Pork & Prune Stew with Turmeric Rice

This is an old family recipe, adapted from a lamb and prune stew that came from my father-in-law Jim’s recipe files that he collected from the defunct New York Herald Tribune some fifty odd years ago.

The original recipe called for lamb and I substituted pork because pork is a leaner cut of beef and I thought it would make it a bit lighter. I also made a couple of other subtle changes such as substituting beef broth for the water that was called for in the original recipe because I believe it added more flavor and I also added a splash of red wine to the broth.

I encourage you, if you like lamb, to definitely use the lamb. If Jim were alive today, I think he would approve of my subtle changes with the beef broth and wine, but I also think, no I know that he would have preferred the lamb.

Over the years the people who market dried fruit changed dried prune’s name to dried plums, probably wisely, so if you go to the market and can’t find prunes, look for plums.

I’ve chosen turmeric rice to accompany the stew instead of plain white rice to give the dish a bit of color and a more distinctive flavor. If you’ve never cooked with turmeric, take note that it stains absolutely everything it comes in contact with a bright yellow, including your fingers, your kitchen towels, and counter. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Jim's Pork & Prune Stew
Adapted from Jim Hoffer’s recipe files clipped from the New York Herald Tribune – serves 4

1 ¼ pounds pork tenderloin or lamb, trimmed of fat and cut in 1”cubes
3 tablespoons olive oil
½ cup chopped onion
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme or ¼ teaspoons dried thyme
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
1 tablespoon all purpose flour
3 cups boiling beef bouillon or water
A healthy splash of dry red wine
1 stick cinnamon
12 pitted dried prunes or dried plums, cut in half
1 teaspoon grated orange rind plus more for garnish

In a Dutch oven brown the meat in the hot oil. Take care not to crowd the pan. If necessary, brown the meat in batches. Add the onions and cook to soften. Remove from the heat and stir in the salt, thyme and flour.  Add the boiling water and stir to mix thoroughly. Add a healthy splash or red wine and the stick of cinnamon, cover and simmer for two hours. Add prunes and grated orange rind and simmer for an additional 20 minutes. Garnish with additional grated orange rind and serve right away with turmeric rice, or if you prefer, white rice.

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Turmeric Rice or Riz au Tumerique
From The 60 Minute Gourmet by Pierre Franey – serves 4

2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons finely chopped onion
1 small clove garlic, finely minced
1 cup white rice (I used Uncle Ben’s converted rice)
2 teaspoons powdered turmeric
1 ½ cups chicken broth plus more as needed
1 teaspoon Kosher salt if using low-fat broth
1 bay leaf

Melt half of the butter in a small saucepan and add the onion and garlic. Cook until wilted, then add the rice and turmeric. Stir to coat. Add the broth, salt if using, and bay leaf. Cover and bring to a boil. Cook exactly 17 minutes. Uncover and stir in the remaining tablespoon of butter.

Cook’s notes: You may have to add more broth if it cooks away before the end of cooking time. Taste before serving and if not quite done, cook until you are pleased with the doneness. Take care with the turmeric. It stains everything that it comes in contact with a bright yellow.

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This will be shared with Foodie Friday at Rattlebridge Farm, Miz Helen’s Country Kitchen Full Plate Thursday, Foodie Friday at Simple Recipes, and The Comforts of Home Tasty Tuesday.   

Have a great weekend everyone.

Orange-Cranberry Pork Stew

This stew is based on a simple “twist of tastes.” It’s fruity and tart with a bit of spice all at the same time. The flavors from the combination of the orange and cranberries spiked with very small shot of hot chili paste and a bit of intrigue from the dark sesame oil just burst in your mouth and I’ve never eaten anything quite like it.

The pork is meltingly tender and the stew goes very well with rice. The fruit ends up cooking away and integrates into the sauce and virtually disappears. So if you want it to look pretty like the picture, I recommend that you use my suggested garnish of fresh orange segments and a sprinkling of cooked cranberries before serving, which was not a part of the original recipe.

