Our first recipe blog post! Lamb Ragu

The blah blah before the recipe, feel free to skip:

Sheep spend most of their day engaged in some kind of eating, whether it’s grazing or chewing their cud (re-chewing regurgitated forage). Apparently, they only spend around 4 hours a day sleeping.

You may think they just eat any food that’s in front of them, but I have spent a lot of time watching sheep and I can tell you they are little gourmandes!

During the grazing season when we move them to a fresh pasture, they will run around their new paddock as a group checking out the menu and then split off getting their favourite things before anyone else. 

Since we have native pastures here that are very diverse, the menu is changing frequently, so I notice certain sheep will prefer certain plants over others. Popular first bites include vetch, clover, those little white flowers that come up in the spring, buttercups.

What is interesting is that they don’t all go for the same thing, it depends on their age, season, maturity of the plant, and what nutrients the individual sheep needs at that moment. My theory is that they also have personal preferences, just like us!

Sheep seem to be thinking about food every moment of the day, and that is just one of the things I have in common with them!

Unlike sheep, I especially love cooking and think it is probably my favourite activity of the day. When I’m not cooking, I’m thinking about what I am going to cook or eat.

In North America, most of us didn't grow up eating lamb everyday so there are certainly cuts that many of you are less familiar with and probably lots of recipes you haven’t thought of yet!

My only hiccup with this is that I come from a family where “a cup of flour” means that one ceramic wine cup your grandma really liked - not an actual measuring cup - and you put as much paprika as you feel like tasting that day. Even when the recipes are written down they still say things like “a big chunk of butter” or "a good amount of rosemary".

All this to say, I am not great at writing recipes! But I do love sharing food, so please bear with me and write to me with any questions you have.

I thought I’d start with a recipe that can be for lamb shoulder or lamb necks, since I get asked about those two cuts a lot.

Bon appétit!

Val's "Ragu di Agnello"

This is Val’s recipe for his amazing lamb ragu that we use mainly as a sauce for pasta but could be served with bread, polenta, even with boiled potatoes or cooked white beans.

This recipe could easily serve 6 people, probably with leftovers.

Ingredients

I have added a ridiculous amount of notes to the ingredient list, so click on the expand arrow to view my notes for each ingredient.

Lamb neck (whole or sliced) and two lamb shanks, should equal about 1.5kg of meat

You could also use only one of the above or  lamb shoulder (watch out for smaller bones), lamb stew cubes, beef shoulder, or one of our favourites is lamb neck and beef oxtail or beef cheeks. (having a butcher husband means getting awesome rejects like oxtail and spider steak)

One jar of tomato passata (around 750ml)

I grew up with my mother’s italian boyfriend always using passata for any tomato sauce but I’m sure this would be great with crushed tomatoes or even whole tomatoes as well, it would just be less velvety and more chunky, which could be amazing! Passata is very easy to find in the area though.

Half a bottle of red wine

Pick a wine you like because you’ll be drinking the other half while cooking! If you don’t drink, there’s plenty more recipes with wine that can use up that other half for you.

1 litre of lamb stock

Nous utilisons notre bouillon d'agneau que nous préparons avec nos os d'agneau et que nous vendons, mais vous pouvez également utiliser du bouillon de poulet, de bœuf, etc.

1 "impressively large" onion, finely diced

3 stalks of Celery, finely diced

2-3 large carrots, finely diced

2 heads of garlic, minced or left whole, depends how garlicky you like it and if you want to have to go fishing out garlic cloves at the end.

5 fresh bay leaves

We have a bay leaf tree in our sunroom so we have the luxury of fresh bay leaves. They usually have them fresh at the grocery store in the little containers of fresh herbs section and I highly recommend getting them because it is so delicious fresh, but it will of course be great with dried bay leaf too!

5 long stems of rosemary, handful of thyme

I don’t know how to measure rosemary and thyme since your stems could be any size! But it will taste delicious whether you add a little more or a little less and even if you don’t have any! 

Tomato paste - 1 tbsp

You’ll also need a pan that you can sear things in and a large baking dish

Okay, now that we’ve gotten through the most unnecessarily long ingredient list (sorry!), let’s move onto the cooking instructions.

I can tell you right now, I’m going to have to adjust and add notes to Val’s recipe. His first career was working as a cook in restaurants which took him from Ireland (where he grew up) to Toronto, Japan, and back to Michelin-starred restaurants in Ireland.

I am already seeing cast iron pan, hotel pan, mirepoix, macédoine, and it looks like he uses about a hundred different dishes, which adds up as I am the one who cleans up after him and I often have to remind him this is a home kitchen, there is no paid dishwasher on staff! I will write the recipe as he wrote it and add my notes underneath:

• In a cast iron pan, sear meat over medium/high heat. Colour the meat thoroughly as this will add the maximum amount of flavour. This step does not need to be rushed, it usually takes me 30-40min.

  • A cast iron-pan is ideal but not necessary! Since it is high heat you want to avoid your toxic teflon pans, but you can use any pan you usually cook at high heat on.

  
  

• While the meat browns, dice your mirepoix into macedoine size and prepare the rest of your ingredients.

  • The mirepoix is the finely diced carrot, celery, and onion cut into small, uniform cubes of about 5-10 mm. You could also use your food processor.

  
  

• Heat stock up in another pot.

  
  

• When meat is thoroughly browned, transfer to hotel pan.

  • By hotel pan he means those big steel steam pans, but you can use your preferred roasting dish, like a le creuset type enamel roasting dish, or a glass one. It is acidic so don’t use anything that can’t handle acid. You’ll need a lid or to put tinfoil over the top.'

• Preheat oven to 150 degrees celsius

  • For us Canadians, that’s 300 degrees fahrenheit.

  
  

• Over medium heat, add mirepoix to the pan you seared the meat in. Add a generous pinch of salt and cover with a lid. We want to sweat the vegetables to release as much flavour as possible and not get any colour/caramelization on the veg. Stir every 3-4 minutes until onions are translucent and carrots are softened. 

  
  

• Add 1 heaping tablespoon of tomato paste and all of the garlic and cook out for 2 minutes.

  
  

• Remove the vegetables from the pan and add them to the roasting dish with the meat.

  
  

• Turn heat to high, add wine to pan and deglaze, making sure to scrape the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Add to roasting dish, along with the stock.

  
  

• Add tomato passata to the the roasting dish.

  
  

• Add fresh herbs, a generous pinch of salt, 30 cracks of black pepper.

  
  

• Cover the roasting dish and cook in the oven for 5-6 hours. 

  
  

• Once meat is cooked, transfer to another dish to cool down until it’s cool enough to handle. Once cooled, pull meat off bones and set aside.

  
  

• For the remaining braising liquid, I just remove the herbs and leave the veg in the sauce, but you could strain if you prefer.

  
  

• Warm the sauce back up, transfer meat back to sauce.

  
  

• Finish with a spoonful of butter and finely grated parmiggiano or pecorino.

  
  

• Serve with rigatoni.

  • Or any chunky sauce friendly pasta, like orrechiete, lumacioni, fresh papardelle or tagilatelli, paccheri, etc

  • We are an always mix the sauce with pasta before serving family, that’s when you can add the finishing splash of olive oil or in Val's recipe, butter. You can do what you want!

  • The aforementioned italian always said to cook the pasta for 1 minute less than the recommended amount on the package, then add it to the pot or pan with the hot sauce where it finishes that last bit of cooking.

If you've made it this far, thank you for putting up with my incessant yapping. I hope you try the recipe and that it brings you joy!