You know what it’s like, you check the thermometer and it’s reading 30 degrees. You think to yourself, ‘you know what?  I’m going to cook something that means my oven is on ALL day.’  This is exactly what I did yesterday.

Whilst having your oven blasting out all day in summer heat may seem crazy, the end result was more than worth it!  I’ve had a Tagine pot that I’ve been wanting to use for absolutely ages, finally I have.  So yesterday it was out with the lamb shanks and into the flavours of North Africa.

• 2 lamb shanks
• 4 lamb chops
• 1 sml tin chick peas
• 1 tin chopped tomatoes
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp Smoked Paprika
• 2 tsp chilli powder
• 2 tsp turmeric
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 2 garlic cloves crushed
• 1 onion finely diced
• 2 rashers of bacon, cut into lardons
• Salt and pepper
• A splash of Worcestershire sauce
• 2 tbsp dried raisins

I love Tagine its one of my favourite dishes to do and now that I have a proper dish to make them in, I thought it only right to make one!  I was up unusually early for a Sunday morning, 6am to be precise, after that all important cup of tea I set about making the tagine.

To start with I heated a large heavy bottomed pan, seasoned and then sealed the lamb.  Then, using the residual oils and juices left behind by the meat I began to fry off the onions, bacon and garlic until the onions softened.  I then added the tomatoes, chick peas and all of the other ingredients and cooked the sauce out for around 5 minutes.   Finally I put the lamb into the tagine pot, covered it with the sauce and put into a low oven to cook for the rest of the day, its final cooking time came to 10 hours. Trust me it was worth the wait!

PG