This was my first experience in cooking with a pork shoulder, also known as a Boston butt. We trimmed every bit of fat we could from the pork, but the stew still ended up looking a bit greasy. But don’t let that be a problem. Simply let the stew sit in the refrigerator overnight and skim the fat from the top before you reheat it. Letting it rest also gives the flavors a bit more time to meld. Remember that bag of cranberries you tucked away in your freezer? This is perfect time to get it out. Also some supermarkets sell bags of frozen cranberries in their freezer section all year long. The closest thing I could find to the sambal oelek (ground fresh chili paste) at Publix in the Asian section was Thai Kitchen’s roasted red chili paste, which worked out perfectly, but Amazon has a nice selection of sambal oelek on line. If you are as confused as I am by all of the different chili sauces, here's an excellent article from "Eat It Atlanta" that explains them very well. I wish I had found it before I searched for sambal oelek.

This stew is most definitely a have-again and the only thing I would change is to double it because it was so good.

Orange-Cranberry Pork Stew
Adapted from Cooking Light – serves 4

1 medium Naval orange (more if you wish to garnish, see below)
1 ½ teaspoons dark sesame oil + more as needed
1 pound boneless pork shoulder, also known as a Boston butt, trimmed of excess fat and cut into 1” pieces
Kosher salt
½ cup coarsely chopped onion
5 garlic cloves, peeled & chopped
1 cup low-sodium, low fat chicken stock
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon unseasoned rice vinegar
2 teaspoons sambal oelek (ground fresh chili paste)
1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries (more if you wish to garnish, see below)
4 cups hot cooked long grain white rice
2 tablespoons diagonally cut green onions, including green tops
Garnish of more orange segments and cranberries if desired (see below)

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

Peel and section and orange over a bowl; squeeze membranes to extract juice. Set sections aside; reserve orange juice.

Heat a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add oil to pan and swirl to coat. Sprinkle pork evenly with salt. Add pork to pan, taking care not to crowd or it will steam, and sauté 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. You may have to cook the pork in batches as I did. In that case, you will need more dark sesame oil. Add ½ cup chopped onion to pan and sauté 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add garlic, sauté 1 minute, stirring constantly. Stir in orange sections, reserved orange juice, chicken stock, brown sugar, and chili paste. Cover and bake for one hour. After 1 hour, stir in the cranberries. Bake, covered, for an additional 30 minutes or until the pork is fork-tender.

At this point, the stew can cool and be stored in the refrigerator, covered, over-night (recommended to be able to skim excess fat). The day of serving, remove the stew from the refrigerator, scoop off the accumulated fat and discard. Reheat the stew slowly while you prepare the rice. If you prefer a thicker stew, reduce the broth to ¾ cup, or simmer on top of the stove after baking.

To serve, place 1 cup of cooked rice in each of 4 bowls. Top each serving with about ¾ up of the pork mixture. Garnish if desired with the additional orange sections and cranberries, then sprinkle with green onions. Serve right away.

Garnish - optional but highly recommended
From My Carolina Kitchen

1 – 2 oranges, depending on their size, peeled and cut into segments
½ cup or so cranberries, fresh or defrosted, cooked in water until their skins pop, and then drain well.

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You may notice that I've just installed something new - a "printable recipe" option located below the original recipe. I would like to thank Pat, one of my followers, for urging me to do it and to my friend Penny of Lake Lure Cottage Kitchen for her help and guidance in finding and helping me with an easy program from Google that I could install myself. I have updated most of my recent posts with the printable recipe option, but if you run across one that doesn't have it and you want to be able to print the recipe, please email me and I'll fix it right away.

This will be shared with Foodie Friday at Rattlebridge Farm, Miz Helen’s Country Kitchen Full Plate Thursday, Foodie Friday at Simple Recipes, and The Comforts of Home - Tasty Tuesday .   

Have a great weekend everyone.

A Quick French Cassoulet / Sausages and White Beans Cassoulet-Style

Today I have a quick version of a French cassoulet, a sausage and white bean stew. A true French cassoulet is a hearty, slow-cooked, meat-studded stew from the South of France. The typical French version consists of duck confit, goose, pork or bacon, sometimes with mutton or veal, and is always combined with wine and beans. The southwestern French villages of Toulouse and Carcassone are thought to be the capital of cassoulet.

