Lamb Shoulder

This is a Moroccan version of a dish you find in many Middle Eastern countries. Serve with bread.

Tagine barkok, made with or without honey, is one of the most popular fruit tagines of North Africa. It is eaten with bread. Restaurants in Paris accompany it with couscous and bowls of boiled chickpeas and boiled raisins (see page 377).

They call it the Tunisian cassoulet.

This Tunisian dish, more commonly made with dried chestnuts, is more to my taste with fresh and even frozen ones. While Tunisia has been sympathetic to Western ideas, and although it was subjected to a massive immigration of French and Italian peasants when it became a French protectorate, it has sustained Arab cooking in its most ancient form. This beautiful and fragrant stew is an example.

This Moroccan tagine is easy to make with the frozen artichoke bottoms from Egypt and frozen skinned fava beans (both really good) available in Middle Eastern stores.

In Egypt this is the favorite kebab. It is also mine. I love the soft, moist texture of the meat, and the flavors of parsley and onion. The traditional way of preparing it is to chop all the main ingredients by hand, then to chop them together. They still do this in restaurants (where it is called kofta kebab or kofta alla shish)—but you can achieve good results with the blade of the food processor if you do each ingredient separately. For a moist, juicy kofta you need a good amount of fat. Most of it will melt away in the heat of the broiler. You will need skewers with a wide, thick blade to hold the ground meat and prevent it from rolling around. If you find it difficult, you can always shape the meat into burgers.

This dish does not look very nice—it is a muddy brown—but the flavors are deliciously rich and strong, and the meat is meltingly tender. Serve it with plain or Vermicelli Rice (page 304).

The special feature of this dish is the exquisite mix of caramelized onions, honey, and raisins called tfaya, which is served as a topping to the long-cooked, deliciously tender meat.

This is the best-known fruit tagine outside Morocco. Restaurants in Paris accompany it with couscous seffa made with fine-ground couscous (see page 28) with plenty of butter, one bowl of boiled chickpeas, and another of stewed raisins. The best prunes to use are the moist Californian ones, which are already pitted.

In an Arab culture born in the desert, dates have something of a sacred character. Considered the “bread of the desert,” they symbolize hospitality and are much loved and prestigious. You would find this dish at wedding parties. Some people find it too sweet, so you might prefer it, as I do, without the optional honey. The dates give it a slightly sticky texture. Use the semi-dried moist varieties from California or the Deglet Nour dates from Tunisia.

This is a recipe that is similar to the chicken tagine on page 93, but the result is quite different. The sweetness of the pears goes surprisingly well with the lamb. Choose firm pears; if the fruit is too soft, they tend to collapse during the cooking. Comice and Bosc are good varieties. Use a boned shoulder of lamb or neck fillets, and trim only some—not all—of the fat.

A favorite joint for a family roast in Morocco is a shoulder of lamb, and honeyed onions are a specially delicious accompaniment. The lamb is cooked very slowly for a long time, until it is so tender that the meat can be pulled away from the bone with the fingers. In the past, the lamb was cooked on the spit in the family courtyard or taken to the public oven. A shoulder roast of young spring lamb is always fatty, but most of the fat melts away during the long cooking, keeping the meat moist and succulent. If an older lamb is too fatty, carefully remove some of the fat with a sharp knife before cooking. Use the smaller amount of honey to begin with, and add more, to taste.

This is sumptuous and extremely easy. The meat is cooked very slowly for a long time until it is meltingly tender and you can pull the meat off the bones with your fingers. The stuffing—it is the traditional stuffing for a whole lamb—is sweet with dates and raisins and crunchy with almonds. (In Morocco, they add sugar or honey but that makes it too sweet for me.) The couscous needs plenty of butter as there is no sauce, but you can substitute oil if you prefer. Try to get the fine-ground variety of couscous called seffa (see page 28), otherwise use the ordinary medium-ground one. For the dates, use the Tunisian Deglet Nour or Californian varieties that you can find in supermarkets. A shoulder of spring lamb is always fatty but most of the fat melts away during the long cooking. If it appears too fatty, as might be the case with an older lamb, carefully remove some of the fat before cooking.

This is one of those delicious dishes that are complex in taste but easy in preparation. In Le Marche it is made with lamb and Ascolane olives, because that is what the land provides, but it could be made with other green olives; black olives, such as taggiasche or Gaeta, would be fine, too. As in the recipe for Chicken with Olives and Pine Nuts (page 176), the simple pan-cooking method used here is typical of Le Marche. Try preparing other meats, such as beef or pork, the same way—keeping in mind that the cooking time will vary—and the results will be excellent. And though lamb shoulder is delicious and economical, more expensive lamb would be extraordinary prepared in the same style. This dish is good any time of year, too. In the winter, serve it with polenta and braised bitter greens such as broccoli di rape; in summer, a tossed green salad would go nicely.

This classic Basque recipe was passed down from owner Mario Leon's grandmother to his mother. Leon took it from there. Sentimentality aside, the dish earns its permanent spot on the menu with big flavor and lamb so tender it falls apart at the touch of a fork.

This Moroccan-style braise is deeply aromatic, meltingly tender, and exactly what you want on a chilly winter weekend.

Spiedini ("skewers" in Italian) refers to this dish at Frasca Food and Wine involving meat, seafood, or vegetables roasted or grilled over a fire. Instead of lamb shoulder, you could buy about 21/2 pounds boneless leg of lamb to trim and cube for the spiedini.

Here is a jewel of an Afghani dish. It is one I cook regularly, sometimes with shoulder of lamb instead of chicken thighs. I serve it with slow-cooked spinach, finished with leeks and a minuscule amount of rhubarb. This may sound strange, but the rhubarb is sweetened by the leeks and it really does work.

It might seem like a joke to include a recipe designed to use up leftover white wine (from our Roast Turkey with Black Truffle Butter and White–Wine Gravy )—after all, why not just drink it?—but if you take the time to make this marvelous one–dish lamb dinner, you might find yourself hoarding half–empty bottles so you can make it again and again. Lamb shoulder chops are an inexpensive cut that benefits from braising, and the wine really helps tenderize the connective tissues running through the flavorful meat. Snuggling the lamb between sheets of thinly sliced potatoes, plus scatterings of golden garlic, onions, and thyme sprigs, creates a handsome and wonderfully aromatic dish.