by Karen Swan

This wasn’t supposed to be a stew with diced lamb.  Actually, this was supposed to be an entirely different recipe.  Somewhere in the scrawling down a shopping list, bathing a toddler and general multi-tasking of Motherhood, there was a breakdown in communication and my husband returned from the Farmer’s Markets with a small, bone in leg of lamb, instead of some lamb chops.

*brain whizzing madly trying to work out what to do with it.

“Just roast it!” I hear you say.  Let me share my little secret with you.  I am THE worst roast cooker on the planet.  I have ruined more gigantic slabs of meat and delicate, expensive butcher cuts of meat than I care to recall.  I have no idea where I go wrong, but my roasts are, without fail, disasters.

Looking in the fridge, I knew I had some red capsicum and carrots, so thought I’d create a sweet stew with a not so delicate ginger punch.  It turned out great!

Note to self:  when leaving in the large, mangled remnants of a piece of fresh ginger after grating (to give off more flavour overnight), remember to fish it out!  Biting down on a piece of whole ginger the size of your thumb is a shock to say the least!

8 hours on low in the slow cooker should do it.  Mine was on for about 12 hours because I wanted to go to bed! (um, yes, I went to bed a 6:30pm!).

Use whatever cut of lamb you can get.  It can be pretty darn pricey, so ask your butcher for the best deal and cut for slow cooking.

Ingredients:

(serves 6 adults)

4 cloves of garlic – finely chopped

2 large carrots – peeled and cut into thirds (you want nice, big veggies in this dish)

2 potatoes – peeled and quartered into wedges

1 onion – peeled and quartered into wedges

1 thumb size piece of fresh ginger – peeled and grated

1 x 400g tin tomatoes (whole or diced – whatever you have in the larder)

1/2 cup vegetable stock

1 red capsicum – thickly sliced

600g to 1kg of lamb – diced (if you want to use less lamb, just up the quantity of carrot and potato).

Salt and pepper to taste

1 tin of chic peas or other beans, drained.

Method:

In a bowl, season the lamb with salt and pepper and toss to combine.

Put the lamb and all other ingredients (aside from the chic peas/beans) into the slow cooker and cook on low for 8 to 12 hours.

Stir through the chic peas/beans right before serving and garnish with fresh parsley (of which I had none, hence the bright orange meal in the photo!)

We had ours with simple steamed broccoli, but it would be lovely served with rice or cous cous.