The recipe is Cassoulet-Style Italian Sausages and White Beans and it is from Pam Anderson’s delightful book Perfect One-Dish Dinners – All You Need for Easy Get-Togethers. If you aren’t familiar with Pam, be sure check out her blog Three Many Cooks. Pam is a former executive editor for Cooks Illustrated and has written several cookbooks, including one of my favorites - How to Cook Without a Book, Recipes & Techniques Every Cook Should Know By Heart.

A French cassoulet is a perfect one-dish meal for casual entertaining. Pam’s Cassoulet-Style Italian Sausages and White Beans is a quick version that comes together in about 10 to 15 minutes and only takes about an hour to cook. She shared her recipe here on Merry-Jennifer’s blog The Merry Gourmet. Merry-Jennifer’s recipe is almost exactly as written by Pam, but she modified the recipe slightly for her family’s taste by decreasing the cherry tomatoes from 3 pints to 2 and adding 4 cans of white beans instead of the 3 called for in the original recipe.

I followed Pam’s original recipe to a T and, as you can see above I included a butter crumb topping, which is typical in French cassoulet recipes. For the crumb topping, tear several slices of a good hearty bread or a European-style loaf into small pieces and chop them in a mini food processer until you have about two cups of fine bread crumbs. If you make more crumbs than you need, they store well in a baggie in the refrigerator or freezer. Melt two tablespoons of unsalted butter in a skillet and toss in the crumbs and season with a bit of sea salt. Cook, stirring frequently, until they are golden brown, about 12 – 15 minutes. Use the crunchy crumbs as a topping on the cassoulet before serving.

Cassoulet has long been a favorite in our family. You may remember my lighter version shown below, recipe here, that uses chicken as the base. If you’ve never eaten cassoulet, I really encourage you to give it a try. It’s French classical comfort food and just may become one of your family’s favorites too.

This will be shared with Foodie Friday at Rattlebridge Farm, Miz Helen’s Country Kitchen Full Plate Thursday, and Foodie Friday at Simple Recipes.   

Have a great weekend everyone.

Big News - Larry at Big Dude's Eclectic Ramblings and Chris at Nibble Me This have just announced the dates for their 5th Annual Blogger Get-Together at Larry's home, Almost Heaven South, located on Tellico Lake in eastern Tennessee. The dates will be either June 7 or June 8. Here's a link to last years party from Larry's blog and a link to my post about last year's luau as well. If you are interested in attending, please contact Larry at the above link. Meakin and I been to every one of the get-togethers and absolutely everyone has a fabulous time. Guaranteed. 

Grab a plate and join me and the other bloggers for the 5th Annual Blogger's Get-together at Almost Heaven South on Tellico Lake, Tennessee in June.

Spanish-style Chicken and Chorizo Stew

This Spanish-style stew is packed with tons of flavor and highlights saffron, sherry vinegar, and Spanish chorizo.  Chorizo as you know comes in two forms – Spanish, which is a cured, firm sausage, and the Mexican version, a spicy ground pork which you may remember I used in the pan-grilled chicken with vegetables and chorizo confetti here.

I like both chorizos because they are so different, not only in texture, but in taste. Where the Mexican needs to be cooked and is hot and spicy and a little goes a long way, the Spanish chorizo has a depth of flavor that comes from smoky paprika and is fully cooked and ready to eat with your favorite cheese and wine.

The two chorizos are not interchangeable and Mexican chorizo should not be substituted in this recipe. Imported Spanish chorizo can be found at La Tienda and Amazon, two on-line sources. Goya also makes a version that is available in supermarkets. The one shown below is from Palacio and is an authentic Spanish chorizo made from a generations-old recipe by a family owned company in La Rioja and was the first Spanish brand to be available in the US.

Saffron threads and Spanish sherry vinegar are the other major flavoring ingredients in the stew and can be found in most large supermarkets and specialty stores. La Tienda and Amazon stock both on line. It’s handy to have a bottle of sherry vinegar on hand. I use it quite often in many recipes, including two of my favorites - a sophisticated and attractive arugula salad tossed with truffle oil and sherry vinaigrette here, and a French lentil salad with goat cheese here.

