slow roast shoulder of lamb with moroccan spices and salt cured orange

This is my first attempt at using my brand new slow cooker. I'm quite excited by the possibilities and couldn't wait to prepare some slow cooked meat. I apologise now if my blog gets a little overtaken with slow-cooking recipes. I'll do my best to not get too carried away. Anyways, whether you're a novice or pro slow-cooker I urge you to give this recipe a try. You could serve it with couscous but I decided to shred it and serve with flat bread and a range of side dishes including roast butternut squash and marrow slices, hummus, mint and garlic sauce and some sriracha too (I love that stuff).



Ingredients
1 kg half shoulder or leg of lamb
Rub
2 tbsp ras al hanout (check out this recipe for the spice mix or use shop bought)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp honey or agave syrup
1 tbsp dried mint (don't even think about using fresh - it won't work anywhere near as well.)
1 salt cured orange, pith removed, sliced into quarters
2 onions, peeled and roughly sliced
2 sticks of celery, halved
2 carrots, peeled and halved

1. Mix the spice rub ingredients together and rub into the lamb making sure it is completely slathered in the mix. Cover and set to one side to marinate. I left mine overnight but an hour or so should do it. 
2. Put the carrot, celery, onion and orange into the base of a slow cooker and put the lamb on top. Add a cup of water then cover with the lid and leave to cook on low/medium for 6 -12 hours. You may need to adjust this depending on your slow cooker. It is ready when the meat pulls apart easily and is falling off the bone. 
3. When cooked, remove the meat from the slow cooker and when cool enough to handle pull the meat apart into smaller pieces.
4. Serve with hummus, roast vegetables, flat bread and yogurt and chilli sauces. 

hummus

There are so many variations for this delicious side dish. I am an absolute fan of hummus in all its incarnations. The amounts of each ingredient are approximate and you can adjust them according to your own tastes. You can make this by hand by mashing all the ingredients together with a potato masher or fork but if you have a food processor it does make the job so much easier.

Ingredients
400g cooked or tinned chickpeas
2 tbsp tahini
1 clove garlic
juice of 1 lemon
water
salt to taste
extra virgin olive oil and smoked paprika to garnish

1. Place the chickpeas, garlic and tahini in the food processor and blitz until you have a rough puree.
2. Add the lemon juice and pulse a few times until mixed in. 
3. Next gradually add water, mixing the whole time, until you have your desired consistency. 
4. Taste the hummus and add salt to taste. Transfer to a bowl, drizzle with the olive oil and sprinkle with the paprika. Yum.

banana & rum cake

This is another wonderful cake to have with your mid-morning tea or coffee. It is very easy to make and I put it together one Saturday morning in between the various weekend chores I had to do. The cake isn't egg-free for any reason other than the fact I had no eggs in the house and I wanted to make a banana cake to use up the over ripe ones sat in my kitchen. You don't have to add the rum syrup, it's delicious and moist without but the rum helps to elevate this cake to something a little more grown-up and special.



Ingredients

Cake:
1 cup soured milk (sour regular milk by adding the juice of a lemon) or regular yogurt
1 cup oil
3 bananas mashed

3/4 tsp baking powder
2 cups of caster sugar
3 cups of self raising flour
2 tsp vanilla extract 

a little milk if too thick
Pinch salt

Syrup:
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup dark rum
Squeeze of lemon juice

1. Grease and flour a bundt tin, and preheat the oven to 180°C, 350°F. 
2. Place all the cake ingredients in a bowl and beat together using a wooden spoon or electric hand whisk until everything is well combined, if it’s a bit thick add a little extra milk. 
3. Pour the mixture into the tin then bake in the oven for about 50 minutes until well risen and a skewer comes out clean.
4. Turn off the oven, and remove cake. Leave it to cool in the tin while you prepare the syrup by heating the ingredients together until the sugar has completely dissolved into the rum syrup.
5. With a skewer poke holes all over the cake and while the cake and syrup are still warm pour the syrup over the cake. Leave the cake to cool completely in the tin then turn out and serve.

chicken soup

What better way to use a great homemade stock than with this delicious and simple chicken soup. You can use any kind of noodle or pasta in it but I chose to use my homemade kluski, they're great. My sister has a similar version on her blog. Check it out here.

Ingredients
1 litre chicken stock
approx 500g chicken meat (use left overs from your roast, making the stock or raw pieces of your choosing)
2 carrots finely sliced in batons
fresh dill
lemon
salt and pepper
1/2 portion of kluski dough

1. Put the stock in a saucepan and heat over a gentle flame. If you're using raw chicken add it now and poach until cooked through then shred or slice in to small pieces and return to the stock.
2. Add the carrot and and kluski into the stock and heat for a further 5 minutes until all the little noodles have risen to the surface.
3. Check the seasoning and adjust to your taste, add the dill and a good squeeze of lemon juice then serve.

easy flapjacks

Ok, so all flapjacks are easy to make but I threw these together tonight because I had a few odds and ends in my cupboard that I wanted to use up and I love flapjacks. The beauty of a flapjack recipe is that it is quite forgiving. Once you understand the basics you can vary things according to your preferences. Essentially you need 2:1:1 of oats/nuts/muesli:butter:sugar with some additional syrup if you want the goo. The quantities below make a fairly thin flapjack

Ingredients
200g rolled oats or muesli of your choice (I used a mixture of muesli, crushed walnuts and rolled oats, just make sure you've got more oats than everything else)
100g butter
100g sugar (I used about 80g caster and 20g dark brown sugar because it was the end of a bag in my cupboard)
1 tbsp golden syrup

1. Preheat the oven to 160C fan. Grease a square brownie pan approx 20cm x 20cm.
2. In a saucepan over a low heat, melt the butter, sugar and syrup together until they are thoroughly combined. Don't panic if the sugar doesn't completely dissolve. 
3. Throw in the the oats/muesli/nuts/dried fruit that you're using and coat thoroughly in the buttery sugary goodness. 
4. Press the mixture into your prepared dish then put in the oven for around 30 minutes. The flapjack is ready once it is golden brown. Avoid over cooking as it will continue to cook once out of the oven because of the high sugar and fat content. 
5. Leave to cool for at least 5-10 minutes minutes before you mark into pieces.
6. Now leave it to cool completely before turning out of the pan otherwise you'll just get all burnt and the flapjack will fall apart. Enjoy with a nice cup of tea.