking as they take less time.

Cook 200g green or puy lentils (or 400g if you have giant squash like I did!) according to the packet instructions and drain.

Mix squash, red onions and lentils together, and add salt.

Combine equal quantities of harissa, lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil, and dress when you are ready to serve.

The magazine suggests serving at room temperature or hot. It also suggests that you combine the salad with lamb's lettuce.

It would equally be good with added cheese, probably goat's cheese (always good with squash) or parmesan, and in that case, using balsamic vinegar to dress.

It was a very good salad - I didn't get to eat it at the party, but I was very pleased to have left overs when I got back from Oxford a couple of days later. So I'm submitting it to My Legume Love Affair: MLLA-13 conceived by Susan of the "Well-Seasoned Cook" and currently being hosted by Sunshinemom of "Tongue Ticklers". My Legume Love Affair is a great event! If you haven't already discovered it, I highly recommend it!

Pasta Time

So I've been following Presto Pasta Nights for a while now, and as it's the 100'th this week, I thought it was high time I joined in. I even took a photo of my pasta, but sadly, being a student, I don't really have beautiful dishes.

My pasta dish was roasted squash, leeks and red onion, with goats cheese:

I had half a left over Sweet Mama Squash, that mum had given me from her veggie box, however this recipe works very well with Butternut Squash too.

I roasted my red onion and leeks, adding the cubed squash later as it was already cooked. Once nicely roasted, I added the veg to some tricolour pasta spirals, and then crumbled on the goats cheese. There's a little spinach hiding in there too, and I love this recipe with a bag of fresh wilted spinach added to it.

So I'll send this to Ruth and finally enter the world of Presto Pasta!