The chicken breasts in this recipe are poached, so you’ll want to take great care not to overcook them or they will be tough. If you are in a hurry, purchased rotisserie chicken could be shredded, eliminating the poaching step, but be sure to make up for the cooking liquid that would have accumulated while poaching the chicken. Actually I think we will use rotisserie chicken next time to avoid overcooked stringy chicken. The stew can be made in advance, but if you do, add the shredded chicken when you reheat the stew and stir in the vinegar at the last moment. Wedges of southern-style savory cornbread would be an excellent accompaniment to the stew.

Spanish-style Chicken and Chorizo Stew
Adapted from Cooking Light, serves 4, easily doubled

Poached chicken:
2 cups fat free, low-sodium chicken broth
2 cups water
1 bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley
3 garlic cloves
1 onion, quartered
1 medium carrot, coarsely chopped
2 (6-ounce) boneless, skinless chicken breasts, trimmed of excess fat

Stew:
6 ounces chopped Spanish chorizo
3 cups cubed red potatoes
1 ½ cups chopped onion
1 medium red bell pepper, chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon minced fresh garlic
½ teaspoon ground cumin
¼ teaspoon saffron threads, dissolved briefly in warm water
1 ½ tablespoons sherry vinegar
Chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley for garnish

To poach the chicken, combine all of the ingredients except the chicken in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the chicken and bring the mixture to a boil. Immediately reduce the heat and simmer about 14 minutes or until chicken is done, checking at about 11 to 12 minutes. Take extra care not to over-cook the chicken or it will be tough and stringy. Remove the chicken, reserving the cooking liquid. Strain the cooking liquid through a fine sieve, save and discard solids. When the chicken is cool enough to handle, shred and set aside.

Wipe the saucepan with paper towels and sauté the chopped chorizo over medium-high heat for 2 minutes. Add the potatoes, onion and bell pepper to the pan and sauté 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Salt & pepper the vegetables, then add the garlic, cumin and the saffron and sauté 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the reserved cooking liquid and bring to a simmer. Simmer 12 minutes, stirring occasionally.* Add the shredded chicken and simmer for a minute or two, just to warm the chicken. Remove the saucepan from the heat and stir in the vinegar. Ladle about 1 cup of stew into each of 4 bowls and garnish with chopped parsley. Serve right away.

*Cook’s note: If you are making the stew in advance, stop at this point. Add the chicken when you reheat the stew so as not to make the chicken tough and the stir in the vinegar at the end.

Printable recipe

This will be shared with Foodie Friday at Rattlebridge Farm, Miz Helen’s Country Kitchen Full Plate Thursday, Foodie Friday at Simple Recipes, & Food on Friday at Carol's Chatter.   

Have a great weekend everyone.

Moroccan Chicken Stew

Moroccan chicken stew is a tagine, simmered with vegetables, olives, oranges, lemons and garlic. It’s citrusy, sunny appearance was a welcome addition to our dinner table last week when even south Florida had a chill in the air, our sweaters had to come back out, and we were, like the rest of the country, longing for springtime.

Traditionally served over couscous, the stew goes together very quickly and can easily be on the table in about 45 minutes. This is simple enough for a weekday dinner or fancy enough for company. Speaking of which we will be having this week, so if you don’t see as much of me as usual, we’re out showing our house guests the sites and hoping for plenty of sunshine on the beach.

Moroccan Chicken Stew 
Adapted from Wine, Food & Friends by Karen MacNeil – serves 3 to 4

1 ½ teaspoons olive oil
1 pound skinless, boneless chicken thighs, coarsely chopped
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 cup chopped onion
½ cup chopped red bell pepper
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon saffron threads, crushed
2 garlic cloves, minced
½ cup fat-free, low sodium chicken broth (or homemade)
½ cup orange juice
¾ cup chopped orange sections (about 1 orange)
3 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons sliced pitted kalamata olives
1 tablespoon chopped lemon sections (about ½ of a lemon)
2 ½ cups hot cooked couscous
Flat-leaf parsley springs for garnish

Heat oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Season chicken with salt and freshly ground black pepper and add the chicken, bell pepper, spices and garlic and cook, stirring frequently, for 12 minutes. Stir in broth and orange juice. Bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat, and simmer 30 minutes. Remove the chicken from the heat. The stew can be made ahead at this point. Stir in orange, parsley, cilantro, olives and lemon sections. Serve over couscous and garnish with parsley if desired.

Printable recipe

This will be shared with Foodie Friday at Rattlebridge Farms, Miz Helen’s Country Kitchen Full Plate Thursday, Foodie Friday at Simple Recipes, Foodtastic Friday at Not Your Ordinary Recipes, Seasonal Sunday at the Tablescaper, and On the Menu Monday at Stone Gable.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Cassoulet ~ a lighter, easier version of one of France’s greatest and richest stews from the South of France

Cassoulet, pronounced [ka.su.lɛ], is a hearty, slow-cooked, meat studded stew from the South of France. The name cassoulet comes from the traditional cooking dish, the cassole, a deep, round earthenware pot with slanting sides.

A typical French cassoulet contains the traditional ingredients of duck confit, goose, pork or bacon, sometimes mutton or veal, but always combined with wine and beans. Some might call it the great- granddaddy of Boston baked beans. Toulouse and Carcassonne, villages in southwestern France, are thought to be the capital of cassoulet. In France cassoulet is often found in a glass jar on the shelf in the store. When we were staying in Saint-Remy de Provence, we actually bought a jarred cassoulet from our favorite boucherie and found it to be of excellent quality.

This is a lighter version and uses chicken as the base of the meats. I don’t know about you, but duck confit isn’t easily found where we live nor does it come cheap if it can be found. I’ve used traditional white beans, or haricots blancs as they’re called in France. Feel free to substitute your favorite bean as I did in this cassoulet using black-eyed peas (recipe here). Interestingly enough, the black-eyed peas brought a certain smokiness to the dish and a nice change from tradition.

A word of caution about cooking the bacon. You don’t want crispy bacon in this. Its texture would be all wrong and it would get lost in the stew. Cook your bacon, but don’t let it get crispy or too browned.

If you’re looking for a dish that can be made in advance, cassoulet is perfect. Stick it in the refrigerator after it’s cooled, then reheat it later and you’re good to go. This is also the perfect time to use those left-over chicken breasts that you’ve cooked in advance for salads and sandwiches. As you know, almost every week I cook chicken for that purpose.

The butter crusted brown topping provides a crunchy texture to the creamy rich, garlicky beans. Be sure that the bread you use is dry, otherwise the topping will become mushy. Served with a green salad dressed with a tangy vinaigrette, cassoulet makes a nice comforting dinner in front of the fire.

Cassoulet – the light version 
Adapted from Eating Well with Bert Wolf - serves 4 to 6.

1 lb dried white beans, Great Northern or navy beans
3 bay leaves
A couple of large sprigs of fresh rosemary
5 or 6 sprigs of fresh thyme
2 large chicken breasts, with bones & skin
4 oz thick bacon, cut in 1-inch pieces, cooked but not crisp
1 tablespoon fat reserved from the bacon
8 oz little link sausages, cooked & cut into 1” pieces, or ¼ pound dried sausage, cut into ¼” slices
1 tablespoon chopped fresh garlic
2 cups canned whole tomatoes, chopped with juices
2 cups low sodium, low fat chicken broth
1 cup or more dried fresh bread crumbs
2 tablespoons softened unsalted butter

Soak beans overnight in a large stockpot filled with water. Drain the beans and put into a pot with fresh water to cover by four inches. Tie the three herbs together with a string and add them to the pot. Bring to a boil over high heat, lower heat and simmer until tender, about 45 minutes to 1 hour. After one hour, add salt and taste for doneness. When done, drain beans, discard herbs and add freshly ground black pepper to taste and more salt if necessary. Put into an attractive oven-proof casserole you can use for serving as well as cooking.

Preheat oven to 350. Rub chicken with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake about 35-45 minutes or until internal temperature is 160 degrees. Remove from oven, discard skin and bones and cut into one inch pieces. Add to beans along with cooked bacon and cut up sausages.

Sauté the garlic in a skillet in about 1 tablespoon reserved bacon fat. Add the tomatoes and their juices and simmer 5 minutes. Add chicken broth and cook over medium high heat for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Pour over the bean mixture and blend well. Mix bread crumbs with softened butter and spread over beans to make a crust.

Place beans in a 325 degree oven and bake, covered, for 45 – 60 minutes. If beans get dry, carefully add more broth while not disturbing crumb crust. Uncover and bake an additional 15 minutes or until crumb topping is browned.

This will be shared with Foodie Friday at Rattlebridge Farms, Miz Helen’s Country Kitchen Full Plate Thursday, Foodie Friday at Simple Recipes, Foodtastic Friday at Not Your Ordinary Recipes, Seasonal Sunday at the Tablescaper, Carol's Chatter Food on Friday, and On the Menu Monday at Stone Gable.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Indian-Spiced Lentils and Lamb Stew

This Indian spiced stew with lentils and lamb is a perfect dish to usher in a little cool weather that many of us have been experiencing. It’s not a heavy winter stew that needs a long simmer and warms your bones. It’s more of what I call a “transitional” dish that bridges the gap between summer and fall.

I completely re-wrote the order of cooking this stew and I’ll tell you why. Lamb can be fatty and leave a heavy after-taste. You’ll hear people say they don’t like lamb. There are many reasons, but I believe that one of the reasons is it's the fatty flavor of the lamb that they don’t like.

The original recipe called for browning the lamb, then adding the vegetables to the skillet, and cooking them together. I reversed the process and cooked the vegetables first, then set them aside. Then I cooked the lamb separately, strained it well with paper towels to remove any fat, and added it to the cooked vegetables to eliminate any fatty flavors associated with the lamb.

And here in lies a question - do you ever make a decision to cook a recipe differently than how it was originally written? I’m not talking about substituting or changing ingredients. I’m talking about actually re-writing the recipe’s instruction. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Regarding ingredients. The recipe called for red curry powder, which I couldn’t find at our local supermarket. I substituted yellow, but I might seek out the red next time. Here’s a link for information about the difference in curry powders. If you don’t like it too spicy, go light on the red pepper. At the end of the cooking time the stew was drier than I liked, so I added the juice from the tomatoes and more coconut milk.

We love lamb and we thought it brought an incredible amount of flavor to this, but ground turkey or lean ground beef would also work. Ordinary brown lentils were called for and I don’t think it’s necessary to use the French ones in this. Save the good ones for when they are the star of recipe, not a secondary player.

Indian-Spiced Lentils and Lamb Stew
Adapted from Cooking Light – serves 4

2 teaspoons olive oil
1 ½ cups chopped onion
¾ cup peeled and chopped carrot
1 jalapeno pepper, seeds and ribs removed, finely diced
5 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
1 teaspoon curry powder, red if you have it
1 teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ teaspoon ground red pepper
1 tablespoon tomato paste
¾ cup brown lentils
2 teaspoons olive oil
6 ounces lean ground lamb
1 cup water
¾ cup light coconut milk, plus more if needed
1 (15 ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes, drained and chopped, (save juice to use later if needed)
¼ cup fresh cilantro, chopped plus 4 sprigs for garnish
Reduced fat Greek yogurt or low fat sour cream

Add the olive oil to a 10” non-stick skillet, swirl to coat, and turn heat to medium-high. When hot, add onions, carrot, and jalapeno and sauté about 10 minutes until vegetables soften and begin to brown. Add garlic, curry powder, cumin, salt and pepper and stir well. Sauté 30 seconds, then add tomato paste. Sauté about 2 minutes until tomato paste is well incorporated in the vegetables. Add the lentils and stir for a minute or two. Remove the vegetables and lentils to a stockpot.

Wipe the skillet out and add two teaspoons of olive oil, swirl, and heat over medium high heat. Add lamb, breaking it up with a spoon and brown for a few minutes until done. Strain cooked lamb in a strainer lined with paper towels to remove any of the fat. Add cooked lamb to the stockpot with the vegetables, then add the water, coconut milk and tomatoes and bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 40 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the lentils are done. Take care not to let the stew stick. You may need to add more coconut milk and/or the juices from the tomatoes. (I used both.) Add chopped cilantro and stir to incorporate.

Ladle one cup of the stew into each of 4 bowls and garnish with 1 tablespoon of yogurt and a sprig of cilantro. Serve right away.

Printable recipe

This will be shared with Foodie Friday at Rattlebridge Farms, Miz Helen’s Country Kitchen Full Plate Thursday, Foodie Friday at Simple Recipes, Foodtastic Friday at Not Your Ordinary Recipes, Seasonal Sunday at the Tablescaper, Food on Friday at Carole's Chatter, and On the Menu Monday at Stone Gable.

Have a great weekend!

Let French Lamb Stew with Figs and Olives Magically Transport You to Provence for the Evening

Once again last week I was dreaming about France (when am I not?). I had heard that it was rainy and quite chilly in France and my mind drifted to dining on a dinner of spring lamb in one of the charming little French bistros along the boulevard somewhere in the south of France.

As it often happens with dreams, at the same time our weather in south Florida turned cool, which was a bit unusual for this time of the year. According to my friend Vicki Lane of Vicki Lane Mysteries, who has a farm high in the mountains of the western Carolinas, cool weather late in the season is called Blackberry Winter. “This sort of late cold snap happens often enough that there’s a name for it – Blackberry Winter. Kind of like Indian Summer, but in reverse.” 

So the chill in our air must have been a Blackberry Winter “Florida Style,” not my dreams of France. Oh well, it’s not the first time my dreams have been interrupted. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me from eating lamb or thinking of Provence.

Enter French lamb stew. Inspired by flavors from the south of France - figs, green olives, and herbs de Provence - this earthy stew is perfect for an evening with a bit of chill in the air. To achieve a French bistro mood, play a little Charles Aznavour or Edith Piaf music quietly in the background, light a few candles, and pour a nice Côtes du Rhône wine. Serve with a crusty French baguette to soak up the rich juices from the stew, and voila, you are magically whisked to Provence for the evening. Well, at least in your dreams.

Lamb, Fig & Olive Stew
From Eating Well – serves 4 – about 1 ½ cups each

1 pound lean ground lamb
2 teaspoons olive oil
4 teaspoons minced garlic
2 teaspoons herbs de Provence
½ cup dry red wine
28 ounces reduced-sodium beef broth
4 teaspoons corn starch
4 plum tomatoes, diced
½ cup chopped dried figs, stems discarded
4 tablespoons finely chopped pitted green olives (use Picholine olives, the crisp un-cracked green ones from Provence if you can find them)
Freshly ground black pepper
Sea salt or kosher salt

Garnish:
4 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
2 teaspoons freshly grated lemon zest

Heat a large saucepan over medium heat. Add lamb and cook, breaking up with a wooden spoon, until browned, 4 to 6 minutes. You don’t crowd the lamb in the skillet, or it will steam instead of browning. Cook in batches if necessary. Transfer the lamb to a sieve set over a bowl to drain and discard the fat. If you have cooked it in batches, carefully wipe out the skillet before browning the next batch.

Wipe out the pan, add the oil and heat over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and herbs de Provence and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Take care not to burn the garlic. Add the wine and cook, scraping up any browned bits, until slightly reduced, about 1 minute.

Stir together the broth and cornstarch in a small bowl. Add to the pan, increase the heat to high, and bring to a simmer, stirring constantly. Add tomatoes, figs, olives and pepper, and return to a simmer, stirring often. Reduce heat to maintain a simmer and cook stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes have broken down, about 5 to 10 minutes. Add the reserved lamb and cook, stirring occasionally, until heated through, about 3 minutes. Check for seasonings and add salt if needed. Serve right away garnished with the fresh parsley and lemon zest.

Cook’s notes: To make your own herbs de Provence, combine equal proportions dried thyme, rosemary, oregano, marjoram and savory in a small jar. If desired, add a pinch of dried lavender and crushed aniseed.

* * *

This recipe will be shared with Foodie Friday at Rattlebridge Farm, Miz Helen’s Country Kitchen’s Full Plate Thursday, Foodie Friday at Not Your Ordinary Recipes, and On the Menu Monday at Stone Gable.